332	BALKAN BALLADS
Interest, but not clearly his nation. He is generally good-humoured
and slow to anger, but he can be abrupt and bloody. He rights
wrongs like a Robin Hood, but does no more for those he has
saved. He is not exempt from moral and mental weaknesses,
which he recognizes without false pride; and his deeds are always
greater than his words.
In a long losing battle the fragments of the Serbian kingdoms
after Kosovo were defended by many petty despots. There were
the Brankovici at Smederevo on the Danube, the Jaksici in Bel-
grade, and the wild Crnojevici on the Black Mountain. Their lives,
as simplified by the ballad poets (their closest retainers), revolved
around two moments: marriage (zenidba) and death (smrt). The
marriages follow a fixed patriarchal pattern of bride-stealing. The
suitor collects a train of supporters (kupiti svatove), to the con-
ventional total of a thousand. Among these are persons deputed to
special offices at the ceremony, who are 'ipso facto' officers of his
little army. They set out across the great watersheds and descend
to the Dalmatian coast. The tricky Latins are frightened at the
show of force, and try to get the Serbs to lay their arms aside.
They try to get the champions dismissed, on the ground that they
are quarrelsome in their cups. If the champions have been dis-
missed (as in Dusan's Wedding) the wooer is only saved from his
imprudence by an unexpected succour; if not, the ballad will end
with the Serbs cutting their way out of an ambuscade (as in jfurju
of Smederevoys Wedding, i.e. George Brankovic, d. 1458). Marko
and the heroes of Kosovo are given prominent roles in all the early
weddings. Then the brides have to be led home. A proxy takes
charge, and a gust of air may lift her veil. Then the proxy falls
violently in love, and so commits the worst offence known to
ballad-poets: the breaking of a foster-brother's fidelity. A ballad
of Marko Kraljevic has that pattern (Karadzic, ii. 55). What there
may be of historical truth in such stories it is scarcely possible to
imagine. A modern Montenegrin, if he thinks of singing his prow-
ess as a wooer, will cut his tale to this pattern without reference to
the real facts. The only difference is that he may adopt a tone of
comic exaggeration.
Heroes die, for the most part, overwhelmed. The ballads of
their deaths thus serve to mark the stages of the Turkish advance
up the Morava valley; an advance which cut Serbia in two and
isolated Montenegro. A brilliant example is Voivod Prijezdds