Another section of more modern ballads narrates events from the latest war between the Servians and Turks, between 1801 and 1815. Who of our readers has not heard of Kara George? His companions, Yanko Katitch, Stoyan Tchupitch, Milosh of Potzerye, are in Servia as well known and admired as Kara George himself. They and their comrades are the heroes of these ballads. The gallant Tchupitch rewarded the blind poet Philip, who chanted to him a long and beautiful poem of his own composition, with a white horse. The subject of his narrative was the battle of Salash; where Tchupitch himself had been the Servian commander.[[374]][pg.381]

The same ballad singer Philip is the author of most of the modern heroic poems. Of others the authors are not known. Little stress is laid on the art of poetry; exercised with such extraordinary power. These productions of our day are by no means inferior to the ancient. There is indeed no essential difference, either in their diction or in their conception; and it is easy to be perceived, that old and young have been nursed from their infancy on tales of "the days of yore." Some passages of Philip's ballads are really Homeric.[[375]] Fortunately, the period is past when our admiration for hyperborean poetry needed to be justified by its similarity with the classics. We have learned that real poetry is not spell-bound to names, nor to any nation or age; and the beautiful has obtained in our time an independent existence, no longer subject to certain forms and conditions, but resting on itself and its divine gifts.

The difficulties Vuk Stephanovitch met with in collecting these wonderful ballads, were not small. He was often hardly able to prevail on the young men and girls to recite, still less to sing them before him; partly from a natural shyness to exhibit themselves before a stranger; partly because his search after effusions which had so little value in their eyes, and his attempt to fix them by writing, seemed to them an idle and useless occupation. The only reason which they could conceive for it was, that the learned idler meant to ridicule them; and his request was frequently answered by the words: "We are no blind men to sing or recite songs to you."

Of the heroic poems, he tells us, that they are not only chanted, but often recited, as we are accustomed to read; and that in this latter way, old people teach them by preference to the[pg.382] children. His own father, grandfather, and uncle, were wont to recite and to sing them; and the two latter even composed not a few. Among those from whose lips he took down the present collection, were lads, peasants, merchants, as also hayduks, i.e. highwaymen, in Servia a mode of life less disreputable than with us, and somewhat approaching to heroism. Further, at least seven or eight were blind men; all of them professional bards, and almost the only persons willing to satisfy him. The shenske pjesme, or female poems, he had to catch by chance; and short as they are, it was easy to keep them in memory after having heard them once or twice.

While these latter poems are mostly sung without any instrumental accompaniment in the spinning-rooms, in the pastures, or at the village dances; on the other hand the tavern, the public squares, the festive halls of the chiefs, are the places where the Guslè is heard which accompanies the heroic ballads. The bard chants two lines; then he pauses and gives a few plaintive strokes on his primitive instrument; then he chants again, and so on. He needs these short pauses for recollection, as well as for invention. Although these ballads are chiefly sung by blind men, yet no hero thinks it beneath him to chant them to the Guslè. Pirch, a Prussian officer, who travelled in Servia some twenty years ago, tells us, that the Knjas, his host, took the instrument from the hands of the lad, for whom he had sent to sing before his guest, because he did not satisfy him, and played and chanted himself with a superior skill. Clergymen themselves are not ashamed to do it. Nay, even Muhammedan-Bosnians, more Turks than Servians, have preserved this partiality for their national heroics. The great among them would not, indeed, themselves sing them; but they cause them to be chanted before them; and it happened, that a Christian prisoner in Semendria obtained his liberty by their intercession with the Kadi, which he owed merely to their fondness for his ballads. A considerable number of fine songs[pg.383] are marked in Vuk's collection as having been first heard from Muhammedan singers.

Although the same ballads are not heard every where, yet the poetical feeling and productiveness seem to be pretty equally distributed over all the region inhabited by the Servian race. The heroic ballads originate mostly in the southern mountains of Servia, in Bosnia, Montenegro, and its Dalmatian neighbourhood. Towards the North-East the productiveness diminishes; the songs are still known in the Austrian provinces, but the recitation of them, and the Guslè itself, are left to blind men and beggars. Pirch heard, nevertheless, the ballads of Marko Kralyevitch in the vicinity of Neusatz, in Hungary. On the other hand, the amatory Servian ballads, and all those comprised under the name of female songs,—although by no means exclusively sung by women,—originate chiefly in those regions, where perhaps a glimpse of occidental civilization has somewhat refined the general feeling. The villages of Syrmia, the Banat, and the Batchva, are the home of most of them; in the Bosnian towns also they are heard; while in the cities of the Austrian provinces they have been superseded by modern airs of less value, perhaps, and certainly of less nationality.

It remains to remark, that while in all the other Slavic popular poetry, the musical element is prominent, it is in the Servian completely crowded into the background. Even the little lyric pieces, or female ballads, are not only in a high degree monotonous, but even without the peculiar sweetness of most popular airs. They also are chanted rather than sung.

The Bulgarian language is said to be particularly rich in popular ballads; and it would hardly be credible, that the numerous nations with which they mixed for centuries, should not have influenced their poetry as well as their language. Nevertheless, those ballads we have met with are not distinguished in any way from the Servian; especially from those Servian ones[pg.384] sung in the provinces where intercourse with a Turkish population is more frequent. One specimen will be sufficient.

THE SLAVE GANGS.[[376]]

O thou hill, thou high green hill!