One dance followed another in rapid succession, and with no interval between them. As each new dance was struck up, new dancers directly sprang forward, erect as a forest, swift of advance as a gale of wind; and loudly the stamping feet thundered afar, and shouts of merriment echoed through the house, while the onset went on, wild, mad, stormy, and earnest as a struggle for life and death! Ah! how they danced! Those Cracoviennes, with their frolicsome hop-skip-and-jump measures, and the quick lilt of their clean-cut, tinkling, metallic tunes; and the terse ditties, full of fun and freedom, with which, like the spangled girdles of the peasantry who made them, they are so brightly studded—those tunes welling with joyous dashing melody, redolent of the strong, abounding, audacious savour of youth in sportful pursuit of the sweet thrilling emotions that tell of the hey-day in the blood! And those Mazurs, long-drawn-out as the paths which streak the endless plains, wind-clamorous and vast as the endless plains they streak: lowly, yet heaven-kissing; melancholy and bold, magnificent and sombre, stately and fierce: genial, warlike, full of discordances, like that peasants’ nature, set in battle array, united as a forest and rushing to dance with such joyful clamours and wonderful strength as could attack and overcome ten times their number, nay, conquer, sweep away, trample down, the whole of a hostile world, nor reck though they themselves be doomed, and fall, but still carry on the dance after death, still stamping as in the Mazur—still crying out aloud: “Oy dana dana!” And oh, those Obertases!—short of rhythm, vertiginous, wild and frantic, warlike and amorous, full of excitement mingled with dreamy languor and notes of sorrow; throbbing with hot blood, brimming over with geniality and kindliness, in a sudden hailstorm: affectionate voices, dark-blue glances, springtime breezes, and fragrant wafts from blossoming orchards, like the song of fields in the young year; making tears and laughter to burst forth at the same time, and the heart to utter its lay of joy, and the longing soul to go beyond the vast fields around her, beyond the far-off forests, and soar dreaming into the world of All Things, and sing ecstatically the burden, “Oy dana dana!” And all these dances, beyond the power of words to describe, thus followed one after the other, that our peasantry might make merry in season! And thus did they take their pleasures at the wedding of Boryna and Yagna.