278 NORDIC BALLADS

for a distance of about 50 miles in the valley of the Spree. The
inhabitants, numbering about 200,000, are of Slavonic stock and
speech. They call themselves Lusatians or Sorbs (Serske, Sarske),
but to the Germans they are known as Wends—the old name
applied to any representatives of the Slavonic stock. Their ballads
have been collected by Leopold Haupt and Johann Ernst Schmaler,1
and are of special interest for two reasons. Firstly, the collection
is, in a peculiar sense, definitive. Apart from an abortive literary
movement in the nineteenth century, there has been no other
expression of Lusatian creative genius. The ballads are their all.
The collectors gathered texts from the whole district, together with
the surviving melodies; and they have added an illuminating intro-
duction and full notes. Secondly, the people are a Slavonic islet
wholly subjected to German hegemony. At least fifty of their
ballads are palpably German, and there is a marked German strain
in their melodies. Though enclosed within Germany, they are not
out of touch with their Slavonic kinsmen. For a period Saxony
and Poland formed one kingdom. The 'king' of their ballads is
usually the Polish king. Lusatia thus forms a bridge between
German balladry and that of Poland, Galicia, and the Ukraine. It
shows correspondences also with Czechoslovakia, Into which
similar German influences poured, though probably from another
direction.

In the opinion of the collectors, Lusatian tunes stand on a footing
of equality with the best in Germany, and by their use of ecclesias-
tical modes, they give evidence of respectable antiquity. They held
that specifically German traits are late. ŁThe greater number (they
wrote) have the characteristics of Slavic folk-song; but some, which
resemble German types of song more closely, betray their later
origin/ It is possible the collectors may have begged the question
of date. They wrote at a time when music and song were considered
innate endowments of all men, so that a Slavonic folk would be
supposed first to sing Slavonic tunes. The point seems to lie open
to debate, since tunes collected only in the nineteenth century can-
not but be of undetermined age. Save in dance-tunes, the enuncia-
tion is leisurely, and there is much use of tremolo and trill. Verses
frequently begin, as in Polish Galicia and the Ukraine, with an
exclamation (ha or haFe), and this ejaculation may be used to

1 L. Haupt and J. E. Schmaler, Volkslieder der Wenden in der Ober- und
Nieder-Lausitz, Grimma, 1841-3.