3a8 BALKAN BALLADS

The poets give us glimpses of the tragedy from several stand-
points. It is seen most terribly in The Death of the Jugovici's
Mother (Karadzic, ii. 47), for she perished when a raven brought
her the hand of her dearest son, Damjan, together with the news of
the ruin of her house.

Then that mother takes Damjane's hand up,
turns and turns it, turns it o'er and gazes;
still and softly to the hand she whispers:
'Hand the dearest, green and lovely apple!
where begotten, where hast thou been severed !
There begotten, in my loving bosom,
there wert severed, on the plain Kosovo P
Swells with anguish Jugovici's mother,
swells with anguish, till her frame was shattered,
for the dear sake of nine Jugovici,
and the tenth one—aged Jug-Bogdane.

But there were others of less exalted category, whose sorrow was
softened by pathos. Just as the young hero Music Stepan (Karad-
zic, ii. 46) perished in a manner more romantic than tragic, so there
is a softer side to the grief of The Maiden of Kosovo (Karadzic, ii.
50). Early in the morning she rises and goes to the battle-field; she
wipes the blood from dead faces and turns over the heaps, till she
comes upon her own dead lover. With the discovery the joy is
eclipsed from her own young life, and she ends lamenting her
doom to barrenness:

Down her white face streams of tears descended,
homeward goes she to her own white homestead,
from her white throat wailing like a cuckoo:
'Who more wretched? O my fate is bitter!
Wretch, embracing such a fair green pine-tree,
but in green youth has my pine been withered.'

These ballads do not constitute an epic, though in their uniform
dignity they have tempted the skill of modern epic poets.1 The
disaster is never presented as a complex whole. It is glimpsed in
sections, as it affects various people: Queen Milica, the mother of
the Jugovici, an unnamed girl, Milos, the Jugovici and Lazar. Yet
some strange instinct would seem to have been at work to see that
nothing entered the Kosovo cycle but what was worthy of a place

1 For Instance, the Lazarica Hi Boj na Kosovu of S. J. Stojkovic', in 24 cantos.
It is in places a centon of ballads.