Again, fair Mara, white and red, walked by the spring and tended her sheep:
See a young and handsome suitor comes riding up on horseback,
Shouting: “God’s peace be thine, fair Mara, white and red.
Tell me, canst thou offer me a draught of cold clear water;
Tell me, can the basil ever verdant here be gathered,
And may I snatch a kiss from thee, fair Mara, white and red?”
W. F. H.
But straightway comes the answer from fair Mara, white and red:
“I charge thee, handsome laddie, to horse and ride hence quickly,
Wouldst thou drink of this cool fountain, thou must hither come some morning,
For cold and clear’s the water in the hours of early dawn.
Wouldst thou gather from the bushes, thou must hither come at mid-day,
For the flower-trees smell the sweetest about the noon-tide hour.
Wouldst thou kiss the beauteous Mara, then hither come at evening,
At evening sighs each maiden who finds herself alone.”
W. F. H.
In another Servian ballad we find the same glorification of the stalwart young lover, the same contempt for, and detestation of, old men who go a-wooing.
High upon a mountain’s slope once stood a maiden,
Mirroring her lovely image in the stream,
And her image in these words addressing:
‘Image fraught to me with so much sadness
Had I known a time was ever coming
When thou shouldst be kissed by agèd lover,
Then amidst the green hills I had wandered,
Gath’ring with my hands their bitter herbage,
Squeezing out of it its acrid juices,
Washed thee then therewith that thou should’st savour
Bitterly wheresoe’r the old man kissed thee.’
‘O my lovely image, had I known that
Thou wert fated for a young man’s kisses,
I had hurried to the verdant meadows,
Gathered all the roses in the meadows,
Squeezing from the roses their sweet juices,
Laved thee with them, O mine image, that thou
Savoured of fragrance wheresoe’r he kissed thee.’
W. F. H.
A kiss must be given and taken in frank, joyous affection. To have recourse to violence is unknightly, unlovely, and despicable in the highest degree. This is a sphere wherein the brutal axiom regarding the right of the stronger can never hold good. An Albanian folk-song tells us of a young man who is in search of a young maiden with whom he is in love; he finds her at a brook, and, against her will, kisses her mouth and cheeks. Filled with shame, the young maiden tries to wash away the kisses in the brook, but its water is dyed red, and “when the women in the neighbouring village come thither to wash their clothes, the latter turn red instead of white. And, in the gardens watered with water from the brook, scarlet flowers sprout up; and the birds which drank of the water thereof lost their power of song.”
This ballad shows us, in burning words, how deeply a man outrages a woman when he kisses her against the dictates of her heart. A Southern imagination alone can find an expression so sublime and poetical: in French it runs simply and frankly: Un baiser n’est rien, quand le cœur est muet. In Teutonic countries it is expressed somewhat more awkwardly. In Denmark people say: Kys med gevalt er æg uden salt (a kiss snatched by force is as an egg without salt); and in Germany still less elegantly: Ein aufgezwungener Kuss ist wie ein Hühneraug’ am Fuss (like a corn on one’s foot).