ASIA MINOR, GREECE 319

last to be cultivated with grace and freshness. The traditional
distichs have not the formal perfection of the best epigrams, but
they maintain a level much above the worst. They slip easily over
the tongue, since their rhythms are those of normal speech. They
are unemphatic, direct, and full of poignancy or charm, Were we
to count them not by lines but by hemistichs, they would resemble
the quatrains of modern Portugal and Latvia, which are also reduc-
tions of older, more varied verse types.

There are ballads of crime—typical crimes, rather than particular
ones. The Evil Wife (Politis So) relates ho\v one brother slew
another to take his wife, but, overcome by remorse, slew her too.
An evil mother drives her son into exile, and an evil step-mother
bewitches her children. The special motifs of piracy and brigand-
age are a sauce for old situations: a girl proves to be her captor's
sister (Politis 86), and a count is forced by misery to sell his wife
to one who proves to be his brother (Politis 86 B). A girl offers a
kiss for her lover's ransom, but is refused; the Emirissa is seized by
pirates when bathing; the captive women of Chios lament, and so
do Greek prisoners in the Barbary states and a galley-slave in a
Turkish ship at Lepanto, There are stirring fights between three
monks and a Turkish privateer, or between Tsoulakis and a pirate.
In one poem the Greeks go down defiantly resisting, in another It
is the ship that will not yield to a storm. The best of these sea-
pictures—a special merit of Greek poetry—is the ballad of Kyr
Bonos. A storm overtook his vessel, on which was a Turk and a
Jew. The Turk was ordered to pray in his own fashion, the Jew
to recant. So the wind abated. But the Jew changed his mind
again, blasphemed Christ, and roused the wind afresh so that the
ship was lost.

To complete the picture of Greek folk-verse, we find many types
that are not strictly relevant to this work. They serve to mark the
unity of Balkan folk-song, for they are generally found in other
lands in much the same form. The stages of funerals are signalized
by special dirges, and there are songs for each moment of the
bridal feast: betrothal, the bridegroom's pride, stuffing the beds on
a Saturday, riddling, leading the bride, reaching the new home,
scattering bramble-straw and ivy. So also there are the stated
seasons of the year: Noels or "kalanda*, Palm-tide songs or
'baitika', with appropriate compliments for master and mistress,
priest and heir. Shepherds and other workers have their songs.