Welsh Journals

THE SERB AS AN ARTIST TO attain to any real understanding of Serbian poetry and song, one must go back, far away from our complex civilisation, to the herdsman and fighter who still remains in the heart of every Serb to-day. All that is best in Serbian music, all that is most worthy in Serb literature smacks of the primaeval needs of man-of his hunting and tilling of the soil that he may find food, of his long wars with enemies of every kind, of his heroism and suffering, his loves and hates, battle and sudden death, and at the root of all, the long drawn fatalism of the East. The songs the peasant sing are the same that their fathers loved, and even the new music is based on old harmonies. If there are no outstanding makers of music in Serbia it is still true that every man is a musician, and the little children in the villages have as instinctive a knowledge of harmony as have the children of our own Wales. There is indeed a curious kinship between these two countries which works out strongly in the artistic lives of the people. In the olden days it was the Welsh harpers who preserved for us the chronicles of their land, and who kept alive the spirit of nationality by their recitals of the deeds of heroes. Without the harper minstrels, much of Welsh history would never have been written, and so in Serbia the warrior poets used music as an aid to their poems. The gousla,' or one-stringed fiddle, was the primal instrument of old Serbia, and though capable only of a limited range of sound, it yet was essentially adapted to its purpose-that of accompaniment to the endless epic poems which have preserved for later generations the heroic deeds of a mighty race of warriors. The Serbs have always divided their poems into two classes-and as the gousla was the inevitable companion of the heroic chant immortalising some great deed of war, so the reed pipe or flute was the gentler accompaniment to the softer lyric poems where a higher, shriller note of ecstacy or stimulation made other forms of expression more necessary to the spirit of the people there was the national bagpipe ready to play its part-this more closely resembling the squeaky instrument of the Piedmon- tese Alps than our great war pipes of Scotland. If the poet songs of Serbia are inferior, broadly speaking, to those of the Ruthenians or Czechs, they have yet a plaintive beauty of their own, and their wailing cadences are admirably suited to the timbre of the voices of the people. In the prevalency of the minor keys and in their admirable simplicity they appear to me to resemble the Welsh music more than the folk songs of any other land. In the long historic poems of Serbia there is a wealth of folk lore and legend wrapped round the deeds of the authentic heroes of the past-if one can speak of a past in connection with a people which knows no past, but blends its past inextricably with its present. Marko Kraljevitch, their greatest hero. is half- brother to a fairy, who helps him in the achievment of his greatest acts-he possesses a fairy horse Shiraz,' who rides upon the clouds-and Marko is a living reality to-day in every Serbian home. Stefan Dushan and Tsar Lazar-two famous rulers, have namesakes in every village, and their pictures in crude colours decorate many a white-washed wall in Northern Serbia. The bones of Saint Sava, founder of schools and churches and the Chris- tianiser of Serbia, were venerated as sacred until that Turkish governor whose name is anathema to every little Serbian child, caused them to be burned at Belgrade. It is difficult for us, with our books and writings, to realise how these stories of the bye-gone days of Serbia are burnt into the hearts of the people so that the most unlettered peasant can tell one the beautiful epic poems of his land or sing one the historic songs of a fighting people. The widespread interest which British people are feeling towards Serbia and things Serbian should lead to a greater knowledge of her wealth of literature still waiting in large measure for adequate transla- tion. Mr. Seton Watson has done admirable work in this direction, and his rendering of the wonderful poem of the Nine Brothers who fell on the great Field of the Blackbirds "-which is the meaning of Kossovo-has laid students of Serbian poetry under a deep obligation. The poem itself is as wonderful as any Northern Saga, and the weird beauty of its measured cadences has been most admirably expressed by its translation. Like all primitive races, the Serb has an instinctive sense of colour and harmony, and in the former art the influence of the Turk has for once been beneficial rather than harmful. Some of the gala dress s of the peasants are really beautiful, and it is rare to see a jarring note or a crude combination of colours. And, although the Turk has influenced their carpet weaving and their embroideries, still it is worthy of note as far as costume is concerned, that the district in which the Ottoman rule pressed most heavily are the ones in which the least originality of conception and more limited range of colours are to be found. For this people thrives best in freedom, and under an alien yoke its instinct is to restrain its national