ASIA MINOR, GREECE 309

'Twas Eugenoula, pretty child, so recently she married,

she boasted as she went her ways that Charon little feared she;

so high the roof-tree of her house, so valiant her husband,

and all her bretheren nine so stout, the vanquishers of castles,

they every castle overcame til! even* country trembled.

But Charon, when he heard that word, so deeply did it grieve him.

To a black bird he changed his shape, like unto a wild swallow,

he sent his arrow from his bow against that lady lonely,

he struck her on her linger fine, upon her fine ring-finger.

Three other ballads remain to be cited in this Akritic group,
though they have no connexion with Digenis. They are Tsamados
and his Son, The Bridge of Art a and The Dead Brothers Return or
Constantine and Arete (Politis 77, 89, 92). In the first we are told
that the brutal Tsamados descended the hill and forced a deadly
wrestle upon his son. The legend belongs to the same class as
Ulysses and Telegonos, IPja and his son, Sohrab and Rustum,
and Hildebrand; it stands closest to the Russian version inasmuch
as it condemns the father for a tragic situation generally regarded
as caused by blind fate. The second legend was first told concern-
Ing the bridge of Adana, in Asia Minor, and only at some later date
transferred to Arta in Acarnania. It Is a masonic legend. The
bridge will not stand, however the builders toil, until the master-
builder's wife is enclosed in it alive. The oldest form of this ballad
is Cappadoclan, but the best development Is in the Rumanian
Master Manole or the building of Arges, where it is connected with
the name of a seventeenth-century Greek architect and a Rumanian
shrine of much earlier date. The Rumanian version is superior,
because it conveys supremely the sense of helplessness in the face
of fate; no prayers or entreaties, not even rain and storm, will pre-
vent the devoted girl from advancing to her doom. The third is
a powerful ballad, which has spread as far as the gypsies of Hun-
gary in one direction and England in the other {The Suffolk
Miracle). Arete was an only sister of nine brothers. When a wooer
came from a far country, her mother was unwilling to let her gos
and only consented when Constantine promised to bring her back
when needed, at all costs. Plague swept away the nine brothers
and left the mother sick to death. Constantine rose from his tomb,
compelled by his oath, and rode to seek Ms sister; he brought her
back, and after so tremendous an experience both she and her
mother fell dead. The odour of death rests on all the poem; the