GUSLA, or Gusli, an ancient stringed instrument still in use among the Slavonic races. The modern Servian gusla is a kind of tanbur (see Pandura), consisting of a round, concave body covered with a parchment soundboard; there is but one horse-hair string, and the peg for tuning it is inserted in oriental fashion in the back of the head. The gusla is played with a primitive bow called goudalo. The gouslars or blind bards of Servia and Croatia use it to accompany their chants. C. G. Anton[1] mentions an instrument of that name in the shape of a half-moon strung with eighteen strings in use among the Tatars. Prosper Merimée[2] has taken the gusla as the title for a book of Servian poems, which are supposed to have been collected by him among the peasants, but which are thought to have been inspired by the Viaggio in Dalmazia of Albarto Fortis.
Among the Russians, the gusli is an instrument of a different type, a kind of psaltery having five or more strings stretched across a flat, shallow sound-chest in the shape of a wing. In the gusli the strings, of graduated length, are attached to little nails or pins at one end, and at the other they are wound over a rod having screw attachments for increasing and slackening the tension. There is no bridge to determine the vibrating length of the strings. The body of the instrument is shaped roughly like the tail of the grand piano, following the line of the strings; the longest being at the left of the instrument. Matthew Guthrie gives an illustration of the gusli.[3]
(K. S.)
[1] Erste Linien eines Versuchs über den Ursprung der alten Slaven (Leipzig, 1783-1789), p. 145.
[2] La Guzla, ou choix de poésies lyriques recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie, &c. (Paris, 1827).
[3] Dissertations sur les antiquités de Russie (St Petersburg, 1795), pl. ii. No. 9, p. 31.
GUSTAVUS I. ERIKSSON (1496-1560), king of Sweden, was born at his mother’s estate at Lindholm on Ascension Day 1496. He came of a family which had shone conspicuously in 15th-century politics, though it generally took the anti-national side. His father, Erik Johansson of Rydboholm, “a merry and jocose gentleman,” but, like all the Swedish Vasas, liable to sudden fierce gusts of temper, was one of the senators who voted for the deposition of Archbishop Trolle, at the riksdag of 1517 (see [Sweden], History), for which act of patriotism he lost his head. Gustavus’s mother, Cecilia Månsdåtter, was closely connected by marriage with the great Sture family. Gustavus’s youthful experiences impressed him with a life-long distrust of everything Danish. In his eighteenth year he was sent to the court of his cousin Sten Sture. At the battle of Brännkyrka, when Sture defeated Christian II. of Denmark, the young Gustavus bore the governor’s standard, and in the same year (1518) he was delivered with five other noble youths as a hostage to King Christian, who treacherously carried him prisoner to Denmark. He was detained for twelve months in the island fortress of Kalö, on the east coast of Jutland, but contrived to escape to Lübeck in September 1519. There he found an asylum till the 20th of May 1520, when he chartered a ship to Kalmar, one of the few Swedish fortresses which held out against Christian II.
It was while hunting near Lake Mälar that the news of the Stockholm massacre was brought to him by a peasant fresh from the capital, who told him, at the same time, that a price had been set upon his head. In his extremity, Gustavus saw only one way of deliverance, an appeal for help to the sturdy yeomen of the dales. How the dalesmen set Gustavus on the throne and how he and they finally drove the Danes out of Sweden (1521-1523) is elsewhere recorded (see [Sweden]: History). But his worst troubles only began after his coronation on the 6th of June 1523. The financial position of the crown was the most important of all the problems demanding solution, for upon that everything else depended. By releasing his country from the tyranny of Denmark, Gustavus had made the free independent development of Sweden a possibility. It was for him to realize that possibility. First of all, order had to be evolved from the chaos in which Sweden had been plunged by the disruption of the Union; and the shortest, perhaps the only, way thereto was to restore the royal authority, which had been in abeyance during ninety years. But an effective reforming monarchy must stand upon a sound financial basis; and the usual revenues of the crown, always inadequate, were so diminished that they did not cover half the daily expenses of government. New taxes could only be imposed with extreme caution, while the country was still bleeding from the wounds of a long war. And men were wanted even more than money. The lack of capable, trustworthy administrators in Sweden was grievous. The whole burden of government weighed exclusively on the shoulders of the new king, a young man of seven and twenty. Half his time was taken up in travelling from one end of the kingdom to the other, and doing purely clerical work for want of competent assistance. We can form some idea of his difficulties when we learn that, in 1533, he could not send an ambassador to Lübeck because not a single man in his council, except himself, knew German. It was this lack of native talent which compelled Gustavus frequently to employ the services of foreign adventurers like Berent von Mehlen, John von Hoja, Konrad von Pyhy and others.