If we transport ourselves to the government of Olonetz, we discover the first cousin of the Corsican voceratrice in the Russian Voplenitsa ("the sobbing one"). But the jurisdiction of this functionary is of wider extent; she is mistress of the ceremonies at marriages as well as at funerals, and in both cases either improvises new songs or adapts old ones. Mr Ralston has familiarised English readers with some excellent samples of the Russian neniae in his work on the _Songs of the Russian People_. In Montenegro dirge-singing survives in its most primitive form. During the war of 1877 there were frequent opportunities of observing it. One such occurred at Ostrog. A wounded man arrived at that place, which was made a sort of hospital station, with his father and mother, his sisters and a brother. Another brother and a cousin had fallen by his side in the last fight--the Montenegrins have always gone into battle in families--and the women had their faces covered with scratches, self-inflicted in their mourning for these kindred. The man was young, lively, and courageous; he might have got well but there were no surgical instruments to extract the ball in his back, and so in a day or two he was dead. At three in the morning the women began shrieking in spite of the orders given by the doctors in the interest of the other wounded; the noise was horrible, and no sooner were they driven away than they came back and renewed it. The Prince, who has tried to put down the custom as barbarous, was quartered at Ostrog, and he succeeded in having the wailers quieted for a moment, but when the body was borne to the cemetery the uproar began again. The women beat their breasts, scratched their faces, and screamed at a pitch that could be heard a mile off. It is usual to return to the house where the person died--they made their way therefore back into the hospital (the Prince being absent), and it was only after immense efforts on the part of the sisters of charity and those who were in authority that they were expelled. Then they seated themselves in the courtyard, and continued beating their breasts and reciting their death-song. An eyewitness of the scene described the dirge as a monotonous chant. One of the dead man's sisters had worked herself up into a state of hysterical frenzy, in which she seemed to have lost all control over her words and actions; she led the dirge, and her rhythmic ejaculations flowed forth as if she had no power to contain them. The father and brother went to salute the Prince the day after the funeral; the old man appeared to be extremely cheerful, but was doggedly inattentive to the advice to go home and fight no more, as his family had suffered enough losses. He had a son of ten, he said, who could accompany him now as there was a gun to spare, which before had not been the case. He wished he had ten sons to bring them all to fight the Turks.