P.[18]

But the warm and tender hearts of the Slavic women, nevertheless, find means to satisfy that natural want of the female breast, to pour out on certain objects the whole blessing of love. Family connections are among no other race regarded as so holy, the ties of relationship are nowhere so cherished, as among the Slavi.  Maternal tenderness is the subject of very many songs; and is set by comparisons in the most shining light.  In the Russian ballad above adduced,[19] we have seen how slightly the poet thinks of the love of the wife; her tears are dried up by the sun, like the morning dew; while the mother’s tears gush out incessantly like the waters of the mountain stream.  In a Servian ballad, a youth wounds his hand.  The Vila, a malicious mountain-nymph, offers to cure him.  But she exacts a high price,—­from his mother, her right hand; from his sister, her hair; and from his wife, her necklace of pearls.  The mother willingly gives her right hand, and the sister her hair, but the wife refuses the necklace.  The love of a mother is often described by the image of swallows, clinging to their own warm nest; or of tender doves, bereft of their young ones.  The rights of a mother are respected with true filial piety, even by the barbarian hero Marko, who never fails to pay his aged mother filial respect.

More remarkable, however, in Slavic popular poetry, is the peculiar relation of the sister to the brother.  This remark holds especially good of Servia.  Sisters cling to their brothers with a peculiar warmth of feeling.  These are their natural protectors, their supporters.  They swear by the head of their brothers.  To have no brother is a misfortune, almost a disgrace.  A mourning female is represented in all Slavic poetry under the constant image of a cuckoo; and the cuckoo, according to the Servian legend, was a sister who had lost her brother.  Numerous little songs illustrate the great importance which a Servian girl attaches to the possession of a brother.  Those who have none, think even of artificial means for procuring one.  This is exhibited in a pretty little ballad, where two sisters, who have no brother, make one out of white and pink silk wound around a stick of box-wood; and, after putting in two brilliant black stones as eyes, two leeches as eyebrows, and two rows of pearls as teeth, put honey in his mouth, and entreat him “to eat and to speak.”  In another ballad, of a more serious description, “George’s young wife” loses at once in battle her husband, her brideman (paranymphos, in Servia a female’s legitimate friend through life), and her brother.  The gradations of the poetess in her description of the widow’s mourning are very characteristic, and give no high idea of conjugal attachments in Servia.

  For her husband, she has cut her hair;
  For her brideman she has torn her face;
  For her brother she has plucked her eyes out. 
  Hair she cut, her hair will grow again;
  Face she tore, her face will heal again;
  But the eyes, they’ll never heal again,
  Nor the heart, which bleedeth for the brother.