The Theme of the Ukrainian Folk Songs and Their Kinds
Quite many among the songs treat about the Ukrainian Cossack life,
their love affairs, heroic deeds, courage and raids on Russians, Poles,
Tartars and Turks. There are songs about general heroic deeds--the
epopees--which are much older than the Cossack period. There are ritual
and religious songs, the Kolyady or Christmas and New Year carols, the
Eastern songs; the occasional holiday and festive songs; the spring,
Kupalo and Obzhynkovi; political and patriotic songs; soldier, Cossack
and recruit songs; the songs of the Cossack Sitch and Sokol (Falcon),
hymns and marches which are stately and martial in character; historic
and traditional songs; the Chumak songs composed by waggoners or
drivers who traded in salt and fish; professional songs and ballads;
Kolomeyky[1] or the brisk, lively tunes and love words, originated in
the vicinity of the city of Kolomya, Ukrainian East Galicia; wedding
songs; burial songs; baptismal songs. But most numerous and diverse are
the love songs; their multitude of airs, difference of shades and depth
of sentiment is as varied and beautiful as the fragrant flowers of
Ukraine. We must certainly distinguish the religious from the secular
songs, for there are many of the former ones used exclusively in the
church and home by the faithful. Their purpose is the glory of God and
of his faithful servants--the saints--whose good works or miracles are
being celebrated.
It is only in the rarest cases that the author of a celebrated popular
song may be traced; as a rule the authors of Ukrainian folk songs
are unknown, but the beauty, strength and popularity of their words
and airs demonstrate that they were real masters of human souls who
either lived themselves through what they afterwards sang or else
their intelligent, susceptible minds keenly felt the heart’s emotions
of others; they were the nation’s long forgotten philosophers, although
the simplicity of their verse and contents show that these authors were
simple, kind-hearted, themselves. It may be that some of them were
accomplished scholars, but through many centuries their productions
underwent such a metamorphosis through oral transmission by the people
that they no longer show signs of erudition.
It quite often happens that because these songs reflect so much
individual and national suffering, the singers, particularly women and
girls, sob while they sing; they cry while singing about a dramatic
love affair which usually ends with death of the lover Cossack or with
the captivity of his fiancee.
There are some ancient songs antedating Christianity officially
introduced in Ukraine by St. Vladimir in 988, and these songs are
sung with as great an interest as if they were recent compositions.
They have to do chiefly with the pagan worship of the natural forces
and celestial bodies, by the ancient Ukrainians; some of them are
sung side by side with the Christian productions of later date, on
various religious occasions. Ukrainian philologists and ethnologists
such as Maxime Drahomaniv, Pantaleymon Kulish, P. Chubinsky, Michael
Maximovitch, A. Metlinsky, I. Holovatsky have recorded many hundreds
of these songs, most of which have been published; but it is said that
at least another half of these popular songs have not been as yet
collected and written down.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Kolomeyka, a short form of song, composed of two verses, fourteen
syllables; it makes up a complete thought; it is being produced
continually by the common people. Sometimes a few of these stanzas are
linked together. Most of the truths of life are expressed in this form
of people’s poetry.