When the world despises me,
Only God has any pity.
Thou too, doubting, comest not near me,
Willst not know and willst not hear me.
Only one, my little dove,
Knew my sorrow, brought me love:
My sweet turtle dove, I know,
If her other half should go,
Would not mate with any other,
Or fly from one tree to another.
This is a more passionate vein, with some adumbrations of a story in
it:—
“Hide, O God, the moon in a mist,
Let me revel as I list;
Wrap like a shroud his face in a cloud,
Till my lover has kissed and kissed.”—
“Green leaf of the vine’s long train,
I go, but in autumn shall come again.”—
“If you go for a month away,
Mad you’ll find me on your home-coming day;
If you go away for a year,
Not mad you’ll find me but laid on my bier.
Then to my grave I bid you come,
Scatter dust upon my tomb,
Take a look within
At the death of sin;
As I lie at your feet
And at Death’s deceit.”
Most of the poems collected are short ones, of a kind not dissimilar
from the specimens given above. There are, however, some pieces which
approach more nearly to the ballad form, which are considerably
longer, and contain some sort of story. Our specimens would not be
representative unless we included one poem of this kind. Let this
ballad stand upon its own merits, merely as a representative one,
without attempting to explain or apologize for its obscurities and want
of harmony. The inequality of the metre here will represent the, to our
ears, irregularity of the original:—
Over the mountain, bathed in the dew,
Is standing a little cottage new,
With windows that face the rising sun,
And door that leads toward the valley down.
In it was held a meeting gay
Of all the girls of the village one day.
And they sang and they spun,
And they laughed—all but one,
The hostess’ young daughter:
From her came no laughter
As from every other.
Then thus spake her mother:
“Little daughter, what fails thee?
What is it that ails thee?
Art thou sick, little daughter,
Or is it heart-pain?”
Said her daughter, “Refrain,
Little mother, seek not to know why
I am sad; lest I curse in reply.
For love’s pain I have proved;
I had once one beloved.
He was tall, little mother,
Fairer than any other.
His eyebrows black as a raven’s wing,
In an arch long drawn as is a ring,
Skin soft as silk, white as the froth of milk,
His eyes were like the dark wild-plum,
His hair was like ripe corn in the sun.
Securely my beloved slept,
Safe was my beloved kept
From the sun’s strong rays,
From the wind of wintry days.
And I sent my love
To the fair of Brachov
To buy for me linen,
Fine thread for my spinning,
And rich clothes to wear,
Gold beads for my hair.—
Thence he sent with a message, my mother,
With a message the moon in the night,
That I was to be his stepmother:
Then I sent to him in reply
The sun, for I said that he should
Go wed whomsoever he would.
With the leaf of the hazel-nut tree
He sent his answer to me,
That I should his stepmother be;
Little mother, but dear little mother,
Can I marry him to another,
Or shall I curse him, shall I curse him, my mother?“
“Be not mad, little daughter, go be
His stepmother, as he tells thee:
And you, Gypsy, Gypsy,
Bring my carriage to me,
For I am the grand stepmother.”
“But mother, oh mother, say how
Shall I speak, and what name call him now?”
“My beloved, my stepson,
My heart’s love, my cherished one.”
“And her, O my mother, what word
Shall I give her, what name?”
“My stepdaughter, abhorred,
The whole world’s shame.”
“Then, my mother, what shall I take him?
What gift shall I make him?”
“A handkerchief fine, little daughter,
Bread of white wheat, for thy loved one to eat,
And a glass of wine, my daughter.”
“And what take _her_, little mother,
What gift shall I make _her_?”
“A kerchief of thorns, little daughter;
A loaf of black bread for her whom he wed,
And a cup of poison, my daughter!”
* * * * * *
Whether this is anything more than a fragment one may reasonably doubt,
but no more than this was known to the reciter. This is of course the
disadvantage of orally imparted poems, that a great portion is very
often left out of the beginning, the end, or the middle. Sometimes,
again, two different songs are combined into one. We can understand
without much difficulty what was meant by sending the moon with a
letter or message, and sending back the sun; it is not so obvious what
the letter written upon the hazel-nut leaf implies. The explanation
which seems the most probable is: This Roumanian peasant lover could
not write. He had no means of sending a message unless the sun would
be the messenger, nor of receiving a reply unless the moon would bring
it. The peasants sometimes make calls by whistling against a leaf, as
our peasant boys do with a piece of grass. This apparently is what is
meant by the answer sent by a hazel-nut leaf. Possibly the rest of the
poem, if there had been a remaining part, would have made the difficult
points of this ballad more clear. We might have had a tragedy of the
Ugo and Parisina sort. But all that is now covered up in night.
With one poem of a simple kind we will end this short selection:
List ye who love:
Three evils ye will prove.
The first is that you love,
The next because he seldom comes
Your love to prove.
This bitterness your heart will know.
The third when altogether he shall go,
And say adieu.
He will not come back again;
But your heart will scorch with pain.
Leaf of the barley, he will say,
I know not what has found me,
Nor what sorcery around me
Takes me from you away—
But adieu forever and a day.
—_The Nineteenth Century._