But beyond all this the value of the illustration lies largely in the fact that we have here what may be called a living heroic poetry, such as we hear of among the Teutonic peoples only through occasional notices in ancient records. As among the latter it is customary for the minstrel (pivač, dial. for pjevač) to accompany his recitation on a musical instrument, the tambura, a kind of guitar with only two metal strings. Among the Christian population the gusle, a primitive type of fiddle, is in use.
The poems vary greatly in length. Out of 320 pieces collected by Dr Marjanović thirty contained less than 100 verses, while fifteen exceeded 2000, the longest of all amounting to over 4000. The average length of the pieces described as epic is given at 873 verses; a hundred and three vary from 600 to 1000, and sixty-two from 1000 to 1500. These figures are especially important in view of their bearing on certain prevalent ideas as to the limits of oral poetry. It is to be observed that the ordinary Servian metre is decasyllabic, the verse not being appreciably shorter than the average Teutonic alliterative verse. The minstrel begins his recitation quite slowly, but after about a hundred verses he attains such a speed that not even a shorthand writer can keep pace with him. Such recitations are extremely fatiguing, and in the longer poems it is customary to allow intervals of rest for refreshments, questions and criticism. It will be seen that if carried out on these principles the recitation of a Teutonic poem of 2000, or even 3000, verses would be nothing impossible in the course of a long evening's entertainment.
In the 'recitation' great freedom is allowed. A minstrel need only hear a poem two or three times (once, if it is sung) in order to reproduce it; but the reproduction is by no means given in the same words. To a certain degree, says Prof. Murko, every minstrel is a more or less creative poet ('Nachdichter'). But even by the same man a poem is never repeated in exactly the same words. In the course of years changes may be introduced which apparently render it almost unrecognisable. Some minstrels are experts in particular lines, special popularity being enjoyed by those who know best how to describe a girl's dress or the trappings of a horse. The faculty for expansion and compression is also very marked. Cases are known of minstrels who have doubled and even trebled the length of poems which they had heard. In one instance two variants of a poem are known, of which one contains 1284 verses, the other barely 300. Such cases, as Prof. Murko remarks, supply interesting evidence for the origin of different recensions of epic poems—particularly, we may add, for the relationship of lays and epics.
From what has been said it will be clear enough that the poems are preserved by oral tradition. Vague rumours of written texts are heard of from time to time and, though none have yet been discovered, it seems probable that some poems have been committed to writing in the past. But the minstrels of the present day are invariably unable to read or write. As to the age and origin of the poems nothing is known for certain, though most of them are believed to be about two centuries old. Four minstrels knew of an authoress—a certain 'pale-cheeked Ajka' from the Lika (in Croatia); but regarding her little or no information seems to have been obtained. The other minstrels could only give the names of those from whom they had themselves heard the poems.
The minstrels belong to various stations of life. Some are men of good family, but the majority are peasant proprietors or workmen. Not many carry on minstrelsy as a regular profession, except when they have fallen on bad times. The recitations are given in coffee-houses or at any holiday gathering. Very often too the minstrels are invited to the residences of the Begs[150]. The case is recorded of one minstrel who recited over a hundred poems for a certain Beg within six weeks. The Mohammedan ladies are especially fond of such recitations. For his services the minstrel receives payment, sometimes in money, sometimes in corn or livestock, sometimes only in coffee and cigarettes.
It will not escape notice that a good deal of what is said here might be applied with considerable probability to the Frisian minstrel Bernlef or the English minstrels mentioned by Alcuin. Indeed, apart from the coffee and cigarettes, there is scarcely a single feature in the description given above for which we should not expect to find parallels in Teutonic minstrelsy towards the close of the eighth century. We may therefore reasonably look for traces of those characteristics which distinguish Stage III in the history of Teutonic heroic poetry, and in point of fact there seems to be abundant evidence in this direction[151]. The action is usually spread over a considerable time. The characters mentioned by name are few in number and recur again and again in different stories, each district apparently having a favourite hero who is introduced as its representative on many different occasions[152]. Geographical indications are very frequently erroneous, while historical persons figure in quite unhistorical relationships. The unsympathetic characters are often guilty of atrocious brutality. Moreover, we constantly find repetitions of the same words or formulae in consecutive verses after the manner of ballads. Indeed the characteristics of the poems generally—their merits as well as their faults—are to a large extent those of popular rather than court poetry.
But, though the poems show the characteristics which we associate with Stage III, it is questionable whether we are justified in including them in this category; for there is no evidence that they have passed through anything corresponding to Stages I and II. Practically the only court which they know at all is that of Stamboul, and of this their knowledge is naturally slight and remote. The highest personages with whom they are really acquainted are the Begs. It is not unlikely that in the days of Turkish supremacy—the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the provincial nobility were much more wealthy and influential than they now are; and it may be that some Begs then had minstrels attached to their own personal following. But their position can never have been comparable with that of even petty Teutonic princes. Hence, if we are entitled to suggest the previous existence of court-poetry at all, it can only be in a very restricted sense—so far at least as the extant poems are concerned.
On the other hand Servian poetry has without doubt had a long history, and even heroic poems are by no means the exclusive property of the Mohammedan population. Indeed some of the Christian poems[153] seem to exhibit the characteristics of Stage III to a far less degree than the Mohammedan ones; and they frequently deal with much earlier events. It is likely enough that the beginnings of heroic poetry go back to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries[154], at which time its growth may have been fostered by conditions much more similar to those of the Teutonic Heroic Age. To this question we shall have to refer again. The subject as a whole however is one which must be left to experts. In order to form a sound opinion one would have to take account of the history of narrative poetry among the neighbouring peoples, more especially the Bulgarians and Slovenians[155]. The total change of subjects in the Mohammedan poems would be a necessary consequence of the change of faith; that heroic poetry survived such a change at all is probably to be attributed to the fact that a large proportion of the nobility in Bosnia embraced Islam.
Before we leave the subject however note must be taken of one more important feature in the poems. The Mohammedan Bosnians were religious fanatics, and the spirit of religious war is generally present. It is not absolutely universal; some poems even represent Moslems and Christians in sworn brotherhood. As a rule however the world is regarded as divided into two hostile camps, one under the Sultan (Car), the other under the Emperor (Ćesar). In this respect, as in several others, Bosnian poetry shows affinity with the Old French epics, whereas in early Teutonic poetry differences of creed, and even nationality, are scarcely recognised.