The Ukrainian language and Ukrainian traditions were then largely restricted to the peasantry. Their lot had always been hard but as they approached the modern period, their burdens were increased by the law. They had lost the power of changing their homes, even though this had been rather closely restricted, and the vast majority were mere serfs on the estates of masters who were either of foreign origin or had been completely denationalized. They were overwhelmingly illiterate and could not be presumed to know much of the history of their country. Yet they were wiser than might easily be thought. The villagers had their rich and varied folksongs and there was hardly an occasion of the religious or secular year, hardly an event of public or private commemoration and festivity, when there did not appear some kobzar or bandurist to sing them songs of the exploits of the Kozaks or to retell some narrative of the past. These kobzars were often blind bards, accompanying themselves with a form of stringed instrument, something of the type of a banjo. They knew large numbers of songs, especially historical songs and dumy, which would serve to remind the peasants of other tales which had been handed down by their fathers. When we remember that scarcely a half century had passed since the last desperate revolts, we can understand that there was hardly a village where some old man or woman did not remember the stirring tales of the past and tell them to the young during the winter evenings or in the scanty hours of leisure. Shevchenko’s account of his grandfather’s tales of the Koliishchina can be paralleled again and again and allows us to see how the oral tradition of the village handed down much that was ignored or forgotten in the manor house. It was in this wealth of peasant tradition and of vague and indistinct memories that there lurked the dying sparks of Ukrainian consciousness. It was easy to see that the hard conditions of life were tapping this supply. Without literacy or writing, each generation knew less than had the preceding of what had gone before. The death of one old man might mean the irreparable loss of much that was valuable and true. With each decade there remained fewer and fewer accounts of the history of the past. Had the conquering classes thought of such a trifling subject, they would have realized that time was on their side and that the unpleasant and disturbing nightmares of the past would pass away and leave them in peace. The time was surely coming when the peasantry too would lose their consciousness, exactly as had the nobles and the upper classes who had been won over to the new and fashionable culture and accepted a new nationality!