Nor have there been wanting ardent folk-lorists (if I may coin a word) who have gone this length; so, for instance, Dr. Heinrich von Wlislocki, who, in the summer of 1883, spent several months as member of a wandering troop of tent gypsies in Transylvania and Southern Hungary, and has lately published a volume of gypsy fairy tales, the fruit of his laborious expedition. Yet on the whole the harvest is a meagre one, if we take account of the time and trouble spent on its realization; and even this energetic collector has declared that he would hardly have the courage a second time to face the deceptions and fatigues of such an undertaking. To his pen it is that we owe the first poem contained in this chapter; the second one, entitled, “The Black Voda,” interesting as being an almost solitary instance of a consecutive gypsy ballad, was communicated to me by the courtesy of Professor Hugo von Meltzl, of Klausenburg, another Transylvanian authority in the matter of folk-lore, who, in his “Acta Comparationis Literarum Universum,” has given many interesting details bearing on these subjects. The other sixteen specimens of the Tzigane muse are so simple as to call for no explanation, though in one or two cases not wholly devoid of poetical merit. GYPSY BALLAD. (_From a German translation by Dr. H. von Wlislocki._) O’er the meadow, o’er the wold, Tracks a boy the wand’rer old, Who a scarf wears by his side— Follows him with stealthy stride. Bleeding fells the wand’rer prone In the forest dark and lone; And the boy has ta’en the life Of the man with murd’rous knife. Throws the corse all stained with blood In the river’s rushing flood; But, alas! not guessing he Who this ancient wand’rer be. Lightly running home then went, Till he reached his mother’s tent, Held the scarf before her eyes; She, long silent with surprise, Cried at last with passion wild, “Cursed be thou, my only child! May the slayer of his sire Branded be by Heaven’s ire; Hast thy father killed to-day, And his scarf hast stolen away!” THE BLACK VODA.[66]