Where hast thou three full white days been lingering?"
To the moon the morning star has answered;
"I've been wandering, I've three days been lingering,
O'er the white walls of the fortress Belgrade,
Gazing there on strange events and wonders."
The events which the star had witnessed, it now proceeds to relate to the moon; and these make the subject of this beautiful tale.
After having touched upon these general features, did our limits permit, we should speak more at large of those mythological beings of a more distinct character, which belong to the individual Slavic races; for example, the Vila of the Servians, the Russalki of the Malo-Russians, and the like; at least so far as this belief is interwoven in their poetry, the only respect in which it concerns us here. But we must confine ourselves to a few brief remarks.
The strong and deeply-rooted superstitions of the Slavic nations are partly manifest in their songs and tales; these are full of foreboding dreams, and good or bad omens; witchcraft of various kinds is practised; and a certain oriental fatalism seems to direct will and destiny. The connection with the other world appears nevertheless much looser, than is the case with the Teutonic nations. There is no trace of spirits in Russian ballads; although spectres appear occasionally in Russian nursery tales. In Servian, Bohemian, and Slovakian songs, it occurs frequently, that the voices of the dead sound from their graves; and thus a kind of soothing intercourse is kept up between the living and the departed. The superstition of a certain species of blood-sucking spectres, known to the novel[pg.329] reading world under the name of vampyres, a superstition retained chiefly in Dalmatia, belongs also here. In modern Greek, such a spectre is called Brukolacas in Servian Wukodlak. We do not however recollect the appearance of a vampyre, in any genuine production of modern Greek or Servian poetry. It seems as if the sound sense of the common people had taught them, that this superstition is too shocking, too disgusting, to be admitted into poetry; while the oversated palates of the fashionable reading world crave the strongest and most stimulating food, and can only be satisfied by the most powerful excitement.
In the whole series of Slavic ballads and songs, which lie before our eyes, we meet with only one instance of the return of a deceased person to this world, in the like gloomy and mysterious way, in which the Christian nations of the North and West are wont to represent such an event. This is in the beautiful Servian tale, "Jelitza[[334]] and her Brothers." As it is too long to be inserted here entire, we must be satisfied with a sketch of it. Jelitza, the beloved sister of nine brothers, is married to a Ban on the other side of the sea. She departs reluctantly, and is consoled only by the promise of her brothers to visit her frequently. But "the plague of the Lord" destroys them all; and Jelitza, unvisited and apparently neglected by her brothers, pines away and sighs so bitterly from morning to evening, that the Lord in heaven takes pity on her. He summons two of his angels before him;
"Hasten down to earth, ye my two angels,