The Songs, alas! must lack their native music; of the land which evoked
them Mr. Paul Crath has written with a poet’s pen. It remains for me
just to say a few words about the people who sing the songs and (with
one digression) I will quote a few extracts from French and Ukrainian
essayists:—
“The Ukrainian is a race purely Slav, gay, chivalrous, made thoughtful
by its own steppes—a race of poets, musicians, artists who have fixed
for all time their national history in the songs of the people which
no centuries of oppression could silence. The singers—the
Kobzars—accompany themselves on the kobza while they sing the glories
of the Ukraine. All art with them is national, from the building of
their tiny huts to the embroideries which adorn their clothes and
which are distinguished for their originality all over the East.”
“Here is a people, one of the most numerous of Europe and nevertheless
one of the least known. They have not even an assured name. They are
called Little Russians to distinguish them from the mass of the
Russian people—they are called Ukrainian because they inhabit the
frontier between Poland and Russia; one of the branches (in Austrian
Galicia) bears the name of Ruthenian.... In the nineteenth century
this oppressed people revealed to the world the puissance of its
artistic gifts. The Ukrainians became the first singers of Europe; the
celebrated Russian music is the music of the Ukraine, and it is an
Ukrainian, Gogol, who has opened the way to the Russian romancers of
genius.”—CHARLES SEIGNOBOS, Professor at the Sorbonne.
“In the Russian Ukraine the nobles, descendants of the line of the
Cossacks, and the clergy had closely guarded the remembrance of the
grandeur, the glory, and the independence of the Ukraine. Living in
contact with a people which had preserved its language, songs, and
customs, they turned to it to know it better.... Collections of
popular songs by Maximovich, Dragomanov, Shesnevsky, Zerteleff, etc.,
began to be made around 1820 and in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Soon romantic poets found this field—Kvitka outstripped
George Sand and Auerbach.... Towards 1840 the great poet Shevchenko
(1814–1861) combined by his genius all that was most profound in
universal poetry with the genre of the popular poetry of the Ukraine.
A great poet and a great citizen, his name is sacred to all
Ukrainians.”
Mrs. E. L. Voynich has published six lyrics from the mass of this poet’s
work, all of which is practically unknown to English readers. Many of
his writings, however, are to be included in the “Slavonic Classics” now
under way.
Immigrants, self-exiled, still sing, putting trivial incidents or
dreadful affrays, happenings in their old villages, into legend and
song. From several of these living in Winnipeg I obtained old ballads
and folk-songs set to minor airs. Russalka on ironing days was a concert
in herself! I remember how she told me the song made by a local poet in
her old home when a faithless bride was murdered by her conscript lover.
Anastasia could not wait three years—but the soldier came to her
wedding.