The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 5 (of 5)
General
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 5 (of 5)
Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
=Bulgarian.= Dozon, Chansons p. bulgares, p. 130, No 7, p. 319.
Kačanovskij, p. 120, No 48; Krek as above, p. 653 f., No 10, ‘Lazar and
Yovana.’ Miladinof, 1861, 1891, p. 145, No 100, ‘Lazar and Petkana;’
Krek, p. 653, No 9. Miladinof, p. 317, No 200, ‘Elin Doika;’ Rosen,
Bulgarische Volksdichtungen, p. 247, No 103. ‘Elin Doina,’ Popov, in
Periodičesko Spisanie, II, 162, lacks the last half; Krek, p. 654, No
11. ‘Yana,’ Miladinof, p. 339, No 229, Rosen, p. 116, No 32, diverges
considerably from the others.
=Romaic.= Twenty copies, including all previously published, Polites,
in Δελτίον τῆς ἱστορ. κ. ἐθνολ. ἑταιρ. τ. Ἑλλάδος, II, 193-261, 552-57,
1885-87. Kanellakes, Χιαχὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 37, No 27, p. 58, No 49, 1890.
Ζωγραφεῖος Ἀγών, I, 308, No 30, 397, No 17, 1891. ‘Constantine and
Arete’ (mostly). C. B. Sheridan, The Songs of Greece, p. 207; C. C.
Felton, in English and Scottish Ballads, Boston, 1860, I, 307; Lucy M.
J. Garnett, Greek Folk-Songs, etc., 1885, p. 126.
=Albanian.= (‘Garentina,’ = Arete.) De Rada, Rapsodie, etc., p. 29
(I, xvii); Dozon, Ch. p. bulgares, p. 327, De Grazia, C. p. albanesi,
p. 138. Camarda, Appendice al Saggio, etc., p. 98 (fragment, last
half), p. 102. Dora d’ Istria, Revue des Deux Mondes, LXIII, 407. La
Calabria, II, 55, 1890.--Tale, Metkos, Ἀλβανικὴ Μέλισσα, p. 189, No 12,
translated in Dozon, Contes albanais, p. 251.[58]
A mother has nine sons and an only daughter. The daughter is sought in
marriage; the mother and eight of her sons wish to match her in their
neighborhood, but the youngest son (whom it will be convenient to call
Constantine) has his way, and she is given to a suitor from a distant
country (often Babylon). The brothers are to visit their sister often
(Slavic); Constantine promises to bring her to his mother should there
be special occasion. A fatal year comes, and all the brothers die of
the plague (in a few cases they are killed in war). The mother chants
laments at the graves of the eight, strews flowers, burns candles,
gives alms for their souls; at Constantine’s grave she tears her hair.
She curses Constantine for the distant marriage, and demands of him her
daughter. God takes pity (on mother, sister, or son). The stone over
his grave (his coffin, a board for the grave, his shroud, a cloud) is
turned into a horse; he goes to his sister and informs her that she is
wanted by her mother. The sister will put on gold for joy or black for
grief; she is to come as she stands. (He tries to prevent her going, in
the Servian copies, where his object is to pay the promised visit.) On
the way the sister notes that Constantine is gray with mould, he smells
of earth, his skin is black, his eyes are dull, his hair is dusty,
his hair or teeth fallen out; why is this? He has been at work in the
ground, has been building nine white houses, there has been dust,
wind, and rain on the road, he has had long watches, sore sickness. He
smells of incense, too; that is because he has been at church lately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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