NOTES 391

It is impossible in English, with its more varied sound system, to repro-
duce the Finnish echoes in all their subtlety.

NOTE O

Adonz, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xxix, 1930, discusses the relation
between Digenis and the Armenian David of Sasoun; Speranskii dis-
cussed the Russian romance of Devgenit in the Russian Academy's
Memoirs (Section of Language and Literature) for 1922. H. Gregoire
posits an Arabic Geste de Melitene, relating to the exploits and death of the
emir and martyr 'Umar al-Nu'man in 863. From this supposed Geste
would descend, on the one hand, the Moslem episodes of the Greek poem
(Geste de I3Emir), and on the other the Histoire du roi Omar-al-Nemdn et
ses deux fils merveilleux Scharkdn et Daou'l-Makdn (Mardrus's translation
of the Arabian Nights). The episode should be assigned, according to
Gregoire, to the early Baghdad cycle, not to the late Egyptian cycle of
stories (to which it had been attributed by other scholars). Then there is
the 'great Arabic romance of chivalry', the Ddt al-Himma wa'l-Battdl, for
which we are referred to an article by Cagnard in the Journal Asiatique
for 1926, and lastly the Turkish heroic tale of Sayyid Battal What is
hypothetical in this account of the matter is the so-called Geste de
Melitene. Supposing there were no such work, and that the Moslem
episodes of the Greek poem were merely novelesque developments from
certain facts of history, then it seems far from impossible to regard the
legend in the Arabian Nights—uncertain of date, as it is—as a derivative
from a Greek source, in so far as the two coincide; and so on for the other
romances. The references are those given by H. Gregoire.

NOTE P

The Serbian ballads were collected by V. S. Karadzic, Srpske narodne
Pjesme (my edition is that of Belgrade, 1895), and by an anonymous
German in the Erlangen manuscript edited by G. Gezeman, Erlangenski
Rukopis, Carlowitz, 1925, for which I have to thank Professor Vladeta
Popovic, of Belgrade. Milos Duric's Srpske narodne Pesme, Belgrade (no
date) is a convenient popular issue. There are other collections, par-
ticularly of women's songs, into which I have not thought it necessary to
inquire. That aspect of Serbian folk-song is sufficiently treated by
L. K. Goetz in Volkslied und Volksleben der Kroaten und Serben^ Heidel-
berg, 1936-7, 2 vols. A full-length treatment of the men's songs is given
by H. M. and N. K. Chadwick in The Growth of Literature, Cambridge,
1936, ii. 2: 'Yugoslav Oral Poetry' (pp. 299-456), and in D. Subotic's
Yugoslav popular Ballads, Cambridge, 1932. P. Popovic summarized
research down to 1932 in Misao, xl, and D. Kostic issued notes on the
second volume of Karadzic under the title Tumacenja druge knjige
SrpskihnarodnihPjesama Vuka St. Karadzica, Belgrade, 1937. A, Dozon
collected a number of pieces for his Poesies serbes.

The standard Bulgarian collection is by D. and K. Miladinov, Balgarski
narodni Pjesni, 2nd ed., Sofia, 1891. A. Dozen's Chansons populates