Among the nations of the Slavic race alone is the living flower still to be found, growing in its native luxuriance; but even here, only among the Servians and Dalmatians in its full blossom and beauty.  For centuries these treasures have been buried from the literary world.  Addison, when he endeavored to vindicate his admiration of the ballad of “Chevy-Chace,” by the similarity of some of its passages with the epics of Virgil and Homer, had not the remotest idea, that the immortal blind bard had found his true and most worthy successors among the likewise blind poets of his next Hyperborean neighbours.  The merit of having lifted at last the curtain from these scenes, belongs to Germany, chiefly to Herder.  But only the few last years have allowed a more full and satisfactory view of them.

In laying before our readers a sketch of Slavic popular poetry, we must renounce at once any attempt at chronological order.  Slavic popular poetry has yet no history.  Not that a considerable portion of it is not very ancient.  Many mysterious sounds, even from the gray ages of paganism, reach us, like the chimes of distant bells, unconnected and half lost in the air; while, of many other songs and legends, the colouring reminds us strongly of their Asiatic home.  But the wonderful tales they convey, have mostly been only confined to tradition; especially there, where the fountain of poetry streamed; and streams still, in the richest profusion, namely, in Servia.  Handed down from generation to generation, each has impressed its mark upon them.  Tradition, that wonderful offspring of reality and imagination, affords no safer basis to the history of poetry, than to the history of nations themselves.  To dig out of dust and rubbish a few fragments of manuscripts, which enable us to cast one glance into the night of the past, has been reserved only for recent times.  Future years will furnish richer materials; and to the inquirer, who shall resume this subject fifty years after us, it may be permitted to reduce them to historical order; while we must be contented to appreciate those, which are before our eyes, in a moral and poetical respect.

The Slavi, even when first mentioned in history, appear as a singing race.  Procopius, relating the surprise of a Slavic camp by the Greeks, states that the former were not aware of the danger, having lulled themselves to sleep by singing.[2] Karamzin, in his history of the Russian empire, narrates, on the authority of Byzantine writers, that the Greeks being at war with the Avars, about A.D. 590, took prisoners three Slavi, who were sent from the Baltic as ambassadors to the Khan of the Avars.  These envoys carried, instead of weapons, a kind of guitar.  They stated, that, having no iron in their country, they did not know how to manage swords and spears; and described singing and playing on the guitar as one of the principal occupations of their peaceful life.[3] The general prevalence of a musical ear and taste among all Slavic