YUGOSLAVIA, BULGARIA 329

within It. The language Is unapproachable, and the phrases have
become the resource of all subsequent poets. The ritual solemnity
persists in poems on less solemn themes; all Serbian folk-verse
makes life a pattern that repeats itself through eternity.

Next to the cycle of Kosovo stands that of the Serbian national
hero Marko Kraljevic, or Marko the King's Son.1 The cycle is
historical in so far as Marko was indeed a prince of Prilep, a fortress
commanding the pass from the Vardar valley to the plains of Mona-
stir in southern Serbia. He seems to have taken part in the battle
of Kosovo, but on the Turkish side. The ruin of the old kingdom
was largely due to the dissensions of the Serbian despots, and the
ballad poets, while condemning Marko's father, Vukasin, on this
account, have exonerated the son. His Independence had been
forfeited by the loss of south Serbia In 1370 as the result of the
battle of the Marica; but Marko remained In semi-independence as
lord of Prilep. So he is represented In the ballads: he receives
orders from the Turks and serves as their vassal, and yet he main-
tains a solitary personal Independence. He is typical of the hero-
ism which was still possible at that date In southern Serbia, and
his cycle is opposed to that of Kosovo as southern to northern
and semi-independent to unsubdued. He Is also a plainsman as
opposed to the Montenegrin highlanders, and as such he Is as well
remembered in Bulgaria as In Serbia. The Miladinov brothers
collected twenty-four Bulgarian ballads of Marko Kraljevic, but
none of Kosovo. As a strictly historical and national group the
Kosovo poems have not the power of migration or survival that
belongs to the more novelesque Kraljevic cycle. They are un-
represented In the Erlangen manuscript, collected by an unknown
German in Hercegovina in the eighteenth century, though he
heard several relating to Marko Kraljevic. It is one of the respects
in which the Bulgarian corpus resembles a late stage of Yugoslav
balladry.

The cycle is novelesque. In forming the hero's character It
seems impossible to doubt that some ballad-poets had In mind the
character already assigned by the Greeks to Dlgenis Akrltas. Both
are club-heroes, both are solitaries, and both are ambiguously

1 D. H. Low, The Ballads of Marko Kraljevic, Cambridge, 1922, contains
these poems in translation. An important topic is discussed by M. Budiniir in
'Digenis und Marko Kraljevic*, Actes du quatrieme Congres Internationale des
Etudes bysantinest 1937-

4&I5 U U