GREAT RUSSIA 375

responsible for introducing those western and literate influences
which split the community of rich and poor who had delighted in
the 'byliny* of an earlier age. His birth, suppression of the Streltzi,
his victory of Poltava (also sung by a Finnish minstrel), and his
end, are the principal points of his cycle.

After Peter the Great the wars of the eighteenth century con-
tinued to furnish material for ballad-journalists; for instance, the
Swedish war of 1743 and the fir$t Turkish war of 1769. The cen-
tral figure is that of Catherine II, who was also the first Russian
ruler to extend the web of her intrigues into the Balkan peninsula.
There is a somewhat naive Bulgar ballad about her (Dozon 42), in
which she is said to have defeated seventy-seven discourteous beys,
who did not let her have time to do up her hair. To these pieces
correspond also the numerous Ukrainian political poems of the
same period which have been collected by Dragomanov.1 The
ballad-minstrels were still active when Napoleon I launched his
great attack on Russia. The 'dog of an enemy\ king Napoleon,
is represented as collecting an army and ships,, and sending a letter
to the tsar to demand a lodging in the Russian palace; the tsar
might have acceded to the demand, but for the indignant refusal
by Kutozov; Kutozov promises to prepare delicacies of bombs and
cannons for the French guest.

2. Ukrainia

An account of Russian narrative verse cannot be closed without
some mention of the 4dumiJ and other ballads of the Ukraine,2 if
only because of the strange paradox that overshadows them. The
Ukrainians are the original Russians (Rus), though the name has
been commuted in part of the territory to *Ruthenians\ Thirty
million strong, they have their own Little Russian dialect, and
occupy not only the south of Russia but also parts of Poland and
the former Austrian Galicia. In particular, they hold ail the ground
consecrated by the Kievite cycles of Great Russian 'byliny*. The

1 M. Dragomanov, Politicni Pisni Ukrajinskogo Narody, xvi£i~-xix stn z vois.,
Geneva, 1883.

2 References are to V. Antonovi£ and M. Dragomanov, Istonleskija Pesni

Malorusskago Naroda, Kiev, 1874. M. Dragomanov also published two volumes
of historical poems dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,, which
have been already mentioned. There are some useful notes on Ukrainian folk-
song in S. Smal-Stockyj, Ukrainisches Lesebuch (Sammlung Goschen), Berlin-
Leipzig, 1927.