GREEK POPULAR POETRY.*

IT is agreeably significant of the spread of higher education among women, that the efforts made of late years to remove the stigma of indifference which attaches to English scholarship, so far as modern Greek literature is concerned, have almost entirely been confined to that sex. It is not long since we noticed Miss Macpherson's volume of spirited translations, and already two other ladies, Miss Garnett and Mrs. Edmonds, have come forward to swell the scanty numbers of those students who hold, with the Germans and French, that both profit and pleasure are to be gained from the study of Greek as a living, and not merely a dead tongue. Insomuch, however, as Mr. Stuart G-lennie, besides originally suggesting to Miss Garnett that she should undertake these translations, is further responsible for their selection, classification, revision, and editing, as well as for the political, linguistic, philosophic, and historical dis- quisitions by which they are preceded, it is to him, rather than to Miss Garnett (except so far as the fidelity of the translations

• Greek Fo/1.-Sanos. Translated by Lucy M. Garnett. With Introductions, dce , by J. Stuart Glennie. London : Elliot Stock.—Greek Laps. Translated by E. M. Edmond& London: Trtibner.

is concerned), that the critic is primarily bound to address himself. We are obliged, therefore, at the very outset to express our conviction that the claims advanced by the editor, and the aggressive attitude he has assumed throughout, are calculated to prejudice, if not to destroy, the chances of popularity which these translations might have achieved had they been un- encumbered by the incubus of inflated rhetoric, fruitless specu- lation, and anti-Christian polemic. Here is a book which does not claim to be an addition to contemporary belles lettres, but rather claims to promote Philhellenisin among Englishmen, and so, through the means of a national resurrection, to contribute to the economic reconstruction of the civilised world," because," to quote from Mr. Glennie's preface, "general Economic Re- construction there cannot be without general Intellectual Progress : and because the Greeks —admirably Pagan still, as their Folk-songs prove—are beyond all other East-European peoples, imbued with that spirit of synthetic Intuition and sceptic Cariosity which alone emancipates from enslaving Superstition." The material advantages of having "so consider- able a commercial and naval ally in the Mediterranean "—what- ever a commercial ally may mean—" as a reconstituted Greece might be," are also dwelt upon; and finally, as a sentimental ground, is adduced the consideration that, accepting the ethnical affinity of the Kelts of Scotland and the Albanians, accepting also the belief that the great English-speaking race is not an Anglo-Saxon but an Anglo-Keltic stock, "we therefore, as such a Race, in aiding the Greeks aid the representatives of the near, if not nearest, Kinsmen of our Keltic ancestors." With all respect for Mr. Glennie, we beg to observe that with equal justice Mr. Parnell might call upon Parliament to assist the Bulgarians because of their blood-relationship with "our Keltic

ancestors" the Fir-Bolgs. It is quite true that the Albanians wear the kilt ; but how does Mr. Glennie account for the mysterious disappearance of the bagpipes, no mention of which occurs in these folk-songs, although they have been chosen so as to give as complete a view as possible of all the various phases of Greek folk-life in Albania, Thessaly, and Macedonia? -Where politics for a brief interval give room to philology, we are quite at one with Mr. Glennie. He points out that modern Greek, of which the patois in which these songs are written is a rustic dialect, "differs less in its grammatical forms from that of the Homeric rhapsodists of nearly three millenniums ago, than the language of an educated contemporary Englishman differs from that of Chaucer, only half a millennium ago." But his admission of the broad dis- tinction between the Greek of these folk-songs and the literary Greek of Athens, is significant of the difficulties which have beset Miss Garnett. She has, it is true, had the assistance of Mr. Glennie, who has travelled widely throughout Epirus, and in particular made a prolonged stay at Salonica ; and she admits her obligations to Mr. Ralli, a Chiot gentleman, for the elucida- tion of "many obscure and difficult words and phrases." It may be that a Chiot is not fully an fait with the peculiarities of Epirote patois, any more than a Channel Islander can fully grapple with the idiom of the Lancashire or Yorkshire dialects. Anyhow the fact remains—as any one who takes the trouble to compare her renderings conscientiously with the originals in Passow, Oeconomides, or Aravandinos, can ascertain for himself—that the translator has blundered often and heavily.

The anti-Christian key-note, already struck in the pre- face, is harped upon with great persistency in the essay on "The Survival of Paganism," which follows. We do not quarrel with Mr. Glennie for his unbelief, but we do quarrel with him for his inability to abstain from reviling the belief of others, and for his gratuitous sneers at what most unbelievers revere. As to the fact of the survival of pagan folk-beliefs in these districts, there can be no question, and the sober statements of Mr. Tozer furnish Mr. Glennie with a speci- men of impartiality which he would have done well to imitate, but which it would be vain to expect in the author of Pilgrim Memories. The three essential and sur- viving characteristics of paganism, according to Mr. Glennie, are,—(l), the feeling of oneness with Nature, and a consequent direct and indirect personalising of its phenomena ; (2), uncon- sciousness of sin in sexual love, and non-belief in a super- natural state of rewards and punishments ; (3), the feeling of family kinship and of patriotic devotion to the fatherland. The first is illustrated by a great number of curious and in- teresting passages in the folk-songs. The second is dealt with by Mr. Glennie more suo, and with an embellishment of unsavoury

anecdote. But bow can the third be fairly claimed as a special privilege of paganism as opposed to Christianity ? Was it not discovered in races unemancipated from the bonds of " Jahvehism ?" Is it incompatible with a belief in "that monstrous hybrid, the Semitic Christian Trinity," or "the Christian Pan P "—for these are Mr. Glennie's elegant modes of alluding to the supreme objects of Christian veneration.

It is with a certain relief that we turn from the sounding periods of Mr. Glenuie's unmannerly introduction to the translations themselves, though it must be confessed that the feelings thereby excited are not of unmixed admiration for the national traits which they reflect. Miss Garnett's renderings have, on the whole, been executed with commendable vigour and spirit, though her statement as to the fidelity with which they reproduce peculiarities of metre and rhythm is not always borne out by fact. Rhymed originals are not always rhymed in the translations, and vice send. Again, the translator's resolve not to consult other trans- lations, where they existed, bespeaks an independence which is out of place in a task of such difficulty as that which Miss Garnett has essayed. But before pointing out flaws, let us quote a favourable specimen of Miss Garnett's work in the shape of one of those neyriologia, or dirges, which extorted the admiration of Goethe by their elevated imagery :—

"DIRGE FOR A SON.

0 thou, my son, depnrtest now onto the Lower Regions And leav'at thy mother sorrowful, heartbroken, and despairing. Where shall I hide my pain for thee, how shall I throw it from me ? For, if I throw it on the road, the passers-by will take it, And should I hang it on the trees, the little birds would find it. Where shall I hide my bitter tears, my tears for thy departure? If on the black earth they should fall, the grass no more would flourish ; If they should in the river fall, they would dry up its sources ; If they should fall upon the sea, the vessels there would founder ; Bat if I lock them in my heart, I quickly shall rejoin thee."

The " Charonic " division is, to our mind, by far the most interesting in the collection. Very powerful is the conflict between the shepherd and Charon (p. 115), which reveals the curious notion that Charon took the soul out of the mouth of his victim. The struggle between Zahos and Charon is also the subject of a remarkably fine poem. Zahos rides down to Hades to see his friends in the Td71-015CCXY IMO 7.660 —loca senta situ— and there wrestles with Charon, who at first is dismayed at the advent of this bold intruder. Three times he throws Charon, but finally the latter prevails, and invites Zahos to recline in his tent, the tent-pegs of which are the hands of heroes, while the ropes are made of the twisted tresses of his maiden-victims. Another remarkable poem is "The Vampire" (6 Beepec:Xecsac or BpweAcvtac), which is evidently a variant of that legend which is encountered among so many European, and particularly Slav races, of the invocation of the dead by the living, a theme lately set by Dvorak with such effect in his Spectre's Bride. Another vampire-poem is that by Valaorites, built on the tales which gathered round the traitor Thanases Vayias, which is not very happily rendered by Miss Garnett, though with greater fidelity than is observed in the version given by Mrs. Edmonds, which shirks a good deal of the rather gruesome details of the piece. The so-called " Erotic " section of these folk-songs does not contain many striking poems. But the first of the " Domestic " division, that on the throning of the bride, contains some pretty thoughts; and the same remark applies to the pieces entitled "The Bride's Departure," and "The Absent Lover." In the latter, the bride entreats her husband to take her with him into foreign lands, on which he replies that she is a full- grown woman (is' EW elecipeloi claps-oi), and cannot hang on his saddle like a tuft or tassel, as she proposed to do. Moreover, wherever he went her beauty would attract the notice of Klepht, Turk, or Abbot. But as her hands were made of precious gold, and her bosom of silver, he would get a goldsmith to refine her, and make of her a silver cup, a cross, and a ring, to carry with him wherever he went (p. 161). Quite Homeric, too, in its simplicity is the poem in which the husband, returning after an absence of ten years, makes himself known to his wife at a well.

The Navecpial.eara, or lullabies, which are by no means easy to render intelligibly, are not the best specimens of Miss Garnett's

skill. The nursery-rhymes are better, because she has not attempted to put them into rhyme. More than one of these recall in their structure " The House that Jack Built;" while one from Parga is a good specimen of nonsense-verse :—

" Bps:, ApizEt zed mayi‘d,

Kr O zeorilec rupcievol(El"— which Miss Garnett has rendered well enough :—

" It rains, it rains, and soon 'twill freeze, And the parson smells of cheese,"—

though we must protest against the ineptitude of rendering iralri; "parson." Miss Garnett, however, is not consistent in this matter, and just as often converts the word into an English

form, papas. So, too, she renders pleya by" mother" and mano

in the same line. The " Poems of Married Life" do not give one a very favourable impression of the sanctity attaching to the

marriage-tie, as the mere titles will show. Thus, we have" The Priest's Wife" (who prefers the company of the pallikars to her domestic duties), "The Sale of the Wife," " Maroula the Divorced," "The Old Man's Wife" (a complaint of the results of a mariage de conreaanee)," The Murdered Husband," and "The Child-slayer."

As for the " Humouristic " (why not " Humorous " ?) songs, we can only express our entire accord with the opinion of Mr. Tozer as to the dearth of real humour in the folk-songs of Greece. There is some coarse fun in the ballad which relates the misfortunes of the Klepht who turned farmer ; and the lament of the shepherd after being robbed by the Klephts, is quaintly pathetic. There is also unconscious humour in the

late Klephtic ballad, given in the "Hellenic" section, at the close of the volume, entitled " Kapitan Basdekis," where the recreant Klepht, recounting his experiences to Hobart Pasha, is made to say, "Insurgents forty once were we, and had ten Dentate's- djides"—i.e , commanders of companies—which forcibly recalls the "four-and-twenty men and five-and-twenty pipers" of Bon

Gaultier. But the taste shown in making the selection is so very questionable, that, had we not received Miss Garnett's assurance of the responsibility of her editor, we should have been obliged to confine our strictures to a mere expression of amazement that a lady should have undertaken such a task. Does Mr. Glennie really think to promote Phdhellenisna by publishing such poems as that in which the speaker laments the twelve years' earnings spent in one night with a Bulgarian girl, and then adds :

" Give me, 0 Bulgar ! back my coin, And give me back toy sequins ? "

These verses, no doubt, strike Mr. Stuart Glennie as " admirably pagan," and he is prompted in a note to institute comparisons between them and Sappho's satire upon an intrigue of her brother Charaxas with a famous Thracian Hetaira, and to give details as to the life of the latter. For ourselves, we confess to being so un-

regenerate as to see in them nothing but an expression of avari"e, on the part of the "Aryan mind," more grotesquely sordid than the lowest of the "cerebrally inferior" race of Semites would stoop to own. How mercilessly the late author of La Grece conteraporaine would have mocked at this strange confession of the triumph of the spirit of greed !

From the so-called " Pashalic " division, one song is worth quoting, not for its intrinsic interest so much as for the illus- tration it affords of the editor's mode of commenting on the text. The "Night-school Song," given on p. 20-2, and which probably dates back to the time when education in the ver- nacular had to be carried on in secret, owing to the restrictive measures of the Turks, runs thus :—

" Little moon of mine so bright, As I walk now shed thy light On my way to school tonight: To learn my letters now I go, To learn to broider and to sew, And the things of God to know."

Upon the last line of which—r Eteat% Tee •rptiypara—Mr. Glennie remarks :—" That is to say, the old Aryan myths of a Trinity, a God-man and a Resurrection, instead of the uninythologic

monotheism adopted by the Turks." This intrusion of irrelevant and polemic commentary, to the exclusion of often much-needed historical explanation, is characteristic of the editor, and it is all the more unpardonable when we add that the information in question is almost invariably ready to hand in the collection of Aravandinos, from which the bulk of these poems are taken. Sometimes this information is calculated to strengthen the positions of Mr. Glennie—as when, in "The Miracle of St George," a Christian version of the legend of Perseus and Andromeda is pointed out—and it invariably adds to the better comprehension of the picture. Hence we hold that a spirit of Philliellenism is far more likely to be awakened by such a collection as that of Mrs Edmonds—in spite of the looseness and inaccuracy of her renderings—containing mainly the recitals of the gallant deeds of the oppressed during their struggles for

independence, with suitable biographical and historical notes, than by that of Miss Garnett, which lacks the requisite comment needed to bring them home to readers unversed in the episodes of those struggles. The absence of all explanatory comment upon the poems on the Klepht Vrykolakas and Despo of Liakata. —names surely not familiar to the general public—will serve as examples of the fairness of our complaint ; and let us add that the circumstances of the former's betrayal by a monk are not rendered more easy of comprehension by representing the collo- quial form of the Greek word ( vez;,u:.vog=ivoiftEpo;) in English as "the 'gnemenos." Here the need not only of notes, but of a glossary, begins to make itself felt. And while on the subject of omissions, it occurs to us to remark that stanzas and lines are left out without any indication of the fact, or adequate grounds for the practice —(see in particular the " Chelidonisma," p. 88, "Evthy mios Vlachavas," pp. 231-2, and " Moukhtar's Farewell to Phrosyne," p. 234). A considerable number of popular songs in Greece have as their hero "The Widow's Son "—(see, in this col- lection, pp. 77, 92, 114 177),—with whom Digenes is identified in more than one of the ballads which have him for their subject ; but no effort has been made on the part of editor or translator to furnish the reader with any clue to the origin of this mythical personage. We have felt obliged to allude to the inaccuracy of Miss Garnett's renderings, and a few specimens may be given to substantiate the truth of this charge. In the first poem of the collection, Hantseres is advised by the witch, as a means of procuring entrance to the Castle of EliOyenni, .tvpisou tppc-pcix,x, "Shave yourself like a Frank," i.e., remove your moustache. This Miss Garnett renders, "Take thee Frankish clothes." In the same poem, d.spic's ( = "wild beasts," is rendered" reapers," as though it had been drptureci. On p. 99, the title of a poem, &;b2i gi; 77i ereIrT vicOn, is rendered by an extra- ordinary blunder," Ode to the Seven Passions," as though vtirt4 had been i7r1-tL. On p. 118, in the description of the fight between Zahos and Charon, the former finally bids his antagonist let go his hold of his hair, adding, " xcti vrWeZ [=Us] I withstand thee no longer ;" whereas Miss Garnett turns it," Again I will stand up with thee," which the second half of the line, "do with me as thou pleasest," shows, if the grammar did not already show it, to be non- sense. On p 125, xogi ( = zopucpsi)," head," is confused with zpq0;, and translated "bosom." -Es.f.rs' i s4a Fani, brePTLGVE Tei 14.5-9La (p. 134),=" The maiden shook the apple-tree so that the apples fell," is translated, "Thou, maiden, art the apple-tree, and now let fall the apples,"—a mistake which has evidently arisen from the phonetic resemblance of i'vErs' and is' era' (=--- in. The lover in the ballad given on pp. 146-147 is made to say, "Now would the branches bud and bloom, but hoar-frost holds them prisoned," which represents the original closely enough ; but the second verse, "Now would I sit aud spin for thee, but my desire prevents me," is a most ludicrous misconception of the Greek," /Wu., s.'i7e'd cipy4L, xxi fe' 411,' 7:ogoc." Bat even thi3 is surpassed by the rendering, on p. 166, of T" AAEEGGY411,0 WaYin1/, "To Alexandria she has gone," as though Miss Garnett took a "peacock," to be a part of the verb zeived. Slumber, on p. 168, is bidden to wake a baby, where the Greek is ebrozoi,urag, "lull him to sleep." Lastly, on p. 234, in the poem relating to the capture of Gardiki, where Ali Pasha is described as greatly in- censed by the news of the prolonged resistance of this town, the line occurs .494.5r xcei crripyi.1[—crrbuiet] pz-ovyroupyri 1.4 TO StO Toe i.e.," writes and despatches orders [the Turkish bonyourouldou] with his own hand." Here the translator has rendered the passage, "And furious he with both hands writes, and sends abroad his mandates," evidently reading, Ti Bid roe zip: (=raw, roe xpi), as if it had been :Z.ho 'roe xiptee. The fore- going mis-renderings are very far from exhausting the list of Miss Garnett's shortcomings, but they will serve to illus- trate the absence of exact scholarship and the constant con- fusions which characterise her versions. At the same time, it is only her due to notice that in one or two passages her ex- planations are a distinct improvement upon those given in Passow's indices. The cause of the masons' joy at the fall of the bridge of Arta, 7tori YlVopmciTa, (i.e. giornata), is much more satisfactorily turned by Miss Garnett, on p. 82, "Because they were on daily wages," than by Passow, " Quod habent festnm diem." So, again, for rfi,actso Passow gives tecturn (as though it had been rtsi3issi), which makes nonsense in the nursery-rhyme rendered on p. 172. Here " wasp " answers the needs of the situation well enough, though, strictly speaking, tabanus is a horsefly or gadfly.

Apart from the difficulties of the dialect, there are peculiar features about this ballad-poetry of modern Greece which render the task of a translator unusually arduous. The ever- lasting trochaic tetrameter catalectic metre, the almost in- variable mould in which these songs are cast, degenerates into somewhat of a jingle in English, where the picturesque and often really beautiful imagery of the original no longer admits of verbal reproduction. Such sounding and melodious compound-words as

atPirrovir.carcKc.), crrinciSozaTtylca, ImixoxecpciCEI, 711:p0X0143E1071gGi, ;Xchatiyia,cci9o, teetweepoxrialtieo,—componnds most common in this patois, have a charm all their own which is alien to the genius of our tongue. Another characteristic of the Epirote patois is the repetition of a word—e.g., elyea' c'eyeeWice, einhoVc riAteoV5,xsci,iceohj, yiceloi woad—which is a figure almost certainly borrowed from the Turkish, and in conflict with the "classical spirit and sentiment" which, according to Mr. Glennie, pervades the districts from which these songs are taken. With this assertion, so far as it relates to style, we profess ourselves absolutely unable to agree. Nothing could be more rough- hewn, abrupt, and dgcousu, than the Klephtic ballads as a whole, and it is curious to observe that the most coherent pieces of narrative are to be found in the Christian section ; while of the more modern poems, by far the most powerful and vivid is that by Valaorites on the Monk Samuel, the key-note of which is a spirit of fanatic Christianity. This fine poem, disfigured by occasional extravagances of description and a crude treatment of the miraculous, has inspired Miss Garnett with her best effort, and we would especially commend her rendering of the heroic monk's prayer, in which he makes a touching petition that the features of his beloved Souli may be recalled in the heavenly mansion to which he is so soon to depart, and that he may be allowed to keep the keys of the fortress he had so gallantly defended. And yet we cannot escape the conviction that Miss Garnett's collection is doomed by its form neither to take the fancy of the many, nor to satisfy the demands of the few. Scholars familiar with the volumes of Passow, Fanriel, Legrand, and Kind, will resent its slipshod scholarship and the absence of the original Greek ; while the average reader will be repelled by Mr. Glennie's polysyllabic periods, his aggressive irreligion, and his frequent errors of taste.