replied her father, "will the valorous King Ardashes have ever treasure enough to offer me in return for the noble damsel of the Alans?" A popular song, carefully preserved by Moses, celebrates the marriage of Ardashes and Sathinig:-- The valiant King Ardashes, astride of a sable charger, Drew forth a thong of leather, garnished with golden rings: And quick as fast-flying eagle he crossed the flowing river And the crimson leather thong, garnished with rings of gold, Cast he about the body of the Virgin of the Alans, Clasping in painful embrace the maiden's tender form: Even so he drew her swiftly to his encampment. Once again Ardashes appears in the people's poetry. He is no longer the triumphant victor in love and war; the hour of his death draws near. "Oh!" says the dying king, "who will give me back the smoke of my hearth, and the joyous New Year's morning, and the spring of the deer, and the lightness of the roe?" Then his mind wanders away to the ruling passion: "We sounded the trumpets; after the manner of kings we beat the drums." The Armenian princes were in the habit, when they married, of throwing pieces of money from the threshold of their palace, whilst the royal brides scattered pearls about the nuptial chamber. To this custom allusion is made in two lines which used to be sung as a sort of marriage chaunt:-- A rain of gold fell at the wedding of Ardashes, A rain of pearls fell on the nuptials of Sathinig. Armenian nuptial songs, like all other folk-epithalamiums, so far as I am aware, seem to point to an early state of society when the girl was simply carried off by her marauding lover by fraud or force. Exulting in what relates to the bridegroom, the favourite song on this subject is profoundly melancholy as concerns the bride. The mother was cajoled with a pack of linen, the father with a cup of wine, the brother with a pair of boots, the little sister with a finger of antimony--so complains the dismal ditty of a new bride. There is great pathos in the words in which she begs her mother not to sweep the sand off the little plank, so that the slight trace of her girl's footsteps may not be effaced.