nations is indeed striking.  “Where a Slavic woman is,” says Schaffarik, “there is also song.  House and yard, mountain and valley, meadow and forest, garden and vineyard, she fills them all with the sounds of her voice.  Often, after a wearisome day spent in heat and sweat, hunger and thirst, she animates, on her way home, the silence of the evening twilight with her melodious songs.  What spirit these popular songs breathe, the reader may learn from the collections already published.  Without encountering contradiction, we may say, that among no other nation of Europe does natural poetry exist to such an extent, and in such purity, heartiness, and warmth of feeling, as among the Slavi.” [4]

Although we recognize in the last sentence the voice of a Slavic enthusiast, we copy the whole of his remarks as perfectly true; and would only add, that we do not consider “heartiness and warmth of feeling” more a characteristic feature of Slavic than of Teutonic popular poetry.  As for the purity and universality with which popular poetry is preserved among the Slavic nations, we strongly fear, that the chief cause of these advantages lies in the barrenness of their literature, and in the utter ignorance among the common people even of its elements.

Before we attempt to carry our reader more deeply into this subject, we must ask him to divest himself as much as possible of his personal and national feelings, views, and prejudices, and to suffer himself to be transported into a world foreign to his habitual course of ideas.  Human feelings, it is true, are the same every where; but we have more of the artificial and factitious in us than we are aware of.  And in many cases, we hold, that it is not the worst part of us; for we are far from belonging to the class of advocates of mere nature.  The reader, for instance, must not expect to find in all the immense treasure of Slavic love-songs, adapted to a variety of situations, a single trace of romance, that beautiful blossom of Christianity among the Teutonic races.  The love expressed in the Slavic songs is the natural, heartfelt, overpowering sensation of the human breast, in all its different shades of tender affection and glowing sensuality; never elevating but always natural, always unsophisticated, and much deeper, much purer in the female heart, than in that of man.  In their heroic songs, also, the reader must not expect to meet with the chivalry of the more western nations.  Weak vestiges of this kind of exaltation, with a few exceptions, are to be found among those Slavic nations only, who, by frequent intercourse with other races, adopted in part their feelings.  The gigantic heroism of the Slavic Woiwodes and Boyars is not the bravery of honour; it is the valour of manly strength, the valour of the heroes of Homer.  The Servian hero, Marko Kralyewitch, was regarded by Goethe as the personification of absolute heroism; but even Marko does not think it beneath him to flee, when he meets one stronger than himself.  These are the dictates of nature, which only an artificial point of honour can overcome.