An intelligent Italian traveller, Abbate Fortis, published about a hundred years ago an interesting description of the Morlachians, that is, the Croatian Servian inhabitants of Dalmatia, a tribe distinguished by wild passions and proud contempt of civil life; but full of poetical feeling, and much attached to old usages and the recollections of their ancestors.  He printed for the first time some of their beautiful ancient ballads; but although they were much admired in the German versions which Herder and Goethe gave of them (through the French), the region of their birth remained a terra incognita.  To a few literati only it was known, that many of these ballads, although in a spurious shape, had been collected by the Franciscan monk, Andreas Cacich Miossich; and also that a great many fragments of remarkable popular heroic songs were scattered, as illustrations, through the Croatian and Dalmatian dictionaries of Bellosztenecz, Jambressich, and Delia Bella.  It was known, too, but only by a few, that even ancient Servian historians referred to similar songs.

Vuk Stephanovitch Karadshitch must therefore be called the true discoverer of this mine of beauty; and the judiciousness, patience, and conscientious honesty, with which his collection was got up, deserves the highest praise.  Many of the remarkable songs first communicated to the literary public were the reminiscences of his own youth; for he was born and brought up in Turkish Servia.  Many more he was only able to find after years of careful and indefatigable research.  His large collection—­four volumes with at least five or six hundred pieces of poetry—­was formed upon the principle, that no piece should be admitted, for the genuineness of which he could not be personally responsible, by having himself heard it from one of the people.  Nearly the third part of these poems consists of epic tales; some of them from five to seven hundred verses long; one, more than twelve hundred.

The poetry of the Servians is most intimately interwoven with their daily life.  It is the picture of their thoughts, feelings, actions, and sufferings; it is the mental reproduction of the respective conditions of the mass of individuals, who compose the nation.  The hall where the women sit spinning around the fireside; the mountains on which the boys pasture their flocks; the square where the village youth assemble to dance the kolo,[42] the plains where the harvest is reaped; the forests through which the lonely traveller journeys,—­all resound with song.  Song accompanies all kinds of business, and frequently relates to it.  The Servian lives his poetry.