3o8 BALKAN BALLADS

there, he would have had to suffer the taunts of the Saracen without
retaliating had not an angel helped him to leap the stream. He
destroys an army, but a spy steals his horse. The horse and trap-
pings are recognized by his father, who is a prisoner in the Saracen
camp at the Cilician Gates and is forced to write a letter for-
bidding his son's advance. Amouropoulos answered only with
threats, and the emir preferred to be reconciled to so doughty an
adversary by offering him his daughter. The ballad has been ex-
plained as a sublimation of the sack of Amoriurn in 838, showing
both the furious Greek reaction to the defeat and the policy of ap-
peasement on the frontier. It may be so, though the historical
touches are slight; but it is undoubtedly an old ballad that con-
templates a frontier on the Euphrates or at the Cilician Gates.
Beauty's Castle (Politis 73)—its vain defence by a princess—is
also vaguely Akritic.

Legrand was able to quote a brief fragment, Akritas built a Castle,
which corresponds to the eighth book of the epic. It is a character-
istically eastern ballad, and there are versions in the shorter lines
usual in Pontic poetry. Then follows the hero's death (the ballads
have nothing to say concerning the death of his mother). It is in
two parts or aspects: The Wrestle with Charon and Eudoxia's Death.
The former is a famous piece, and occurs both in Akritic guise and
in later generalized forms (Politis 78, Sathas and Legrand, Legrand
214-16, &c.). As the medieval Hercules it befitted Digenis to
emulate the greatest achievement of the Greek god. Digenis was
victor but soon lay on his bed in agony :

So Digenis does agonize upon his iron bedstead,
and, books in hand, the doctors take their stations round about him.
And now uplifts his dying head, and calls for his beloved:
'Sit here beside me, pretty one, sit here beside me, darling;
for of the years IVe lived on earth the tale is three and thirty,
but now the messenger has come to reave from me my spirit.'
He grips her by her two fair hands, a thousand kisses gives her,
he grips, he squeezes in his arms; she is crushed and suffocated.

So died Eudoxia. In the more generalized versions of the first
ballad, current in Europe (Politis 214-16), the youth is a peasant
or soldier, who trusts to his strength and is speedily overthrown by
Charon. A more poignant counterpart to this scene is Eugenoula
(Politis 217), who thought because she was young and just married
she need not fear death: