[3] A ruined fortress on the banks of the river Morava.
[7] White is a favourite Slavonic appellation. In the Russian popular ballad of “Vladimiz and his Round Table,” White Kiev is the title constantly given to that capital, and the lower Russians almost always call Moscow, “Mother Moscow, the white-walled.”
[9] “Thou in the Lord my sister,”—“Thou in God my brother,”—“Mother in God,” are common Servian expressions.
[15a] Predrag—the well-beloved.
[15b] Nenad—the unhoped-for,—the unexpected.
[25] Governor of a province—commander.
[27] An extensive plain near the Narenta, in Herzegovina, on which is a village of the same name.
[28] I pay cheerful homage to the poetical beauties of the translation of this ballad in “The Servian Minstrelsy,” quoted in the Quarterly Review, No. LXIX. p. 71. The tasteful author has
no doubt greatly embellished the original; but the words in italics are not to be found there.
Stately was she, as the mountain pine tree;
White and rosy-colour intermingled
Were her cheeks, as she had kiss’d the dawning;
Dark and flashing, like two noble jewels,
Were her eyes; and over them were eyebrows,
Thin and black, like leeches from the fountain;
Dark the lashes too; although the ringlets
Hung above in clusters rich and golden.
Softer were her eyelids than the pinions
Of the swallow on the breeze reposing;
Sweeter were the maiden’s lips than honey;
White her teeth, as pearls in ocean ripen’d;
White her breasts, two little panting wild doves;
Soft her speaking, as the wild dove’s murmur;
Bright her smiling, as the burst of sunshine.
[29a] In Bosnia, on the river Una.