352 BALKAN BALLADS

There are many Rumanian ballads with foreign analogues.
Master Manole and Votchitd (Tocilescu, pp. 18, 139) are un-
questionably Greek, and probably borrowed directly from the
Greeks in Macedonia. There are more Serbo-Bulgar contacts, due
to the borrowing either of ballads or of the general pattern of plots.
So Faunas and Vidra (Alecsandri 8, 27) employ, as we have seen,
the Serbian motif of the careless hero who goes singing in the woods
and so attracts dangerous enemies to attack him. Doncild (Alec-
sandri 29) is the Serbo-Bulgar ballad of Sick Doicin, who arises
from his pallet to defend his sister and punishes those who would
seek to profit by her distress. Badiu (Alecsandri 32) is a Bulgar
ballad of escape from Turkish oppressors. In Rada (Alecsandri 31)
the tests of a lover's fidelity are those exacted in Serbia by a maiden
of Senj. The Rumanians have three ballads of Marko Kraljevic
(Candrea-Densusianu, pp. 87, 120, Flori alese 185). Voinicul
Oleaz (Candrea-Densusianu, p. 73) is the story of the bride sold to
pay the poll-tax to the Turks, which we have already encountered
in Greece and Serbia. Old Novak is a hero to the Rumanians as to
the Serbs (Alecsandri 36, 37). In the Cadi's Daughter he intervenes
to protect his son lovita who has stolen the girl from her father,
remarking that boys will be boys!

These are ballads of the Balkans, but there are also a few which
have travelled more widely. The Old Man (Teodorescu, p. 616) is
the Rumanian offshoot of the Moringer saga, lencea Sabiencea
(Teodorescu, p. 639) of Marianson's Rings, and Mizil Crai
(Tocilescu, p. 126) of The Girl who went to War. Oancea (Tocil-
rescu, p. 45) concerns an adulteress who instigated her paramour
to kill her husband, but horrifies him so that he kills or abandons
her; thus it runs parallel to the German Lady of Weissenberg and
the Serbian Vukasin's Marriage. The tests of affection applied to
his family and his fiancee by Petrea or Mircea (Candrea-Densu-
sianu, p. 102) are those of the Serbian ballads: he pretends to have
concealed a snake in his bosom, and only his fiancee dares to take it
out. The cruelty of a stepmother, as displayed in the French La
Porcheronne, appears also in the Rumanian Alimon (Flori alese 192).
The Ring and the Veil (Alecsandri 7) makes use of the superstition
that intimate apparel can fade when its former possessor is
oppressed or unfaithful. Looking on the veil his bride had given
him, an unnamed youth bethought him to return home; where he
found that his lands were wasted and his bride drowned in a pond.