YUGOSLAVIA, BULGARIA 327

shows how every one of them refused to blench before his fatal
duty), and last of all Tsar Lazar is overwhelmed. The battle is
stylized; it is almost a piece of ritual. And rightly so; for the
poet has chosen to represent Kosovo as a national expiation.
A prophet offers Tsar Lazar the victory upon earth or in heaven,
and he chooses the latter. His death is as the Lord appointed, so
that the end of the ballad answers to the beginning:

Came a-flying, came a grey-backed falcon,

from the temple and from Salem?s city,

and he carried in his beak a swallow,

Nay, 'twas not so, not a grey-backed falcon,

rather was it the seer, great Elijah;

and he carried not with him a swallow,

but a message from God's holy Mother,

to the Tsar he brought it, to Kosovo,

placed the message on the Tsar's own knee-cap,

and the message thus the Tsar bespeaketh:

'Tsar Lazare, worthiest of people!

which now would'st thou choose between two kingdoms—

whether wouldJst thou have an earthly kingdom,

or would'st rather win a heavenly kingdom?

If thou wouldest win an earthly kingdom,

saddle charger, girth and trappings tighten,

gird upon thee thy heroic sabre,

furiously on the Turk make onrush,

Turkish warriors every one will perish;

would'st thou rather win a heavenly kingdom,

consecrate thou a temple in Kosovo,

whose foundations build thou not of marble,

silk and scarlet build thou of the purest,

purify there, order there the army;

all must perish, perish all thine army;

in the midmost, 'tis thy doom to perish . . .'

So there perished Serbia's Tsar Lazare,

and about him perished all his army,

for their number seven and seventy thousand:

all was holy, all was honourable,

all accomplished as the Lord appointed.

It is to this conception of holiness that the later ballad of The
Finding of Tsar Lazar's Head (Karadzic, ii. 52) corresponds. Its
tone is hagiological.