YUGOSLAVIA, BULGARIA 341

Justly or unjustly, Asanaga suspected his wife, beat her and sent
her home; then he languished for love of her, but she would not
return. The version known to Goethe opens finely with the sick-
ness of Asanaga:

Say, what whitens on the grassy hill-side ?

Is it snow-drift? are white swans a-fiying:

Were it snow-drift, snow long since had melted;

were it white swans, swans away had fluttered.

Not a snow-drift, not white swans a-fiylng,

but pavilions of Aga Hassan Aga,

where he sickens, where is sorely wounded.

To his comfort mother comes and sister,

but his true love shame forbids to cheer him.

So, with gashes healed and wounds a-closing,

he unbending ordered thus his true love:

'Ne'er attend me in my whitened mansion,

in my mansion, nor among my people,'

Repudiated in this fashion, she soon has new suitors, and the
bridal train passes Hassan In his house. Her heart cannot bear the
thought of her two sons :

Mere spectator then was Hassan Aga,

summoned softly to Ms side two children ;

'Hither come ye, oh my luckless orphans!

your misfortunes cannot win compassion

from your mother, from a heart so stony/

Stood and listened Hassanaginica,

white of feature to the ground she stumbled,

by the roadside yielded up her spirit,

slain by anguish, looking on her orphans.

(Burlc, viiL 10.)

A group of ballads concerning a false wife punished for her
falseness should probably be centred on Bulgaria and dated from
an epoch before the extant Bulgarian ballads arose. The tableau
Is generally the same: a warrior Is travelling with his bride when
he Is attacked by enemies, with whom she sides; some chance gives
him back his weapons, and he takes due revenge. This is the matter
of the Yugoslav ballad of Grujo Novakotic and Popovic Siojan
among those of bandits (Erlangen 117, 71), and of Banotic* Sim-
hinja among those classed as historical and ancient (Karadzic* ii.
42). The Bulgarian Iskren and Milica (Dozon 34) Is of the later
haiduk type, and notably ferocious; and in Russia this tale Is related