358 RUSSIAN BALLADS

pourings were careful to preserve the name, and to indicate the
ground for praise or sorrow, but not to go into narrative particulars.
They would adequately account for the presence of so many
authentic names and the absence of authentic narratives. A Ukrain-
ian piece, with the name left in blank, though late, may be repre-
sentative of the genre:

Famous, fair, renowned N . . .,
what the deed that brought thee glory ?
Dusk—and on horse his saddle's laid;
day—he alights at Tsarigrad,
and fights and fights with Tsarigrad.
Out comes the tsar, so sore afraid,
and burghers hasten, counsel take,
if any gift his ire may slake.1

The poem goes on to describe the offer of a tribute of horses or
gold, but the hero refuses to accept any other gift than that of a
princess under her wedding crown. The editors conjectured that
this piece might be a reference to Svatoslav Igorevic; it is one of
several which have to do with sieges.

The other fact about which we may rest assured is that there
developed at Kiev, before the end of the twelfth century, a con-
siderable heroic legend concerning the champion Il'ja. It is as the
representative hero of Russia that Elias von Riissen appears inOrtnit
and Iljas af Greka in the Thidrekssaga. The latter takes no im-
portant share in the action, but is associated with Vladimir (Valde-
mar) as well as with a certain Osangtrix (Oserich), who is Dietrich's
principal antagonist in the east. Oserich of Russia is a figure of the
Biterolf\ Hertnid (Ortnit), of Novgorod, transferred to Lake
Garda in Italy, became the hero of his own epos, with Elias, his
mother's brother, for his chief courtier and officer. The acts of
Elias correspond to none of those in the 'byliny', but his name and
fame stood high among neighbouring Germans in the early thir-
teenth century. Traces of his fame have been found in the Ukraine
and in White Russia2 of the sixteenth century—neither a district

1 V. Antonovic and M. Dragomanov, Istoriceskija PSsni Malorusskago Naroda,
Kiev, 1874, i. 4.

z White Russian folk-verse is of a highly lyrical character. It is exemplified
in P. V. Sein, Bglorusskija narodnyja PSsni, St. Petersburg, 1874, and discussed
amply by E. Karskii, Gesckichte der weissrussischen Volksdichtung und Literatur
(Grundriss der slavischen Philologie), Berlin, 1926. I have some references to
narrative poems in this dialect, especially to those contained in Bezsonov's