24 WHAT IS A BALLAD?

measure. They are very flexible, but the rush and gabble of
syllables detracts from their dignity.

' The finest metre used in popular poetry is the Serbian deca-
syllabic; it is flexible, weighty, definite, and the vehicle of some
poignantly tragic poetry. Serbia lies on the frontier between
Roman arid Byzantine influence. On the one side, Dalmatia is
Roman; on the other Bulgaria is Byzantine. The oldest recorded
poems are in the peculiar measure called 'bugarstica', with an
irregular number of syllables in the first half, and three trochees in
the second. As 'bugarstica' implies Bulgarian provenience, and
as Bulgaria is now a ballad area dependent on the Serbian, it
would seem that we have in this measure the corruption of some
Byzantine metre. The bulk of Yugoslav narrative pieces is ex-
pressed in decasyllabics, with a fixed pause after the fourth syllable.
They are unrhymed, but in other respects too closely resemble the
old French epic metre to be considered indigenous to Serbia. The
French measure appears in Italian verse as a hendecasyllable with
pause after the fifth syllable; and so it would pass from Venice to
the dependencies of Venice on the Dalmatian coast. The first
Italian syllable is often unaccented. Omitting it, one obtains the
Serbian trochaic decasyllabic with obligatory pause after the fourth.
A certain number of themes carne from the West along with the
verse, but most of the subjects and all the music is Balkanic.
These narrative poems, when dealing with warlike subjects, are
called warriors' or men's songs (junacke pesme) and are chanted,
not sung. Women's songs (zenske pesme) are amatory, and are sung
and danced in a wide variety of metres. Between the two types
lie certain amatory narratives in the heroic verse. The decasyllabic
is found in Bulgaria, especially in ballads taken over from the
Serbians. Otherwise the octosyllable is more common, and there
are some interesting poems in free verse. In Rumania the line is
an octosyllable or less; the style and many important themes are
Balkanic, but the presence of assonance reveals the influence of
Germany and Hungary. A special feature of Rumanian balladry is
its pastoral background.

The fourth great ballad area is the Russian. The Russian
'stariny' or 'byliny' relate the events of a distant age: that of Kiev
under Vladimir or Novgorod in its glory. Other narrative or his-
torical themes have been added, but this sense of antiquarianism
is a characteristic note. The lines are unrhymed, but they are also