I have been betrothed since yesterday;
Come, to-morrow, troops of wedding-guests;
To the altar, I, perforce, must go!
I shall be another's then; and yet
Thine, thine only, thine alone till death."
P.
But the warm and tender hearts of the Slavic women, nevertheless, find means to satisfy that natural want of the female breast, to pour out on certain objects the whole blessing of love. Family connections are among no other race regarded as so holy, the ties of relationship are nowhere so cherished, as among the Slavi. Maternal tenderness is the subject of very many songs; and is set by comparisons in the most shining light. In the Russian ballad above adduced,[[343]] we have seen how slightly the poet thinks of the love of the wife; her tears are dried up by the sun, like the morning dew; while the mother's tears gush out incessantly like the waters of the mountain stream. In a Servian ballad, a youth wounds his hand. The Vila, a malicious mountain-nymph, offers to cure him. But she exacts a high price,—from his mother, her right hand; from his sister, her hair; and from his wife, her necklace of pearls. The mother willingly gives her right hand, and the sister her hair, but the wife refuses the necklace. The love of a mother is often described by the image of swallows, clinging to their own warm nest; or of tender doves, bereft of their young ones. The rights of a mother are respected with true filial piety, even by the barbarian hero Marko, who never fails to pay his aged mother filial respect.