THE ASCENT OF BALLADS 129

leyenda'. The 'legend' Is a poem in ballad lines, but of a more
definite structure; it differs from true ballads chiefly in the eager-
ness to give local colour', which the traditional ballad always takes
for granted. Other countries with rich balladries inevitably show
signs of their influence. A bird's-eye view of that aspect of Danish
literature can be obtained readily in anthologies or by scanning the
works of Oehlenschlager.1 In Serbia we have the poems of Njegos
and adaptations of the 'junacke pesme' like Stojkovic's Lazarica.
The publication of folk-songs opened a new epoch in both the
poetry and the music of Hungary, while in the Baltic states they
revealed the very possibility of a literature inspired by national
sentiment. We must pass over these things, which would delay our
discussion too long; but we must not pass over the case of Russia,
both because its novelists have raised its literature to the front rank,
and because the history of ballad influences has run a peculiar
course.2 The impulse came at first from abroad, chiefly from
Germany. The first of the ballads was actually the Castilian
Guarinos, translated by Karamzin in 1789, and published in 1792;
but the most potent single influence was certainly Burger's Lenore.
Lenore appeared as the Ljudmila of Zukovskii in 1808, and as his
Svetlana in 1813; as Katenin's OVga in 1816 (a plain translation)
and Lermontov's Ljubov' mertveca in 1840; while Anna Turcani-
nova rendered into Russian our Margaret's Ghost (ViVjam i Mar-
garita) in 1800. Percy's Reliques offered to Russian poets the
themes of Edward and the Three Ravens. In addition to these
sources, Goethe's Erlkonig and Konig in Thule were well known,
along with Schiller, Heine, Scott, and Campbell. Herder's Cid
provided Spanish information, and there was direct contact with
Denmark and also with Greece (Malkov's Borba so smerfju, the
Greek battle of Digenis and Charon). Russian prosody was settled
on the basis of rhyme and measured lines, and Russian taste
educated in western types of balladry before the revelation by
Rybnikov and Gil'ferding of the rich store of indigenous 'byliny'.
In the earlier period the matter of Kiev is deemed either comic or
more appropriate to prose genres. It is thus only at a compara-
tively late moment that the Russian 'byliny' come into their own

1 The Oxford Book of Scandinavian Verse unfortunately omits the Viser'. The
comparison can be made on consulting O. Vig, Sange og Rim, Christiania, 1854.

z F. W. Neumann, Geschichte der russischen Ballade, Konigsberg und Berlin,
1937-

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