The above brief sketch will probably be sufficient to show that these poems are capable of throwing a good deal of light upon the origin and development of a heroic story. The period is one for which, comparatively speaking, a fair amount of information is available; and quite possibly more might be obtained by a careful investigation of the documents of that age. It is to be remembered of course that after the middle of the fifteenth century nothing like court poetry can have existed in Servia. We should expect then that from this time onwards the poems would become more and more permeated by those characteristics which we have assigned to Stage III of our scheme. As a matter of fact some of the poems show these characteristics only to a comparatively slight degree. This is especially the case with the poem on the banquet (Karadžić, II 50 iii); but part of this poem, as we have seen, can be traced back to the fifteenth century. On the other hand the characteristics of Stage III are very strongly marked in Karadžić II 46 and 48. I should expect that these poems are late compositions.
So far as I have been able to deal with the subject the result of the discussion has been that there is little or no definite evidence for the invention of characters. That is a result which can scarcely be regarded as surprising, in view of the history of Servian poetry. On the other hand the conditions were such as we should expect to be exceptionally favourable to the development of transference or attraction. Yet there is but little satisfactory evidence in this direction. I am inclined therefore to think that the force of this principle has been considerably overestimated by recent writers. What the Kossovo poems do seem to suggest is—not that the characters of the Iliad were invented or attracted from other quarters, but that their exploits and their relations with one another may in reality have been very different from what we find depicted in the poem.
FOOTNOTES:
[474] My object in this note is to call attention to a subject which appears to have been strangely neglected by English Homeric students. I cannot claim to possess the requisite qualifications, linguistic and historical, for an independent investigation of the subject. English translations of many of the poems are to be found, together with a historical introduction, in Mme Mijatovich's Kossovo (London, 1881). For a more critical study the reader may be referred to the introduction to Pasić's Narodne Pjesme o boju na Kosovu godine 1389 (Agram, 1877), to which I am much indebted.
[475] The references to Laonicos' and Ducas' histories, as well as to the translation of the latter, are to the pages in Niebuhr's edition. It may be that Ducas was mistaken with regard to the name of Bajazet's wife; cf. Engel, Geschichte von Serwien, p. 332.
[476] I do not know whether this is historically correct. There seem to be a number of historical references to Milica, Lazar's queen; cf. Engel, op. cit., pp. 311, 331, 346 f.
[477] Cf. Pasić, op. cit., VI v. 13 ff. (p. 92). This passage is taken from a Croatian poem (Nr. 6, v. 166 ff.) published by Miklosich, Denkschriften d. k. Akademie d. Wissenschaften (Vienna), XIX p. 73 ff., from a MS. collection at Ragusa dating from about 1728. Mme Mijatovich's poem on the same subject (p. 120 ff.) differs a good deal from this and bears a closer resemblance to the Italian in one or two points.
[478] 'Secondo la usanza del suo imperio' (cf. Miklosich, 6. 167: 'Ovaki su zakoni, Milošu, u zemlji mojoj,' etc.).
[479] Vuk Stef. Karadžić, Srpske Narodne Pjesme, Vol. II (Vienna, 1875), 50 III (p. 310 ff.). This is translated, with a few slight changes, in Mme Mijatovich's piece 'The Banquet before Battle' (p. 116 ff.). A somewhat different account of the same incident—and showing less resemblance to the Italian—occurs in Miklosich, 6. 116 ff., a passage which is not used by Pasić or Mijatovich.
[480] Cf. Karadžić, II 50 iii, v. 3 f.: