A rain of gold fell at the wedding of Ardashes,
A rain of pearls fell on the nuptials of Sathinig.
Armenian nuptial songs, like all other folk-epithalamiums, so far as I am aware, seem to point to an early state of society when the girl was simply carried off by her marauding lover by fraud or force. Exulting in what relates to the bridegroom, the favourite song on this subject is profoundly melancholy as concerns the bride. The mother was cajoled with a pack of linen, the father with a cup of wine, the brother with a pair of boots, the little sister with a finger of antimony—so complains the dismal ditty of a new bride. There is great pathos in the words in which she begs her mother not to sweep the sand off the little plank, so that the slight trace of her girl's footsteps may not be effaced.
Marriage is called in Armenian, "The Imposition of the Crown," from the practice of crowning bride and bridegroom with fresh, white flowers. I remember how, in one of the last marriages celebrated in the little Armenian church in the Rue Monsieur (which was closed a few years ago, when the Mekhitarist property in Paris was sold), this ceremony was omitted by particular request of the bridegroom, a rising French Diplomatist, who did not wish to wear a wreath of roses. The Armenian marriage formulæ are extremely explicit. The priest, taking the right hand of the bride, and placing it in that of the bridegroom, says: "According to the Divine order God gave to our ancestors, I give thee now this wife in subjection. Wilt thou be her master?" To which the answer is, "Through the help of God, I will." The priest then asks the woman: "Wilt thou be obedient to him?" She answers: "I am obedient according to the order of God." The interrogations are repeated three times, and three times responded to.
An Armenian author, M. Ermine, published at Moscow in 1850 a treatise on the historical and popular songs of ancient Armenia.
Of popular songs current in more recent times there was not, till lately, a single specimen within reach of the public, though it was confidently surmised that such must exist. The Mekhitarist monks have taken the lead in this as in every other branch of Armenian research, and my examples are quoted from a small collection issued by their press at Venice. I am not sure that I have chosen those that are intrinsically the best, but think that those which figure in these pages are amongst the most characteristic of their authors and origin. The larger portion of these songs are printed from manuscripts in the library of San Lazzaro; the date of their composition is thought to vary from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. The language in which they are written is the vulgar tongue of Armenia, but in several instances it attains a very close approximation to the classical Armenian.
It may not be amiss if I conclude this sketch with a brief account of the remarkable order of the Mekhitarists, which is so intimately related with all that bears on the subject of Armenian literature. Those who are well acquainted with it will not object to hear the history of this order recapitulated; while I believe that many who have visited the Convent of San Lazzaro have yet but vague notions regarding the work and aims of its inmates. It is to be conjectured that, as a matter of fact, the majority of Englishmen go to San Lazzaro rather in the spirit of a Byron-pilgrimage than from any definite interest in the convent; and without doubt were its only attraction its association with the English poet it would still be worth a visit. Byron's connection with San Lazzaro was not one of the least interesting episodes of his life; and it is pleasant to remember the tranquil hours he spent in the society of the learned monks, and the fascination exercised over him by their sterling and unpretentious merit. "The neatness, the comfort, the gentleness, the unaffected devotion of the brethren of the order," he wrote, "are well fitted to strike the man of the world with the conviction that there is 'Another and a better even in this life.'" The desire to present himself with an excuse for frequent intercourse with the brothers was probably at the bottom of Byron's sudden discovery that his mind "wanted something craggy to break upon, and that Armenian was just the thing to torture it into attention." He says it was the most difficult thing to be found in Venice by way of an amusement, and describes the Armenian character as a very "Waterloo of an alphabet." The origin of this character is exceedingly curious, it being the only alphabet known to have been the work of a single man, with the exception of the Georgian, and now obsolete Caucasian Albanian. St Mesrop, an Armenian, invented all the three about A.D. 406. Byron informs Moore, with some elation, of the fate that befell a French professorship of Armenian, which had then been recently instituted: "Twenty pupils presented themselves on Monday morning, full of noble ardour, ingenuous youth, and impregnable industry. They persevered with a courage worthy of the nation, and of universal conquest till Thursday, then fifteen out of the twenty succumbed to the six-and-twentieth letter of the alphabet." The poet himself mastered all thirty-three letters, and a good deal more besides, under the superintendence of the librarian, Padre Paschal Aucher, a man who combined great learning with much knowledge of the world. As the result of these studies we have a translation into Scriptural English of two apocryphal epistles of St Paul, and an Anglo-Armenian grammar, of which, with characteristic liberality, Byron defrayed the cost of publication.
The order was founded by Varthabed Mekhitar, who was born at Sebaste, in Asia Minor, in 1676. Mekhitar was one of those men to whom it comes quite naturally to go forth with David's sling and stone against the Philistine and his host. He could have been scarcely more than twenty years of age when fearlessly and steadfastly he set himself to the gigantic task of raising his country out of the stagnant slough of ignorance in which he saw it sunk. He was then a candidate for holy orders, studying in an Armenian convent.
The monks he found no less ignorant than the rest of the population; those to whom he broached his ideas greeted them with derision, and this did not fail to turn to cruel persecution when he began to preach against certain prejudices which appeared to him to keep the Armenians from conforming with the Latin Church—a union he earnestly desired. Mekhitar now went to Constantinople, where he set on foot a small monastic society; presently he moved to Modon, in the Morea, then under the rule of Venice, but before he had been there long, the place was seized by the Turks. A few of the monks, with their head, managed to escape to Venice; the others were taken prisoners, and sold into a temporary slavery. At Venice, in 1717, the Signory made over to the fugitives in perpetuity a small barren island in the Lagune, once tenanted by the Benedictines, who had there established a hospital for lepers, but which, since the disappearance of that disease, had been entirely uninhabited. Mekhitar immediately organised a printing press, and began making translations of standard works, which were disseminated wherever Armenians were to be found, that is to say, all over the East. When he died in 1747, the work of the society was already placed on a solid foundation; but it received considerable development and extension from the hands of the third abbot-general, Count Stephen Aconzkover, Archbishop of Sinnia, by birth a member of an Armenian colony in Hungary, who sought admittance into the order, and lived in the retirement of San Lazzaro for sixty-seven years. He was a poet, a scholar of no mean attainments, and the author of a universal geography in twelve volumes. The Society is now self-supporting, large numbers of its publications being sold in Persia, and India, and at Constantinople. These publications consist of numerous translations and of reproductions of the great part of Armenian literature. Many works have been printed from MSS. which are collected by emissaries sent out from San Lazzaro to travel over the plains and valleys of Armenia for the purpose of rescuing the literary relics which are widely scattered, and are in constant danger of loss or destruction, and at the same time to distribute Armenian versions of the Bible. Another of the undertakings of the convent is a school exclusively for the education of Armenian boys. About one hundred boys receive free instruction in the two colleges at Venice. What this order have effected, both towards the enlightenment of their country and in keeping alive the sentiment of Armenian nationality, is simply incalculable. In their self-imposed exile they have nobly carried out the precept of an Armenian folk-poet:
Forget not our Armenian nation,