338 BALKAN BALLADS

narratives which have to be classified as in some sense historical,
even when they reproduce well-known fables. The class of adven-
ture ballads, without attachment to historical facts, is thus contained
chiefly among the 'zenske pesme5 of narrative cast. They are also,
not infrequently, the work of Moslem 'guslari'. The Moslem Serbs
had no struggle for independence to sing; in compensation they
were better acquainted with the peripeteias of a civil polity. The
metres employed for such narratives are the heroic decasyllabic,
the octosyllable, occasionally the lyric decasyllabic with pause after
the fifth syllable, and rarely the trochaic tetrameter.

The ballads show no remembrance of the greater figures of
Slavonic mythology, and, with regard to the lesser daemons, the
Yugoslavs seem to possess a less fertile imagination than the
Bulgarians. The sun and moon are actors in their narratives; they
know Vile' and 'samovile' who live in the hills and fountains,
dragons and snakes, and the use of magic. A single apparition of a
ghost is due to a Greek model: Brother and Sister (Karadzic, ii. 8),
like the Bulgarian Lazar and Petkana (Miladinov 100), is a version
of Constantine and Arete or the dead brother's return. The 'vile'
are not always harmful. One, who is also the Morning Star, makes
a plain girl beautiful and becomes her foster-sister. But generally
they are mischievous. A girl should not bathe in a fountain if she
knows a Vila' is there; a youth perishes in the elemental's arms on
their wedding night; and they are wont to spirit away husbands.
In The fiery Dragon's Love (Karadzic, i. 239) it is the girl who is
spirited away to the banks of the Danube; but she refuses help to
come home. The ballad is from Dubrovnik. One works magic by
means of flowers and scripts dropped into fire; the effects are
various, but one of the most malevolent, as in Scandinavia, is to
defer a pregnant woman's delivery. Particularly attractive are the
ballads of sun and moon, which form a small cycle. The Sun and
Moon zooo a Maiden (Karadzic, i. 229) and The bright Moon's
Wedding (Karadzic, i. 230, 231) remind us of the Esthonian and
Lithuanian pieces, though they are quite independent. The
maiden prefers the Moon, with so many stars for relatives, to the
solitary and fiery Sun; in the other it is the Day Star which marries
the Moon. The Sun has a sister, whom it is dangerous to woo;
one tsar did so, but was glad to release her with gifts; a pasha tried
to capture her, but she hurled three apples and three thunderbolts
and destroyed all his forces (Karadzic, i. 233, 232). It is presum-