By far the largest portion of Russian popular songs is of the erotic kind.  According to Russian authorities, even their oldest ballads, to judge from the language,[21] cannot be traced further than to the last quarter of the sixteenth century; and the number even of these is very small.  Most of those now current among the people are derived from the beginning of the middle of the last century.  According to Goetze, the reign of Peter the First was very favourable to popular poetry.[52] His daughter, the empress Elizabeth, was a successful poetess herself; and her ditties had a perfectly popular character.  If we may draw a conclusion from the frequency with which modern historical events have given birth to popular ballads, one must suppose that many ancient ones are lost.  The victories of Peter the First are celebrated in many popular ballads, some of which are of no inconsiderable merit; as the reader will judge for himself from the specimen we give below.  The French invasion also, of 1812, which aroused the Russian nation so powerfully, gave rise to not a few patriotic songs, of many of which the authors were peasants and common soldiers.

There are, however, various indications, which seem to justify the belief, that several of the Russian ballads still current among the people are, in fact, more ancient than they appear, or perhaps even than they actually are in their present shape.  We have not room here to dwell on this subject.  We remark only, that from one circumstance alone we may draw the safe conclusion, that the Russians have ever been a singing race.  We allude to their custom of attaching verses full of allusions and sacred meaning to every festival, nay, to every extraordinary event of human life, and thus of fettering the flying hours with the garland chains of poetry and song.  They have to this very day their wedding songs, Pentecost and Christmas carols, and various other songs, named after the different occasions on which they are chanted, or the game which they accompany.  Although these songs, also, have been modernized in language and form, they seem always to have been regarded with a kind of pious reverence, and appear to have been altered as little as possible.  Most of their allusions are, for that reason, unintelligible at the present day.  That their groundwork is derived from the age of paganism, is evident from the frequent invocations of heathen deities, and from various allusions to heathen customs.

Nearly related to these songs are the various ditties of a social kind, which peasant girls and lads are in the habit of singing on certain, stated occasions; for instance, walking songs, dancing songs, and the like.  They consist mostly of endless repetition, often of words or single syllables, apparently without meaning; and the tune, in which these fragmentary poems are sung, is after all the best part of it.  Yet not seldom a spark of real poetry shines through that melodious tissue of unmeaning words.  What is most remarkable in these songs, which have now been more than a century the exclusive property of the common people, is the utter absence of coarseness and vulgarity, even in the wedding songs.