But, for the full enjoyment of Slavic popular poetry, we must exact still more from the reader.  He must not only divest himself of his habitual ideas and views, but he must adopt foreign views and prejudices, in order to understand motives and actions; for the Oriental races are far from being more in a state of pure nature than ourselves.  He will have to transport himself into a foreign clime, where the East and the West, the North and the South, blend in wonderful amalgamation.  The suppleness of Asia and the energy of Europe, the passive fatalism of the Turk and the active religion of the Christian, the revengeful spirit of the oppressed, and the child-like resignation of him who cheerfully submits,—­all these seeming contradictions find an expressive organ in Slavic popular poetry.  Even in respect to his moral feelings, the reader will frequently have to adopt a different standard of right and wrong.  Actions, which a Scotch ballad sometimes shields by a seductive excuse,—­as for instance in the case of “Lady Barnard and Little Musgrave,” where we become half reconciled to the violation of congujal faith by the tragic end of the transgressors,—­are detestable crimes in the eyes of the Servian poet.  On the other hand, he relates with applause deeds of vengeance and violence, which all feelings of Christianity teach us to condemn; and even atrocious barbarities, which chill our blood, he narrates with perfect composure.  This latter remark refers, in fact, chiefly to the ancient epics of the Servians.  Much less of barbarism and wild revenge meets us in their modern productions, namely, the epic poems relating to the war of deliverance in the beginning of the present century; although their oppressors had given them ample cause for a merciless retaliation.  In the shorter and more lyric songs, of which a rich treasure is the property of most Slavic nations, and in which their common descent is most strikingly manifested, there prevails a still purer morality, and the most tender feelings of the human breast are displayed.

It was on account of this decidedly exotic character of Slavic popular poetry, that, when the author of the present work first published a German version of the Servian popular songs, Goethe considered it as an advantage, that the work of translation had fallen into the hands of a lady.  Only a female mind, the great poet thought, was capable of the degree of accommodation requisite to clothe the “barbarian poems” in a dress, in which they could be relished by readers of nations foreign to their genius.  Even the love-songs, although “of the highest beauty,” he thought could only he enjoyed en masse.  But this last remark applies in a certain measure to all popular poetry; for these little songs are like the warblings of the wood-birds; and a single voice would do little justice to the whole.  The monotonous chirping of one little feathered singer is tedious or burdensome; while we enjoy their full concert as the sweetest music of nature.  One swallow does not make a summer.  But the whole blissful sense of nature waking from her wintry sleep comes over you, when you hear the full, mixed chorus of the little songsters of the grove; and the monotonous cry of the cuckoo seems to belong just as much to the completeness of the concert, as the enchanting solo of the nightingale.