Your lady is dragged away
Into captivity!
A slave for life to be,
Far, far in Tartary!"
Among the ballads of almost all nations we find some that illustrate the mournful and destitute state of motherless orphans. There seems to be hardly any feeling, which comes more directly home to the affectionate compassion of the human heart, than the pitiable and touching condition of helpless little beings left to the tender mercies of a stepmother; who, with her traditional severity, may be called a kind of standing bugbear of the popular imagination. The Danes have a beautiful ballad, in which the ghost of a mother is roused by the wailings and sufferings of her deserted offspring, to break with supernatural power the gravestone, and to re-enter, in the stillness of the night, the neglected nursery, in order to cheer, to nurse, to comb and wash the dear seven little ones, whom God once intrusted to her care. It is one of the most affecting pieces of popular poetry we ever have met with. The Slavic nations have nothing that can be[pg.399] compared with it in beauty; but most of them have several ballads on the same subject; and in a general collection, the "Orphan Ballads" would fill a whole chapter.[[385]] The simple ditty which we give here as another specimen of Polish popular poetry, exceedingly rude as it is in its form, and even defective in rhyme and metre, cannot but please and touch us by its very simplicity.
POOR ORPHAN CHILD.[[386]]
Poor little orphan is wandering about,
Seeking its mother and weeping aloud.
Jesus Christ met it, mildly to it spake:
"Where art thou roaming, poor little babe?