GREAT RUSSIA 357

lie otters one or two parodies) more floridly imaginative, it is even
less possible to believe that the notes of time, place, and person
would have been anachronistically applied by a contemporary of
the Yladimirs. The Kiev cycle, if it represents the literature of the
court of Kiev in any way, must be regarded as the f otsam and
jetsam of a foundered poetry, recovered in a later age, pieced
together and expanded with the utmost licence of creation.

Two things, however, may be affirmed concerning this Kicvite
court poetry. The Expedition of I gar springs partly out of epinician
odes addressed to the heroes, as we know otherwise to have been
an established custom. Narrative details were not necessary, since
the event was fresh in the memory of the troops which improvised
them; the important thing in them was the name of the victor.
Laments for the dead also preserved the memory of a name.
Hence, when the 'byliny' came to be composed, there were at hand
many famous names and surnames, unaccompanied by precise
details of their lives. Those who bore the same name would be
confused in one personality, since the ballad poet had neither the
means nor the inclination to make distinctions. Dobrynja, the
uncle of Vladimir I, and Dobrynja of Rjazan who perished on
theKalkain 1224, make one ballad Dobrynja; Aljosa Popovic was
one of the seventy champions who died on the Kalka; Roman in
the ballads is a compound of two different Romans separated by
the length of the thirteenth century; Gleb Volod'evic is probably
derived from the names of two allies who attacked Korsun in 1077,
namely, Gleb Svjatoslavic and Vladimir II Vsero/0A>r/r, though the
ballad also contains the name of Marinka, taken from the wife
of the Pseudo-Demetrius, the seventeenth-century usurper. Simi-
larly, in the Novgorod cycle, Vasilil Buslaev was probably the
'posadnik' who died in 1171, and Sadko was the rich Sodko or
Sudko who built the first stone church in the city in 1167. Such
identifications are open to dispute, and the scholar is warned not
to pursue them into too meticulous detail; but, taken globally, they
make it certain that many of the names occurring in 4byliny* are
historical and belong approximately to the epoch of the Vladimirs.
That such names should survive through encomia and laments
is in keeping with the habits of Rurik and his companions, who
were accustomed to similar improvisations from their skalds. The
Scandinavian practice doubtless stimulated or blended with the
native 'velicanija'. Addressed by a retainer to a chief, such out-