Set already was the moon,
  Nearly past the night;
  To the storming on they marched,
  With the morning light;
  To the fort with bulwark’d towers
  And walls so strong and white.

  Not great rocks they were, which rolled
  From the mountains steep;
  From the high, high walls there rolled
  Foes into the deep. 
  No white snow shines on the fields,
  All so white and bright;
  But the corpses of our foes
  Shine so bright and white. 
  Not up-swollen by heavy rains
  Left the sea its bed;
  No! in rills and rivers streams
  Turkish blood so red!

Different dialects are spoken, and different ballads are sung by the population of Malo-Russia[29] and of those Polish-Russian and Polish-Austrian provinces, where the peasantry is of the Ruthenian race.  The musical element is still more prevalent among them; and their ditties are rhymed.  The few very ancient ones, which are still extant, alone make an exception.

These have the form and the spirit of the ballads of the Great Russians, and can in no way be discerned from them; while the great mass has a different character.  Indeed, such an immense number of ballads have originated in the rich and fertile steppes of the Ukraine, that it would seem as if each bough of their forest trees must harbour a singer, and each blade of grass on these endless blooming plains whisper the echo of a song.[30] The pensive character of the Great Russian popular poetry becomes, in that of the Malo-Russian and Ruthenian, a deep melancholy, that finds vent in a great variety of sweet, elegiac, melodies.  According to the author of a little collection of their popular songs, published first in a German translation, “these are the after-pains of whole generations; these are the sorrows of whole centuries, which are blended in one everlasting sigh!” [31] If we look back to the history of these regions, we cannot doubt that it is the spirit of their past, that breathes out of these mournful strains.  The cradle of the Kozak stood in blood; he was rocked to the music of the clashing of swords.  For centuries the country on both banks of the Dnieper as far as to the northwestern branch of the Carpathian mountains, the seat of this race, was the theatre of constant warfare and aggression; there was no time for the blessings of a peaceful development.  Their narrative ballads have, therefore, few other subjects than the feuds with Poles and Tartars; the Kozak’s parting with his beloved one; or his lonely death on the border, or on the bloody battle field!  No wonder that their little lyric effusions have imbibed the same melancholy spirit.