By C. F. KEARY.
A special interest, as it seems to me, belongs to every attempt to
restore to a place in literature the genuine peasant speech of the
Roumanians, with all its Slavisms undiluted, and showing by those
Slavisms that it is not a sham peasant literature with the thoughts
of educated men put into the language of a lower class. The task of
contributing to this restoration has been undertaken by M. Ricard
Torceanu. He has spent much time and labor in going from village to
village to collect the songs, the customs, and lore of the peasants.
Everything which he amassed was orally communicated to him. What he
gained was often fragmentary and uncouth, but it had the advantage of
being a genuine product. It would almost seem as if the villagers were
beginning to forget their village songs. In a few years’ time, perhaps,
these songs will be no longer to be heard, having been driven away
by the new education code and by the new language which has been to
a great extent substituted for the old tongue. Then these poems will
remain like the last echoes of bygone days.
M. Torceanu has invented nothing, he has extenuated nothing. He has
set down what he heard, and no more; he needs, therefore, to make no
apology, although the poetry is often meagre and is always absolutely
simple. In actual form these songs have some points of likeness to
Mr. Barnes’s Dorset lays. In both the beat of four is much the most
usual measure of the line; only that, owing to the difference in the
accent, while in English the four-beat is often reached in only seven
syllables, in the Roumanian eight are nearly always employed. A great
variety of accentuation prevents the monotony which would naturally
arise from the frequency of this form. And as this variety of accent
can not be rendered in the English translation, more freedom has been
used in the number of syllables contained in a line than is used in the
original. At the same time the four-beat, when found in the original,
has been generally preserved.
Alternate rhyme is the exception, the most usual thing being the
couplet. Very frequently, however, four of five lines rhyme or sound
together. These poets are not very particular about accurate rhyme.
Untrained ears are never very exacting on this head. Our ballad
literature could show countless instances of such assonance as _wind_,
_begin_, _him_, _them_, _am_, _man_, etc. The Roumanians are much more
liberal still—at least as appears to our ears. Some of their rhymes
recall the loose assonance of old French poetry, such as the _Chansons
de Geste_. Little distinction seems to be made between the liquids _l_
and _r_, so that _are_ and _ale_ would pass for a proper rhyme. In
singing each line is repeated twice, with a variety of accent.
The songs have one peculiarity: almost all begin with the words _frunză
verde_, that is, green leaf. To this follows sometimes “of the so and
so.” This reminds us of the beginnings of the snatches of rhyme in Mr.
Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”:
Flower o’ the clove,
All the Latin I construe is _amo_, I love.
Occasionally the _frunză verde_ is followed on by the name of a flower
unconnected with it by any conjunction. Thus the following song begins
with a line which, literally translated, is simply “green leaf, three
violets;” but to make it intelligible we will borrow the form from Mr.
Browning’s songs.
The same phrase _frunză verde_ is frequently introduced into the middle
of the poem. One might be tempted to suppose that when it is found
there, it has been the result of the welding together of two different
songs. But there are some instances where this certainly has not been
the case.
Now take for a specimen the following song, characteristic enough of
the greater number of these village lays:
Green leaf, green leaf of the violet,
As of old, across the wold
And round my house the wind sobs yet,
Whispering longing and regret,
For the loved ones who have fled.
Breathes the wind among the grasses:
I faint with wishing as it passes.
Storm-gusts rise and fall again,
And passion wrings my heart with pain.
Breathes the wind, and small leaves move,
I die with longing for my love.
Over the mountain the mountain wind blows,
My longing for my kindred grows.
Blows the breeze the trees among,
My brothers’ names shall fill my song.
When it creeps the flowers through,
My sisters sweet I think of you.
Leaf o’ the maple branching fair,
What cloud comes here, the wanderer—
Hast thou told to her forsaken
How her love’s for a conscript taken?
Oh, little cloud, thou dost not carry
Rain or snow, but the tears of Marie.
Curious little conceits such as these, drawn from the common imagery
of nature, are very characteristic of the poems. In that respect some
of the songs resemble not a little some of the popular songs which one
may hear in Italy, and resemble much less the popular songs of northern
lands, wherein these conceits are more rare. Here is a still more
simple fragment:
Green leaf of holly, all are gone,
The girls of the village, and I am alone.—
Not all; for one remains for me;
Only one my hope to be.
My hope but she;—
Frail as ice my trust will find her,
To the trysting who can bind her?
And here one which is far from ungraceful:
“Undo, my dear, the charm which you have made,
And let me now go free.”
“To make you go my charm was never laid,
But to make you marry me.”
The following might seem like an imitation of Shakspere; but it is a
quite true rendering from the mouth of peasants to whom Shakspere was
not even a name:
Green leaf of the poplar grove,
Tell me, prythee, whence comes love?
From the eyes or from the brows,
Or from the crimson lips?
Can a peasant taste thereof
As one honey sips?
This is the lament put into the mouth of a girl who has disgraced
herself so far as to marry a tzigan (gipsy).
Swallows, swallows, little sisters—
Sisters, seek my mother dear;
Tell her from her daughter here,
That she send her kirtle red,
For a raven she has wed,
And a large thick veil for shroud
When the watch-dogs bark aloud.
Her brave dresses, that she take them,
Into one rude bundle make them,
Throw them in the street and burn them,
Utterly to ashes turn them.