ASIA MINOR, GREECE	317
Lover's Return (Politis 84) and the tests he makes of his wife's
fidelity, and The Luckless Marriage (Arabantinos 471)? which is a
distant offshoot of Elveskud. From the Ukraine in the eighteenth
century came a version of Mazeppa's ride entitled by Legrand
The Husband's Vengeance. A ballad of Captain 3Ianetas, In 1780,
describes how he went to the Black Sea ports on hearing a report
that his wife was unfaithful, and how he sent back orders for her
murder. The ballad is evidence of Greek contact with the Ukraine;
at the same time it betrays the influence of foreign (Italian) aesthetic
preferences, since it is a 'rima' in twelve-syllable couplets.
The greater number of the "tragoudia* have no obvious attach-
ments outside Greece. They cover the usual grounds of folk-
poetry: love, tragedy, crime, adventure. There is tripping of feet
in the charming Zerbopoula (Politis 99), orSyropoula, as others say.
A king comes unexpectedly upon a round of dancing girls, and he
loses his heart to the fairest of them:
The golden damsels danced before, the brown girls danced behind
them,
and in the midmost of them all, fair Zerbopoula tripped it.
They danced the 'chores', which is the Bulgarian *horo*, the
Rumanian 'hora*, and the Serbian lkolo'. The Greek ancestry of
all these dances is evident in the words; but it is also possible that
the 'choros' is the source of the old French 'carole', and so of carols
and danced ballads. The simple movements are carried out by
women, who leave to men feats of virtuosity. In Greece the dance
does not lead to a distinction of kinds in folk-poetry, as it does in
the opposition of women's songs to men's songs in Yugoslavia;
but it does give us yet another glimpse of the part women seemed
to have played in the restoration of love-poetry to Europe.
The Greek love-poems are very numerous, and they indulge in
pretty fancies. They speak of trees that flourish just so long as
lovers remain faithful to the vows spoken under their branches.
A handkerchief or a mirror is a girl's counsellor and confidant,
Lovers' secrets are never inviolate, but the star tells the sun, the
sun tells the sea, the sea tells the oar, the oar the sailor, and the
sailor all the world. There are metaphors from fowling and hunting
applied to the sport of love. Lovers are tested: they are sent down
wells to get a ring or must lift a marble block in a garden. The
lover pursues his girl through many transformations of shape.
Then follow the changes of fortune: quarrels, desertion, the over-