KINDS AND DATES 65

the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries far better than the tenth.
The unreality of Vladimir's court offers a sharp contrast with the
genealogical exactitude of the twelfth-century Igor's Raid. What
we have are simply names and hints of character. These might be
obtained from the epinicia (velicanija) which we know were im-
provised in old Russia after successful expeditions. Round these
names wholly fabulous adventures were woven. The first event
recorded, even indistinctly, is the battle of Kalka in 1224; but there
are ballads which cause Ermak, the conqueror of Siberia (1582), to
take part in that battle. An additional cause of confusion is that the
entire Kiev cycle has been transferred to the Great Russian area,
while in the Ukraine itself much more modern types of song pre-
vail. In Great Russia we encounter a veritable historical ballad for
the first time in The Princes of Tver (1327), and after that the series
run on unbroken. In sum, the 'byliny' reach back to the thirteenth
century in all probability, and some poem on IFja of Murom may
have arisen in the twelfth, but a greater antiquity for the genre
seems unlikely. Their apogee is marked by the cycles of Ivan the
Terrible and Boris Godunov in the sixteenth century.

The historical ballads of central and western Europe give dates
of a more decisive character, both because the events are better
known, and because subsidiary information from monuments and
chronicles is more abundant. The oldest ballad dates are provided
by Denmark. The ballad of the Battle of Lena takes us to the
year 1208; it is a straightforward report on the event, without
romanesque accretions. There are older ballads which are not so
free from retouching: Erik Emuris Murder (i 137), Sir Stig Hvide's
death (1151) and previous marriage, Svend Grade or the battle of
Graahede (1157), Tovelitte (Valdemar I's reign), Esbern Snare
(Valdemars I and II): shortly after the thirteenth century opens
there come the ballads of Queens Dagmar and Bengerd, the good
queen and the bad, expressing the passions of the day. The evi-
dence is overwhelming that Viser' of the present type existed in
1200 and probably in 1150. On the other hand the history of Saxo
Grammaticus, which draws heavily on poetical texts, uses no
ballads. His information comes from late heroic poems in the
Germanic metres, such as the Bjarkamdl] his Hagbard and Signe
is a much more circumstantial text than the ballads we now have.
Saxo shows us, within living memory, a literary epoch when there
were no ballads—assonating poems with refrains—but only the

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