I sat and waited for thee; love!
II.
No good luck to me my dream forebodes;
For to me, to me, fair maid, it seemed,
On my right hand did my gold ring burst,
O'er the floor then rolled the precious stone.
The Bohemians preserved their nationality, and very probably with it their ancient popular songs, down to the seventeenth century. During the thirty years' war, of which Bohemia was in part almost uninterruptedly the seat, a complete revolution in manners, institutions, and localities, took place. Whole villages emigrated, or were driven into the wide world, wandering about in scattered groups as fugitives and mendicants. Most of the ancient songs may have died at that time. The German influence increased rapidly during the remainder of the seventeenth century, mostly by force and reluctantly; still more during the[pg.389] eighteenth century by habit, intermarriages, education, etc. The Bohemians, the most musical nation in the world, are still a singing people; but many of their ditties are evidently borrowed from the German; in others, invented by themselves, they exhibit a spirit entirely different from that of their ancestors. These modern songs are mostly rhymed. The following specimen of songs still current among the peasantry of Bohemia, will show well the harmless, playful, roguish spirit that pervades them.
THE FORSAKEN MAIDEN.
Little star with gloomy shine,
If thou couldst but cry!