But Manoll makes no reply, Works with restless energy. Higher and yet higher Grows the wall entire; O’er her dainty foot Fast the church walls shoot; Fair Annika’s knee Soon no more they see, Building on in haste To her lithesome waist; Hidden is her breast, By the stones compressed; Hidden now her eye, As the wall grows high; Building on apace, Hidden soon her face! And the hapless woman, she Laughs no longer now in glee, But from out the cruel wall Still the feeble voice doth call: “Manolli, dear Manolli! Master, master Manolli! See the wall is closing quite, Vanished the last ray of light.” There is still a fifth canto to this ballad, but of such decidedly inferior merit as to suggest the idea that it is a piece of patchwork added on at a later period. The prince, delighted at the success of the building, asks the master masons whether they could undertake to raise a second church of yet nobler, loftier proportions than the first. This question being answered in the affirmative, the tyrannical Voyvod, probably afraid of their embellishing some other country with the work of their genius, orders the ladders and scaffolding to be removed from the building, so that the ten illustrious architects are left standing on the roof, there to perish of starvation. Hoping to escape this doom, each of the master masons constructs for himself a pair of artificial wings, or rather a sort of parachute, out of light wooden shingles, and by means of which he hopes safely to reach the ground. But the parachutes are a miserable failure, and crashing down with violence, the nine master masons are turned into as many stones. Manoll, the last to descend, and distracted at hearing the wailing voice of his dying wife calling upon him, falls likewise; but the tears welling up from his breast cause him to be transformed into a spring of crystal water flowing near the church, and to this day known by the name of Manolli’s well. “Miora,” or “The Lamb,” is another popular ballad, which, sung and recited throughout Roumania and Transylvania, is gracefully illustrative of the idyllic bond by which shepherd and flock are united: MIORA. Where the mountains open, there Runs a path-way passing fair, And along this flowery way Shepherds came one summer day. Snowy flocks were three, Led by shepherds three. One from Magyarland had come, Wrantscha was another’s home, From Moldavia one had come; But the one from Magyarland, And from Wrantscha—hand in hand, Council held they secretly, And resolved deceitfully, When behind the hill Sank the sun, to kill The Moldavian herd, for he Was the richest of the three. Strongest were his rams, Fattest were his dams, Whitest were his lambs, And his dogs the fiercest, And his horse the fleetest.