Of her sarong will sweep softly along the grass,—
I shall hear it.
There are times when the vitality of poetry seems to be lost as one feels the simple and direct power of some of these ancient songs which spring from the heart and not from the head, and all modern verse seems like the pale and artificial product of intellectuality, weakened feeling, and language refined until it has lost its strength, and one is almost tempted to believe that civilization is as fatal to poetry as it is to religious enthusiasm. Of course this is not the case. The human heart has not lost its strength of feeling nor its power of expression, and modern poetry is greater in its power and wider in its scope than folk-song. But it has lost some of the peculiar strength which comes from simplicity of feeling and overmastering power of passion; and its language, if it has many delicate shades of meaning, which that of a primitive people has not, has lost the clearness and vividness of expression of those whose words are few, but which are the creation of their hearts and not of their intellects.
These folk-songs of Roumania are full of the pathos and strength of simple passions, and they show a native poetical spirit and power of the imagination which is rare in any nation. Doubtless many of them are old, the inheritance of long tradition and familiar forms of expression, but it is indicated that many of them are new, and that the stock is being constantly added to by the force of a poetic inspiration, which is still in full life and flower. We are told that many of the spinning songs are improvisations, the girls all standing in a circle, the best spinner or singer in the centre, and that she begins to improvise a song, which is passed on for continuance with the distaff to any one whom she may select. Doubtless these are on familiar themes and with familiar forms of expression, like all folk-songs, but they show the vital spirit of poetry still existing, and the bulk of more elaborate compositions is probably still being added to. This fact confirms the belief, which intelligent observers have noted, that the Roumanians and the kindred peoples of this race have an intellectual power which is of an undecayed and still progressive people, very different from the effete Ottomans by whom they were so long oppressed, and that, if the future promised an opportunity for original development, instead of absorption into the Muscovite empire, they might produce a homogeneous and progressive nation with original features and an independent contribution to civilization. At any rate the volume gives evidence of remarkable intellectual power among the Roumanian peasantry, and it may be hoped that this treasure-trove will stimulate other researches, and the discovery of a larger bulk of native poetry, if none of finer value. Whether any touch of sentiment has been added in the translations with the higher poetic form in some instances cannot, of course, be apparent, but the internal evidence would indicate that essential faithfulness has been preserved and that the substance is as genuine as the poetry is original and powerful.
Some of the most striking songs in the collection are those of the gypsies, which have a wild and fiery tone like the gypsy music which has stirred the blood of refined civilization, as it has been performed by orchestras with all the effect of modern instrumentation, in a way that the most skillful composers have failed to do, and shows the element of poetry and passion in that strange and exotic race. What stronger beauty of expression or grace of feeling can be found than this?—
There where the path to the plain goes by,
Where deep in the thicket my hut doth lie,
Where corn stands green in the garden plot—
The brook ripples by so clearly there,
The way is so open, so white, and fair—