PREFACE.

THE object of this little book is to supply a want in English literature. There is nothing in our language on the subject, except the work of Mrs. Robinson (Talvj), published in 1850, at New York, which is now out of date. Moreover, it hardly had any circulation in England, and to the majority of Englishmen, even philologists, is absolutely unknown. It was never reprinted in this country. The materials for my compilation have not been taken at second hand, but in all cases from original authorities. It may be as well to state this, as, with a few remarkable exceptions which need not be here specified, most of the books published in this country on the Slavs are mere adaptations from the French and German. I have found the Russian work of MM. Pipin and Spasovich, "History of Slavonic Literatures" (Istoria Slavianskikh Literatour) of very great help, and have used it extensively. Very valuable also have been the articles in the "Archiv für Slavische Philologie," edited by Professor Jagic, and the "Journal" of the Bohemian Museum (Casopis Ceského Musea)—a mine of Slavonic lore. Other

iv

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

works consulted will be found mentioned in the foot-
notes. An attempt has been made to spell the proper
names of those Slavonic nations which use the Cyrillic
alphabet on a fixed and accurate plan. Generally they
are treated among us as a mere jargon and written at
random: thus, the same person will frequently be
found writing Gortchakoff and Woronzow, though
the termination is identical in both. The names of
those Slavonic peoples who use the Latin alphabet
have, of course, retained their original orthography,
just as no one would think of altering the spelling of
a French word to suit English pronunciation. Un-
fortunately, the printers in this country have not in
every case the requisite diacritical marks, but I have
still thought it better not to tamper with the words,
and have occasionally added a foot-note. It is to be
hoped that, in time, the gross misspellings of Slavonic
words will disappear from our maps.

My little book will have amply fulfilled its purpose,
if it serve as a humble guide to those who wish to
pursue further the study of these languages, so
interesting to the philologist, but, strange to say, so
ignored among us.

W. R. MORFILL.

OXFORD.

# CONTENTS.

## CHAPTER I.

### CLASSIFICATION OF THE SLAVONIC RACES.

* The Slavs in Greece—The Slavonic Languages—The Bulgarian Language—The Serbs in Hungary—The Lithuanians and Letts—The Ursprache of the Slavonic People—Foreign elements in the Russian Language—The stages of Palæoslavonic—The Revision of the Church Books—The Cyrillic and Glagolitic Alphabets—Had the Slavs any runes? ... ... ... Page I

## CHAPTER II.

### THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES.

* The Russians—The Poles—The Bulgarians—The Serbs and Bohemians—The Wends—The Croats—The Scythians... ... ... ... ... ... 26

## CHAPTER III.

### EARLY RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

* The Błlini—The Bogatīri—Vladimir and his Drouzhina—The Lay of the Boyar—Ivan the Terrible—The

CONTENTS.

vii

## CHAPTER VI.

THE EARLY LITERATURE OF THE SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES.

Anonymus Presbyter Diocleus—Early Servian Codices
—The Code of Stephen Doushan—Andrew Kacic-
Miosic—The Servian Improvisatori—The Battle of
Kosóvo—Paul Orlovich—Marko Kralevich—A Bosnian
Idyl—The Dalmatian Poets—The Slovenish Language
—The Frisingian Manuscripts—Primus Truber—Juri
Dalmatin ... ... ... ... ... ... Page 145

## CHAPTER VII.

THE WESTERN BRANCH: EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

The Present State of the Polish Language—The Psalter of
Queen Margaret—The Bible of Queen Sophia—Gallus
and Kadlubek—The Reign of Casimir III.—Jan
Długosz—The Socini in Poland—Translations of the
Bible—Jan Kochanowski—The Idyls of Szymonowicz
—Peter Skarga—Stryjkowski ... ... ... ... 178

## CHAPTER VIII.

THE EARLY LITERATURE OF BOHEMIA.

Influences during the Earliest Period of Bohemian Civilisa-
tion—The Judgment of Libusa—The Königinhof
Manuscript—The Rose—The “Mater Verborum”—
Premysl—The Satires on the Trades—Early Transla-
tions of the Bible—“The Weaver” —Thomas Stitny
—Jan Hus—Poděbrad and the Pope—Bohemian Lite-
rature at the Renaissance—Quarrel between Ferdi-
nand I. and the Citizens — Lomnicky—Wenceslaus
Vratislav—The Slovaks ... ... ... ...

203

# EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE

## CHAPTER I.

### THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

BEFORE I treat of Early Slavonic Literature under the various heads into which I propose to divide it, my readers will, no doubt, be glad to have a list of the Slavonic peoples and their languages, as at present existing in Europe. To trace the early history of the Slavs would be out of place here, and the student must be referred to the useful book of the Rev. G. F. Maclear on "The Slavs," published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The great source of our knowledge on the subject of their ethnology and early history is still the monumental work of Schafarik, originally published in Bohemian, but made more familiar to scholars by a German translation. I shall take my statistics from those lately furnished in Russian by Boudilovich, as an accompaniment to his valuable ethnological map.¹

¹ "Statisticheskia Tablitzl." St. Petersburg, 1875.

B

2

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

EASTERN DIVISION.

I. Russians.

(a) The Great Russians (Velikorousskie), occupying the governments round Moscow, and thence scattered in the north to Novgorod and Vologda, on the south to Kiev and Vorónezh, on the east to Penza, Simbirsk and Viatka, and on the west to the Baltic provinces. They amount to about 40,000,000.

(b) The Little-Russians (Malorossiane). These including the Rousines or Rousniaks in Galicia, the Boiki and Gouzouli, in Bukovina amount to 16,370,000.

(c) The White Russians, inhabiting the western governments, amounting to 4,000,000.

II. Bulgarians, including those in Russia, Austria, Roumania, the Principality, the temporary expedient called Eastern Roumelia, and those still left under the government of Turkey, 5,123,592.

III. The Serbo-Croats, including those of the Principality, the Black Mountain (Montenegro), the southern part of Austria and a few in the south of Russia, 5,940,539.

Under this head may also be classed the Slovenes, including those in the provinces of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, amounting to 1,287,000.

WESTERN DIVISION.

I. Poles, shared between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, 9,492,162 under which head may be included the small population of the Kashoubes, 111,416.

II. The Cechs and Moravians, 4,815,154, under

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

3

which head may also be included the Slovaks,
2,223,820.

III. The Lusatian Wends, Upper and Lower, partly in Saxony and partly in Prussia. Of the Upper there are 96,000, of the Lower 40,000.

It is acknowledged by all those who are conversant with the subject, that the Slavs may be traced in many other countries. Thus they have left their names marked on all the north-eastern coast of Germany, Rostock, Berlin, Potsdam, Zerbst, and many others being of Slavonic origin; in fact, Pomerania and Mecklenburg are thickly sprinkled with this nomenclature.¹ Traces of them may be found in Europe as far west as Utrecht, which was originally called Wiltaburg. I cannot, however, agree with Schafarik when he connects our English Wiltshire with the Slavonic tribe of the Wilzen—the derivation obviously being from Wilton, the town on the river Wily.

The Slavonic population in Greece has formed the subject of a keen dispute, and although Falmerayer may have pushed his opinions too far, yet some of them have never been overthrown, and the attempt to explain away the ἐσθλαβώθη πᾶσα ἡ χωρὰ of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, by M. Sathas and others, cannot be considered successful. The whole of Greece, especially the Morea, abounds with Slavonic names, which are now being gradually replaced by others taken from classical times. The Slavonic elements in the Neo-Greek language have

¹ See P. Kühnel, "Die Slavischen Ortsnamen in Mecklenburg-Strelitz." 1881.

B 2

6

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

The Russian language is hemmed in on the west by Polish, Magyar, and Roumanian, on the south by Little Russian, and on the east by Finnish and Tatar dialects, and on the north by Lithuanian and Ugro-Finnish dialects including Esthonian.

The Siberian dialect is spoken by the colonists who have settled in that vast tract of Northern Asia, since it was discovered by Yermak in the time of Ivan the Terrible. There are other less important dialects than those specified, but it would be impossible to enumerate them in a small work like the present. They will be found discussed in the "Opît Oblastnago Velikorousskago Slovara" (Attempt at a Provincial Dictionary of the Great Russian Language), published at St. Petersburg in 1852. The Little Russian is spoken in all the southern governments of Russia. It is called Red Russian as current in Galicia and Bukovina. There is also a thin streak of Little Russian population in the kingdom of Hungary, north of the Carpathians. White Russian, one of the dialects most neglected by philologists, is spoken chiefly in the governments of Mohilev, Minsk, Vitepsk, and Grodno.

Bulgarian covers the ground originally occupied by the ancient Mœsia, Thrace, and Macedonia: it is bounded on the north by Rouman, from which it is separated by the Danube, on the west by Servian, south-west by Albanian, and south by Greek, which begins to prevail from a line drawn from Saloniki (the ancient Thessalonica) to Adrianople. Its area is dotted by small Turkish colonies, and here and there

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

7

a considerable admixture of Greeks. The Balkans
separate the territory of Bulgaria into two portions,
which, as a result of the Berlin Congress, constitute
the Principality of Bulgaria and the autonomous
territory of East Roumelia, soon, let us hope, to be
united like Moldavia and Wallachia, formerly so
absurdly separated in consequence of a timid and
ungenerous policy. The modern Bulgarian language
shows Slavonic in a very corrupted form. A great
many Turkish words have been incorporated, which
can very easily be detected. The wonder is, that
after so many years of oppression the language was
not altogether stamped out. We get fearful pictures
of the sufferings of this unfortunate people from
the travellers of last century. Take the account
given by Edward Clarke, for instance, who visited
European Turkey at the close of that period. The
modern Bulgarian has taken the Slavonic demonstra-
tive pronoun for an article, which is placed at the
end of words, as in Rouman, Albanian, and the
Scandinavian languages. The cases are very defec-
tive, the genitive being supplied by a preposition,
so that the language is in a very advanced stage
from synthesis to analysis. There is also (as in
modern Greek) no regular form of the infinitive,
which is expressed by a periphrasis. Till recently,
the appliances for learning Bulgarian were very
meagre. In 1852, the brothers Tzankov published
a grammar at Vienna, which was useful at the time,
but laboured under considerable defects. Latin letters
are employed, and the orthography is of the most

8

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

confused nature. A dictionary (Bulgarian-French) has since been published by Bogorov, and there is a prospect of the language being scientifically treated, in proof of which I might appeal to some excellent papers which have appeared in the "Archiv," edited by Professor Jagic, already mentioned. Thus it is shown, that in the Bulgarian dialects the nouns are much more fully inflected, and traces are found of the nasals, which existed in Old Slavonic, but are almost lost in the modern forms with the exception of Polish and the Kashoubish dialect. The geographical extent of the territory over which Serbo-Croatian and its dialects, and Slovenish and its dialects, are spoken, has already been specified. The influx of Serbs into the kingdom of Hungary dates from a time posterior to the battle of Kosovo (15th June, 1389), in which they lost their independence, and of which I shall shortly speak more at length. The Turks made themselves masters of the right bank of the Danube, and the Serbs became tributary to them, their tzar changing his title into the more modest one of despot. Immediately an immigration began into the adjoining Christian countries. It is to this period that we must assign the Servian churches and monasteries on the left bank of the Danube. In 1481, the Serbian chieftain, Vouk Brankovich, brought 50,000 Serbs with him, who were established in the environs of Temesvar. In the time of the Emperor Leopold of Germany, about 35,000 or 40,000 families, or zadrougas, came. These zadrougas are not families in our sense of the word, consisting of a father, mother,

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

9

and children, but communities of families, according
to the patriarchal custom existing among the Slavs,
and such as they have remained to the present day
on the military frontiers.¹ The number of those who
emigrated at that time would therefore amount to
something like 400,000 or 500,000 persons. Others
also came in 1738 and 1788. These Serbs have
kept their religion and language. All attempts to
Magyarise them have failed, and they are looked
upon with a very jealous eye by the Hungarian
Government. The only one of the Slovenish dialects
which demands any special notice is the Rezanian.
It may be said to have been discovered by Professor
Baudoin de Courtenay. At all events, he was the
first person who made any critical study of it. The
Rezani are in Venetian territory and number 27,000
according to Boudilovich. They live in the north-
eastern corner of the Italian frontier, in two valleys
of the Julian Alps. The dialect, Ugro-Slovenish
marked c,
although it has been but little employed
in books, is interesting, because it shows some con-
nexion with Slovakish, and is thus a link between
the eastern and western branches of the Slavonic
languages.

Of the remaining dialects only one seems to demand
any special notice—viz., Kashoubish, spoken by about
200,000 persons (according to Hilferding: some,
however, make the number much less) in the neigh-
bourhood of Danzig. This dialect of Polish presents

¹ See "Revue des Deux Mondes," 1876, vol. iv., p. 832.

10

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

some very interesting variations. According to Dr. Cenova ("Die Kassubisch-Slovinishe Sprache," p. 79), the word Kashoub is a nickname, their proper appellation being Slovintzi. The derivation of the word has not been settled. Schafarik connects it with a word meaning a goat.

A few remarks may be here introduced on the Lithuanian and Lettish languages, which stand in close relationship to the Slavonic, and have been so politically mixed up with them. According to a recent calculation, there are 1,900,000 Lithuanians in Russia (including the Samogitians, or Zhmudes). There are also 1,100,000 Letts. The rest of the Lithuanians, numbering 146,312, are in Eastern Prussia, commencing not far from Königsberg, and extending along the shores of the Curisches Haff.¹ The language is now fast dying out, and in a few years will be extinct. Its literature is exceedingly scanty, consisting of a few songs, and some poems on rustic life and the seasons, composed by a native clergyman, named Donalitius, in the latter part of last century. These have been carefully edited by Rhesa, Schleicher, and Nesselmann. Schleicher and Kurschat, a native Lithuanian, have written excellent grammars, and thus, before the language becomes extinct as a living tongue, it will be preserved for philological purposes. There is also a Lithuanian society which labours to preserve the songs, the proverbs, and the folk-lore of this interesting people.

¹ See the excellent map prefixed to the Lithuanian grammar of Kurschat.

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

II

The Lettish language, spoken in the neighbourhood
of Riga and Mittau, exhibits a more advanced stage
of Lithuanian, and has incorporated Finnish elements.
There is a collection of Lettish songs, with a Russian
translation, published by Sprogis at Vilna in 1868.
Some of the old Lithuanian and Lettish catechisms
have been edited by Bezzenberger. Of the Old
Prussian, a language very closely connected with
Lithuanian, which died out in the sixteenth century,
a few fragments have been preserved, viz., a transla-
tion of Luther's Catechism and a few vocabularies.
Some of these were printed in the very curious
work of Hartknoch, "Alt-und Neues Preussen,"
1684, and a complete list of all the known words
has been published in the "Thesaurus" of Nessel-
mann. They are of primary importance to the
student of comparative philology. These languages,
as I have previously said, bear, of all other mem-
bers of the Indo-European family, the closest affinity
to the Slavonic in their phonetics, grammatical
construction, and roots. The Slavonic languages,
however, far surpass them in the copiousness of the
verb.

The Lithuanian national songs are, on the whole,
colourless productions. They are chiefly interesting
on account of the pagan allusions, which seem to
show that they are of considerable antiquity. We
must remember, however, that the Lithuanians were
the last people in Europe to become Christianised;
and probably, when Jagiello was baptised in 1386,
and his people with him, in a summary fashion, the

12

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

influence of Christianity was but slight, for we find
them indulging in many heathen habits much later.
Thus Herberstein, in his travels in the sixteenth
century, tells us that he found them still worshipping
the lizard as their *lar familiaris*. As the Lithuanians,
as a people, have had no history, and, like the Finns,
have merely been receding in the historical period,
we do not find any tales of bold robbers or local
heroes, as in the Servian, Bulgarian, and Russian.¹
The love-poems are pretty. Altogether, this Lithu-
anian people has had a curious fate; their language
has never been anything more than a tongue of
peasants, and those who talk of the Lithuanian
principality must remember that the language of its
laws and court was White Russian.

In the past year, a collection of folk-songs and folk-
tales of the Lithuanians was published by Leskien and
Brugman. The valuable translations into German by
Brugman, appended to this work, will make it wel-
come to the many students of the growing science of
Comparative Mythology.

Having now enabled my readers to form, it is to
be hoped, a clear idea both of the geographical
extent of the Slavs and the classification of their
languages, I must say, before leaving this chapter, a
few words on the theories as to which of these lan-
guages most resembles the *Ursprache* of the Slavonic
people, as the Germans would term it. As this is a
work for general reading, I cannot go much into philo-

¹ In some of the later songs collected by Juszkewicz we have
allusions to Charles XII. of Sweden and Bonaparte.

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

13

logical detail. It will be enough to say that there are
three main theories.

(1) That it was Old Bulgarian. This opinion has
been held by Schleicher, Schafarik, J. Schmidt,
Leskien, and other eminent scholars.

(2) That it was Old Slovenish, *i.e.*, a language
spoken in the modern Styria, Carinthia, and the
southern parts of Hungary, as previously shown.
This opinion has been held by Miklosich and
Kopitar. A great supporter at the present time is
Professor Jagic. (See his "Specimina Linguæ Palæo-
slovenicæ. 1882.)

(3) The opinion of Geitler, a professor at Agram,
who finds that the Palæoslavonic is best represented
by the Russian. This view, however, had been pre-
viously held by some Russian scholars. That the
early stages of the languages show them much more
resembling each other is evident to all students. We
may truly say,—

> Facies non omnibus una
> Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum.

Baron Vratislav, of Mitrovic, whose travels form
such a pleasant monument of the Bohemian litera-
ture of the sixteenth century, tells us how easily he
made himself understood by the Bulgarians. If we
look at the old Polish we see how very different it is
from the modern forms of the language,—as, for
example, in the statute of Wislica belonging to the
year 1449, among other words we get the form *cirekwe*
(church), and not, as in modern Polish, *kosciol*, which

14

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

is derived from *castellum*.¹ The tendency to develop into dialectic variation caused by the low state of civilisation soon began, and all the modern Slavonic languages show signs of foreign influence. With regard to Russian we must, in the first place, remember that for upwards of two centuries (1237-1462) the country groaned under the yoke of the Tatars, and it is therefore only natural to expect that we should find some traces of their dominion. The Asiatic garb worn in Muscovy till the days of Peter the Great, the curious custom of the *pravezhe*, or public flagellation of defaulting debtors, the seclusion of women, and perhaps the use of the knout, may be traced to the presence of these truculent invaders; but when we turn to the actual Tatar words in the language we find them very few. Scherzl, in his "Comparative Grammar of the Slavonic and other kindred Languages," Kharkov, 1871, vol. i., p. 95, writes as follows:—"In the purity of its vocabulary, in its structure and syntax, the Russian language has preserved the Slavonic type better than the other members of the family. The Tatar words which have entered into it are limited to a small number, relating to clothes, precious stones, and articles of every-day use, such as *chemodan*, trunk; *kinzhal*, dagger; *bashmak*, a shoe; *boulat*, steel, and others." Little Russian has incorporated a great many Polish words, as Bulgarian and Servian have Turkish. Many of these, however, in the renovation of the languages caused

¹ Cited by Koulish, "Essays on Southern Russia" ("Zapiski o Youzhnoi Rousi"), St. Petersburg, 1857, vol. ii., p. 274.

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

15

by national independence are being expelled. Of
the western branch, Polish has always been greatly
under foreign influences. Many German words may
be found in the language. During the whole of the
seventeenth century the pedants and Jesuitic school-
masters with which the country teemed were intro-
ducing Latin words with Polish terminations, and
this mischievous practice was at its height in the days
of Sobieski. In the eighteenth century the language
suffered more than any other from the Gallomania
then rampant throughout Europe. Slovenish, Cech
and Lusatian-Wendish show also the influence of
their German neighbours. On the other hand,
German has borrowed some Slavonic words, as
*stieglitz*, a goldfinch; *grenze*, frontier; and, according
to some scholars, *pflug*, a plough.

The following few remarks on the characteristics
of the Slavonic languages, considered as a family, may
be interesting to the student. These languages are all
in a highly inflected state, having terminations to mark
the seven cases which they employ, and the genders.
The only exception to this is the Bulgarian, which has
lost its cases almost entirely; a few being kept in a
provincial dialect here and there as we might expect,
from the rule that the dialects of a language are truer
to its spirit than the literary form. Bulgarian has
also in its dialects preserved traces of the original
nasals which existed in the Palæoslavonic, and are
now only regularly found in Polish. But besides
these remains in Bulgarian there are also a few in
Slovenish, and even more in the words which Magyar

16

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

has borrowed from Slovenish at an early stage. The
article is altogether wanting in the Slavonic languages
(as in Latin). Owing to German influence the demon-
strative pronoun has been occasionally used for it in
Slovenish and Lusatian-Wendish, but it has been
rejected by purists. In these two last languages (the
least cultivated of all the Slavonic family) the dual
has been preserved both in the nouns and verbs.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of these Sla-
vonic languages is the extraordinary development of
the latter. Every verb undergoes a certain number
of aspects, which will remind the classical students
of the forms in *urio, sco, ito, &c.*, but what is but a
casual modification of a verb in other languages is
developed into a system in Slavonic, and minute
shades of meaning are thereby expressed which are
sometimes very difficult to translate.

The history of the Palæoslavonic or Church Lan-
guage, as it is often called, has been divided by the
eminent scholar Vostokov, the editor of the Ostromir
Codex, into three periods.

(1) From Cyril, or from the ninth century to the thirteenth century. This is the genuine ancient Slavonic, as appears from the manuscripts of that period.

(2) From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. This is the middle age of the Slavonic, as altered gradually by Russian copyists, and full of Russisms.

(3) From the sixteenth century to the present time. This comprises the modern Slavonic of the Church-books printed in Russia and other countries, especially

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

17

after the so-called improvement of those writings.
In the course of time, after passing through the hands
of so many ignorant copyists, the sacred books had
been corrupted, and in many places unintelligible. In
a learned paper in one of the earlier volumes of the
"Bohemian Magazine," frequently quoted in this
work, Schafarik has given some curious and amusing
examples of these perversions of the text. Absurd,
however, as they were we shall find afterwards that
men were willing to be burned alive in their defence.
The sufferings of the Dissenters in Russia who
adhered to the old forms, furnish some very gloomy
pages in the annals of the country. We find such
books as Yesipov's "People of the Old Time"
(Lioudi starago vicka) full of terrible stories. There
grew up a general feeling among the more intelligent
of the necessity of a revision, and in the time of Basil,
the father of Ivan the Terrible, Maximus, a learned
Greek monk, was sent from Mount Athos to Moscow
to correct the Church books according to the original
Greek. But he seems afterwards to have fallen into
disgrace, and the work was never accomplished,
although repeatedly resumed, till the time of Nicon,
in the reign of the Tzar Alexis, of whom I shall
speak more at large in the chapter on Russian lite-
rature. The study of the Old Slavonic, or Church
Language as it is styled, has been greatly facilitated
by the admirable Comparative Grammar and Lexicon
by Miklosich, and the "Handbuch der Altbulgaris-
chen Sprache" by Leskien. There is also a good
grammar by Schleicher.

C

18

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

A few words may here be added on the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. In what relation they stand to each other has always been a very difficult question. That one was moulded upon the other is evident, because the order of the letters is the same in both, and the difficulty of expressing the præiotised vowels is the same, perhaps the one great defect of these Slavonic systems of writings.

Among the various opinions held concerning these alphabets the following may be specified :—

(1) That the Cyrillian was invented by St. Cyril, and called after him; the chief part of the alphabet, as is evident, being derived from the Greek. The letters wanted to express sounds not existing in the Greek language, he took from Hebrew and Persian. The eminent Bohemian scholar Schafarik held that the Glagolitic alphabet was invented by Cyril and the Cyrillian by Methodius, although bearing the name of the former. His reasons for this opinion he has given in his work, "Ueber den Ursprung und die Heimath des Glagolitismus." For an account of the labours of these two Slavonic apostles, see Dr. Maclear's book previously cited. We must remember that Constantinople was a city frequented by the inhabitants of all nations, and Cyril and Methodius could easily have made acquaintance with some members of these nationalities there. Cyril also, as we are told by his biographers, travelled among the Khazars, who spoke Hebrew, and also lived for some time with the Caliphs of Bagdad.

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

19

The following account of the conversion of the Slavs is taken from the twentieth chapter of Nestor, and may, perhaps, prove interesting to my readers :—
"When the Slavonians and their princes Rostislav, Svatopolk and Kotzel had been baptised, they sent to the Emperor Michael saying: 'Our land has been baptised, but we have no teacher to preach to us and instruct us and translate the sacred books for us. We do not understand the Greek and Latin languages; one teaches us in one way and one in another, and therefore we do not understand the meaning of the writing and its force: therefore send us teachers who may translate the words of the books and their meaning.' When the Emperor Michael had heard this he called together all the philosophers and told them all the words of the Slavonic princes. And the philosophers said, 'There is a man in Thessalonica, by name Leo, whose sons are well acquainted with the Slavonic tongue; he has two clever sons who are philosophers.' When the emperor heard this he sent to Thessalonica to Leo for them, saying, 'Send to us thy sons, Methodius and Constantine, quickly.' And Leo having heard this sent them quickly. And they came to the emperor and he said to them, 'Lo! the Slavonic land has sent to me to ask for an instructor, who might translate the sacred writings for them, for this is what they desire.' And they allowed themselves to be persuaded by the emperor, and he sent them to the Slavonic land, to Rostislav, Svatopolk and Kotzel. And when they arrived there they began to devise a Slavonic alphabet, and translated an

C 2

20

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

Apostol¹ and the Gospel. And the Slavonians were glad that they heard the great things of God in their language. And afterwards they translated a Psalter, an Oktoich² and the other books. And some began to abuse the Slavonic books, saying, 'No other nations must have a writing of their own except the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, according to the writing of Pilate which he wrote on the cross of the Lord.' But when the Roman Pope heard this he blamed those who found fault with the Slavonic books, saying, 'Let the word of the Scriptures be fulfilled, that all languages should praise God'; and in another place, 'All shall declare in divers tongues the greatness of God as the Holy Spirit shall give them to utter.'³

(2) The Glagolitic was credited with having been invented by no less a person than St. Jerome. A more sober criticism, however, in modern times has dissipated this belief. Dobrovsky, the eminent Bohemian scholar, author of the "Institutiones Linguæ Slavicæ veteris Dialecti," assigned them to the thirteenth century, and, at a later period of his life, even the fourteenth. Kopitar, in his edition of the "Glagolitic Clozianus," endeavoured to raise the antiquity of the alphabet to the tenth century. But we must remember that this is a mere conjecture, since up to the present time no Glagolitic manuscript has been found with a date, whereas we know by a

¹ See p. 36.

² A book of hymns.

³ Bielowski's edition of "Nestor," p. 569, in Monumenta Poloniæ Historica.

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

21

note subjoined that the Ostromir Codex, written in Cyrillic, was begun October 21, 1056, and finished May 13, 1057.

The Glagolitic question is intimately bound up with the introduction of the Roman ritual into the Southern Slavonic countries. The Slavonic liturgy was forbidden by the Roman Catholic councils of 925, 1059, and 1064, in Dalmatia, but the service in the Slavonic language was preserved notwithstanding. At last, by a bull of Pope Innocent IV., in 1248, the Slavonic service, with the use of the Glagolitic alphabet, was permitted. It is in this bull that we see the Dalmatian Slavs assigning the invention of their alphabet to St. Jerome: "quod in Slavonia est litera specialis, quam illius terræ clerici se habere a beato Hieronymo asserentes eam observant in divinis officiis celebrandis." After this time, the use of the Glagolitic spread along the coast of Croatia, and a great part of Dalmatia. But the employment of Latin in the religious services accompanied it. In the fourteenth century it had extended itself to the Slavonic monastery founded by Charles IV. at Prague for the Croatian Benedictines.¹ Here the Glagolitic breviary was used for a hundred years, when it was changed for the service-books of the Utraquists. In 1483 was published, apparently at Venice, a Glagolitic breviary, and in the middle of the sixteenth century some books appeared in it at Tübingen, as I shall afterwards show when speaking of Slovenish literature. Nor was the

¹ See p. 35.

22

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

Glagolitic entirely confined to sacred subjects. In
this alphabet is written the Statute of Vinodol, so
called from a district in Croatia, one of the most
important monuments of South Slavonic law. This
manuscript is now preserved in the public library at
Agram. It has been printed *in extenso* in the valuable
collection of Slavonic Laws, published by Jirecek at
Prague in 1880. In the Glagolitic alphabet, according
to some scholars, the chronicle of the priest of Dio-
clea, mentioned in a subsequent chapter, was written.
A list of Glagolitic manuscripts is given in Schafarik's
"Geschichte der Südslawischen Literatur," but it is
not complete, as it does not include some which are
to be found in the Bodleian Library. It is to be
regretted that a Psalter of the year 1222, which was
seen by Levacovic in the seventeenth century, has
since disappeared. The manuscripts and printed
books in this curious character are, for the most
part, of a religious nature. There are, however, excep-
tions, as in the Glagolitic letters which passed between
the commanders of the Austrian and Turkish frontiers,
and are cited by Schafarik as still preserved in the
Lyceal-Bibliothek of Laibach, the head-quarters of
Slovenish philology. The Glagolitic writing is passing
more and more out of use. It is not a little curious
that in many manuscripts we find both Cyrillic and
Glagolitic writing, as in the Psalter of Bologna of the
twelfth century.

Besides these two alphabets there is another less
known, the so-called *boukvitza* (Servian, alphabet),
which prevailed almost exclusively in Bosnia. The

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

23

basis of this was apparently the Cyrillian, but approaching more to a cursive hand with some new forms, and mixed to a certain extent with Glagolitic letters. This has also been considered by some writers as an invention of the clergy to draw the people from the use of the Cyrillic liturgy. There are many documents preserved in this boukvitza, which seems to have been more frequently employed for mundane purposes than the Glagolitic; thus even collections of songs have been written in it. Perhaps the most important document which has come down in it is the Statute of Poljica, a place near Spalatro in Dalmatia. The manuscript dates from the second half of the fifteenth century. It has been included in Jirecek's work previously mentioned.

As regards the relative antiquity of the alphabets, some have asserted the priority of the Glagolitic on account of its having incorporated some of the (supposed) Slavonic runes. The view that the Slavs had runes is based upon a passage in the writings of the Monk Khrabr, who tells us that they used to draw figures and make cuttings to express their ideas. But no Slavonic runes can be distinctly shown to have existed, although wild theories have been propounded on the subject by such writers as Wolanski, Kollar, and Cybulski. Schleicher, in his "Formenlehre der Kirchenslawischen Sprache," held the Glagolitic alphabet to be later than the Cyrillic. On the other hand, Kopitar has attempted to show, in his "Glagolita Clozianus," that older linguistic forms

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

24

occur in the Glagolitic manuscripts than in the
Cyrillic.

The admirable remarks of Professor Jagich
("Archiv," iv. 2, 316) seem to sum up the question
very accurately. They may be briefly stated as fol-
lows :—

(1) The two alphabets are certainly connected.

(2) They are both as certainly derived from the
Greek, the Cyrillic, as would appear from the Uncial,
and the Glagolitic from the Cursive. Among the first
persons to suggest the latter of these views appear
to have been Professor Leskien and the Rev. Isaac
Taylor.

(3) On the other hand, the alphabets must have
been separated for a long time, as we see by their
letters having different numerical values.

The Cyrillian alphabet is used at the present time
by the Russians, the Serbs, with a few additional
letters, and the Bulgarians. From 1436 to 1828 this
alphabet was employed by the Roumans with cer-
tain modifications. In the latter year the learned
John Eliade modified their shape and diminished
their number. In 1847 the first Rouman news-
paper was printed in Latin letters, since which the
Cyrillian have given place to them. The Glagolitic
alphabet has a much more limited range, being only
employed by the Croats of Dalmatia in their religious
books. There are two forms of these letters, the
Bulgarian and the Croatian, the latter being bolder
and more square in their appearance. The first
Glagolitic book was a missal, printed in the year 1483.

THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES.

25

Before leaving the subject of Slavonic writing it
may be further remarked, that besides the allusion of
the Monk Khrabr, already mentioned, we have the
description given by Bishop Dittmar, of Merseburg,
of the City Riedegost, and its temple :—" In this
city is only a temple cleverly made of wood, supported
on the horns of different kinds of animals. Various
representations of gods and goddesses, wonderfully
sculptured to all appearance, ornament the walls
outside ; in the interior are figures of the gods, with
their names engraved on them, terribly arrayed in
helmets and breastplates, the chief of whom is called
Zuarisci, and is honoured and worshipped before the
rest by all nations."

Supposed Slavonic runes have been found on some
objects, as the so-called idols of the Obotrites, which,
however, have been proved to be forgeries, and some
stone figures, but none of them have been successfully
deciphered. The whole matter has been thoroughly
sifted by Nehring and Jagic in the "Archiv für
Slavische Philologie," and it may be as well to quote
their opinion, incisively expressed, that up to the
present time no genuine Slavonic runes have been
found.

26

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

CHAPTER II.

IN this chapter I propose to discuss some of the chief
explanations which have been attempted of the
Slavonic territorial names.

(1) Russian.—This name was formerly derived
from the Rhoxolani, but these have been shown by
Schafarik to have been a Medish tribe, and to have
had nothing to do with the Slavs. In the last century,
the derivation was first suggested from the Finnish
name of Sweden, Ruotsi, and Ruotsalainen, a Swede.
We must remember that the empire of Russia was
founded by three brothers, Rourik, Sineus, and
Trouvor, who came from Scandinavia, and for a long
time, as Professor Thomsen has shown, the Russians
and Slavonians were considered to be different races.
The names also admit of a Scandinavian explanation;
thus Ingar becomes Igor, and Helga, Olga. The
most celebrated passage relating to the difference
between the original Russians and the Slavonians
is the description of the waterfalls of the Dnieper
by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, where
the names are given in two languages, Slavonic
(Σκλαβινιστί) and Russian (Рωσιστί). But in a few

¹ Thomsen, "The Origin of the Russian State," Oxford, 1877.

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 27

generations the Scandinavian origin of the settlers
was forgotten. The grandson of Rourik, Sviatoslav,
has a purely Slavonic name, and Nestor speaks of
Slavonic and Russian as being identical. The
Finnish name, Ruotsi, Professor Thomsen supposes
to be itself a corruption of the first syllable of
the Swedish word *rothsmenn*, or *rothskarlar*, rowers
or seafarers. He considers the view that the word
Russ has anything to do with the Hebrew *Rosh
mentioned in Ezekiel xxxviii. 2, 3, and xxxix. 1,
untenable. In the old Slavonic writings, from the
twelfth to the sixteenth century, we always find
the country called Rous. The form Rossia was
introduced by the Greek revisers of the Russian
Church-books, and by the Byzantine writers.¹ It
is clearly formed on a classical model. Of late
years many attempts have been made by Ilovaïski,
Gedeonov, Zabielin, and others, to upset the theory
of the Scandinavian origin of the Russian empire,
but they cannot be considered to have succeeded.
The most important argument upon which those
rely who reject the Scandinavian theory, is the
number of geographical names in which the root
*rus*, or *rous*, occurs, especially in Pomerania and
the Isle of Rügen, in Lithuania, in White Russia,
and on the banks of the Dnieper. Ros is the
Lithuanian name of the river Niemen; and hence
the appellation given to the ancient Prussians—still
borne by the German occupiers of their country—

¹ Schafarik, "Slawische Alterthümer," ii. 98.

28

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

viz., *Po-rousi*, or people dwelling on the banks of the Rous.¹ M. Reclus calls attention to the fact that the Arabian authors, at the end of the ninth and commencement of the tenth century, speak of the Russians of their time as a Slavonic nation divided into three groups, that of Kouyaba (Kiev), that of the Slavs, or Sloveni of Novgorod, and the family of Artsanîa, supposed to be identical with the inhabitants of the country of Razan, on the Oka, or the population of Rostov, in the government of Yaroslavl, not far from the Volga. If we weigh the testimony furnished by Byzantine, Arabian, and Jewish writers, and the results of the explorations of the Russian Kourganî, we must perforce acknowledge that at least at the close of the ninth century, there existed in the basin of the Dnieper, a Russian nation, tolerably compact, possessing certain industries and acquainted with the art of writing.²

The story of the three brothers, Rourik, Sineous, and Trouvor, who were invited by the citizens of Novgorod, has a very legendary air. Concerning the foundation of this town, we know nothing; its origin is lost in remote antiquity. Some writers have supposed that a large Finnish settlement existed on its site. Karamzin, however, does not think that it was a celebrated city before the time of Rourik. It is natural to suppose that there would be consider-

¹ Reclus, v., 302.

² A valuable collection of passages is given in the following work—Von Hammer, "Sur les Origines Russes, extraits de Manuscrits Orientaux," St. Petersburg, 1825.

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 29

able intercourse between the inhabitants of the north
coast of Russia and the Norsemen. Oustrialov
holds that some of the latter went to Byzantium
through Russia, for we know that the Greek em-
perors had a body-guard of Varangians. But how
did these brothers first come into the country? Were
they invited, or did they make a piratical invasion?
The national vanity of the Russian historians has led
them to consider that these strangers were invited.
The whole story bears a very suspicious resemblance
to our own legend of Hengist and Horsa, and pro-
bably ought to be put upon the same footing. Ac-
cording to one of these accounts, they were sum-
moned by Gostomîsl, a leading citizen of Novgorod.
Karamzin thinks the whole story of this Gostomîsl
very dubious. There is no mention of him in the
chronicle of Nestor, or in the Stepennaïa Kniga of
which I shall speak shortly. According to another
legend, Rourik was the son of the Swedish king
Ludbrat and his queen Oumila, the daughter of
Gostomîsl, and was born at Upsala in 830. From
all these stories we seem to learn one thing, viz.,
that a successful Scandinavian invasion occurred in
the North of Russia. The very names of the persons
introduced into the story, such as Gostomîsl, seem
to show that it is a myth.¹ The three brethren, we
are told, finally settled in the country,—Rourik at
Ladoga, where the river Volkhov flows into the lake;
Sineous at Bieloe ozero (white lake), in the territory

¹ Does it mean, one who cares for guests, hospitable?

30 EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

of a Finnish tribe; and Trouvor at Izborsk, on Lake Peipous.

(2) The Poles.—The first authentic date of Polish history is the year 963, when a certain prince, Mieszko, was subjugated, and compelled to pay tribute to the German emperor, Otho I. Schafarik (“Slawische Alterthümer,” i., 205) sees their name in the Bulanes of the geographer Ptolemy (floruit cir. 161), although there is another reading, Sulanes. The name seems to connect itself with the Slavonic, pole, a field, and thus would signify the dwellers on the plain, cf., such names as Champagne. Jordanes (in the sixth century A.D.) mentions Slavs as inhabiting the banks of the Vistula, but with no definite nomenclature. It was probably about the sixth, or perhaps seventh century, that a people called the Lekhs settled near the above-mentioned river. This is certainly the oldest name which can be assigned to the Poles. The attempt of Schafarik to connect it with the Polish word szlachta, meaning nobility, cannot be considered successful; the latter word has been derived with greater show of probability from the German word, Geschlecht.¹ By the tenth century the name of Lekh was beginning to grow uncommon, and was gradually becoming superseded by the appellation of Poliani, or inhabitants of the plains. Nestor, however, knows both names, and distinguishes between two branches of the Poliane, viz., Poliane Liakhove on the Vistula, and Poliane

¹ Pîpin and Spasovich, 457.

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 31

Rousove on the Dnieper. When we have the first glimmer of light thrown upon the Poles as distinguished from the other Slavs, we find them broken up into different tribes, each under the rule of its chief. Dlugosz, their early chronicler previously mentioned, has drawn a pleasing picture of their primitive happiness, but it can only be looked upon as a rhetorical composition. He speaks of their having no riches, and arousing no jealousy or hatred among their neighbours; of their implicit obedience to the wishes of their chiefs, which had all the force of statutes; of their Arcadian simplicity and happiness.

(3) The Bulgarians.—Already at the commencement of the third century A.D. we find Slavs settled between the Danube and the Balkan. A constant immigration was going on till the middle of the seventh century, as these hordes were pushed further southwards by new invaders from the East. In 681 the Slavonic settlers fell under the power of a tribe of Bulgarians, a Ugro-Finnish race, if we follow the opinion of Schafarik, Drinov, and the best authorities. The origin of the Bulgarians is one of the vexed questions of ethnology. Some have made them Tatars; Raich, the Serb, held them to have been Slavs, and this view has lately been resuscitated by Professor Ilovaïski, the Russian historian, who seems to take special delight in breaking a lance against all the orthodox and well-grounded decisions of Slavistic. Kerstovich, a native Bulgarian writer, makes them also to have been Slavonians, but he puts the Huns

3² EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

under the same head, and thus produces a great confusion of ethnology. The etymology of this name, Bulgarians, Bolgare, has not yet been satisfactorily explained. The theory which would connect it with the Volga is exploded. The original forms of the name, Burgari, Borgian, Wurgari, &c., show its analogy with forms like Onuguri, Uturguri, Kutriguri, and the appellations of other tribes. We thus see that the elements of the composition of the word are Bul and gari.¹ History tells us that Koubrat, a Bulgarian prince, shook off the yoke of the Avars, and that on his death his possessions were divided among his five sons. The eldest remained in the ancient settlement on the Volga, where the ruins of their former capital, Bolgari, are still pointed out to travellers. The third son, named Asparoukh, crossed the Dniester and the Dnieper, and first settled in a place called Onklos, a word in which Schafarik sees the old Slavonic ongl, angulus, between the Transylvanian Alps and the Danube.² From this place the Bulgarians pushed further south, as previously mentioned, till they reached the localities which they have ever since occupied, where they became mixed with the original Slavonic settlers. Drinov compares this fusion and importation of a new nomenclature to the mixture of the German Franks and the Gauls and the adoption by a branch of the Slavonians of the Finnish name

¹ Schafarik, "Slawische Alterthümer," ii., 169.

² See Professor Drinov's "Settlement of the Balkan Peninsula by the Slavs" ("Zaselenie balkanskago poluostrova Slavyanami," Moscow, 1873).

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 33

of their conquerors, whence the appellation Russian,
as previously mentioned.

(4) The Serbs.--Somewhere about the beginning
of the seventh century we find the Serbs settling,
with the consent of the Emperor Heraclios, in what
had been the ancient Mœsia. Our chief authority for
their migrations is the Emperor Constantine Porphyro-
genitus, but his account has a very mythical air; and
we need not puzzle ourselves with too close an
accuracy about the heroes Klukas, Lobelos and
Chorbatos, nor the sisters Tuga and Buga. The
Serbs have, unlike the Russians and other Slavs,
kept their old name, for we know from the ancients
that Servi was one of the appellations which the Slavs
gave themselves, whereas they were called Wends by
their Teutonic neighbours. Procopius has quaintly
turned this into Σπόφοι, and informs us gravely that
they were so called because they lived σποράδην.
According to Schafarik this was originally the generic
name of the Slavs: we find it in Pliny, Serbi; in
Ptolemy, the geographer, Serbi and Sirbi. In Vibius
Sequester, a geographer who wrote in the sixth century
A.D., they are called Servecii or Servetii. The roots
of this word Schafarik finds in the Sanskrit su, to
produce, and thus makes the name equivalent to the
children. But this cannot be considered a very happy
conjecture.

(5) The Bohemians or Cechs.—It is a mere geogra-
phical expression to apply the Celto-Germanic name of
the country of the Boii (Boiiheim) to the Slavs who
occupied it afterwards. In the same way the English

D

34

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

are sometimes called Britons. The name Cech has
never been satisfactorily derived. Dobrovsky wished
to connect it with a word ceti, signifying to begin,
and thus would make the name imply the original
inhabitants. Schafarik, however, does not endorse
this etymology. The land now occupied by the
Cechs was, as previously mentioned, first held by
the Celtic Boii, and afterwards by the Teutonic
Marcomanni. The Cechs are supposed to have
arrived in the country between 451 and 495 A.D.

(6) Lusatian Wends or Sorbs.—The word Lusatia
(German, *Lausitz*) is derived from a Slavonic root,
signifying a low, marshy country.¹ The term Wend
applied to them by their German neighbours will be
explained a little further on.

(7) The names Slovaks and Slovenes are made
clear by their connexion with the word Slav, Slavonic,
of which I shall now speak.

The name Slav does not occur in any written
memorials before the time of Jordanes. He says :
“Quorum nomina licet nunc per varias familias et
loca mutentur principaliter tamen Sclavini et Antes
nominantur.” It is probably connected with the root
slovo, the word, which is related to the Greek κλύω,
and in some Polabish vocabularies we get the very
interesting form sliv'o, which is further supported by
the verb slit, used like the Greek κλυειν = to have a
reputation. The Slav thus comes to signify the
intelligibly speaking man, as opposed to the (seemingly)

¹ Lug, or luza. Cf. "A Sketch of Serbo-Lusatian History" (in Polish), by W. Bogusławski. St. Petersburg, 1861.

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 35

dumb man, *Niemetz*, which in modern Russian and all other Slavonic languages has come to mean simply, the Germans; they being the nearest Gentiles, so to speak, with whom the Russians came into contact; another application of the old line,—

> Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli.

The tendency to seek a self-laudatory origin for their national name has led some Slavonic scholars to identify the word with *slava*, glory. Under any circumstances this word and *slovo* are from the same root. The word *slave* has, however, acquired another meaning in the languages of Western Europe. The devastating wars of the Germans in early days,—of Charles the Great, Henry the Lion, and Albert the Bear,—so harried with fire and sword the territories of the unhappy Slavs, and uprooted their occupants, that the European markets were glutted with captive Slavs, who thus added another word to our modern vocabulary.

The Slavs have never applied the name Wends to themselves; this is the appellation which they have received from their German neighbours. Even now the Finn calls Russia *Wennalaiset*, or the land of the Wends. To this day the Lusatians are styled Wends, and the name Windish is frequently given by the Germans to what would be more correctly called the Slovenish language. The name is connected by Schafarik with a root, *wenda* (Russ. *voda*, Lat. *unda*), and thus would come to mean the people dwelling by the water, the shores of the Baltic being one of the earliest homes of the

D 2

36

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

Slavs. Tacitus talks of the nations of the Peucini, the Venedi, and the Fenni; and the Wendic mountains (τὰ οὐενεῖκα ὄρη) are mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy. The latter writer, who flourished about A.D. 161, and whose work formed a text-book even so late as the fifteenth century, has given us a list of rivers and tribes in European Sarmatia at considerable length. Let us remember that by Sarmatia the ancients signified all the country lying east of the Vistula and north of Dacia, thus including parts of Poland and Galicia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Western Russia. The Tanais was considered to form the boundary between Europe and Asia.

In Ptolemy the Baltic appears as part of the Northern Ocean, but he is acquainted with the Vistula, which he calls by its name. He tells us that Sarmatia is inhabited by very widely-scattered races, and that the Wenedæ are established along the whole of the Wendish Gulf (οἱ τε οὐενέαι πάρ' ὅλον τὸν οὐενεδικὸν κόλπον). The Winidæ are also mentioned by Jordanes.

(8) Croat, Chorwat, Hrvat.—Schafarik derives this word from the original name for the Carpathian mountains, Chrbet, which, like the word Alp, may be used to signify any mountain, as it literally means a ridge or backbone, and occurs also in Russian.¹ We must pay no attention to the mythical Chrobatos of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

¹ This explanation is also adopted by Professor Ljubic, "Survey of Croatian History" ("Pregled Hrvatske Poviesti"), Fiume, 1867, p. 6.

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 37

(9) Polabes, an extinct tribe, dwelling on the shores
of the Elbe (Laba), as described in chapter x. of this
work.

(10) Pomeranians, a Slavonic tribe, dwelling on
the shores of the Baltic (*Po* and *More*, the Sea).

(11) Bosnia, so called from the river Bosna. In
connexion with which the name Herzegovina may be
mentioned, which is a barbarism from the German
herzog. It was first used in the time of Stephen,
one of the Servian princes, who acknowledged him-
self the vassal of the German emperors.

Before concluding these brief remarks on the
origin of the nomenclature of the various Slavonic
races, I may mention that at the end of the second
volume of the invaluable "Slavonic Antiquities" of
Schafarik, extracts are given from all authors directly
or indirectly referring to the Slavs, from the time of
Herodotus, who is supposed, with considerable pro-
bability, to allude to them as the Budini and Neuri,
to the monk Khrabr, in the tenth or eleventh centuries.
The Father of History has but a scanty knowledge
of the north of Europe; of the Baltic he tells us
nothing, but he appears to have heard of the
lakes of Ladoga and Onega, as he describes the
Tanais as rising in a large lake. He has, how-
ever, in his fourth book given us a very lengthy
description of Scythia, especially the southern part,
for of the northern he had but a vague conception.
We know what different opinions have been held
about the travels of Herodotus; according to some
extreme views he had traversed all the regions he

38

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

describes; according to others, his own personal experience was but small, his narratives consisting mostly of tales drawn from merchants and the conductors of caravans, with whatever accumulation of gossip the traveller's love of the marvellous addressing an uncritical audience would add. Herodotus does not pretend to have been personally acquainted with all, or even the principal parts of Scythia; he had probably made a journey to Olbia on the Hypanis (Boug), and drawn his narrative from the garrulous and perhaps mendacious Greeks he met there.¹ Still we must be thankful for his curious, if fragmentary details.

I shall not discuss the question here as to whether the Scythians were a Mongolian or Indo-European race. The correct view would appear to be that the name was applied loosely to a *colluvies gentium*, and this is the only way in which we can explain the very divergent accounts given of them.

Two tribes have been identified with the Slavs with considerable probability by Schafarik,—namely, the Budini and Neuri; of the former we are told that they formed a very numerous and powerful nation; also that they had blue eyes and red hair (Bouδῖνοι δε ἔθρος ἐὸν μέγα καὶ πολλὸν γλαυκόν τε πᾶν ἰσχυρῶς ἐστὶ καὶ πύρρον). They had a city in their territory called Gelonus, built entirely of wood; this erection of wooden buildings is eminently character-

¹ Cf. Rawlinson's Herodotus, iii., 41. The site of Olbia can still be traced about twelve miles below Nikolaev. Mounds mark the site, and many coins have been found there.

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 39

istic of the Slavs, as may be seen in Russia at the
present day. In ancient times large parts of Moscow
were built of wood; hence the frequency of fires. Of
the same material the temples of the gods were also
constructed. The account given of the origin of this
town by Herodotus is very curious. He tells us that
the Geloni were anciently Greeks, who, being driven
from their factories along the coast, fled to the Budini
and took up their abode with them. The Budini,
however, and Geloni spoke different languages. Scha-
farik claims these Budini as a Slavonic race, and
thinks that the description of the country given
by the historian exactly corresponds to Volînia and
portions of White Russia. Besides Herodotus, the
Budini are mentioned by Pomponius Mela, Pliny,
Ammianus Marcellinus, and others. Ammianus has
a horrible story to tell us about them: "Post quos
Budini sunt et Geloni, perquam feri, qui detractis
peremptorum hostium cutibus indumenta sibi equisque
tegmina conficiunt, bellatrix gens." The whole of
this part of Russia is full of marshes, and the
northern portion of the country of a most unlovely
character. The word Budini, Schafarik connects with
a Slavonic root, meaning dwelling; it would be the
same as is found in Buda, the name of one of the
parts of Pesth. Concerning the Neuri, Herodotus
tells us that they were driven from their former quar-
ters by a plague of serpents, and came and dwelt
with the Budini. He further adds that they were
conjurors (γόητες), and that both the Scythians and
the Greeks who dwelt in Scythia asserted that every

40

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

Neurian once a year became a wolf during a few
days, and at the end of that time was restored to his
proper shape. He adds quaintly, "Though they say
this they do not persuade me; still they do say it,
and confirm their assertion with an oath." These
people are placed by Schafarik on the river Boug,
which traverses Podolia and empties itself into the
Black Sea; there even at the present day we have a
river named Nurev, and the surrounding country is
called Nurska. The word *Nur* is claimed by Scha-
farik as genuinely Slavonic, and signifying land. It is,
he says, so explained in the Dictionary of the Russian
Academy. Besides this argument based upon lan-
guage, he thinks that the Budini would not have re-
ceived them unless they could claim a community of
race. He also relies upon their superstition as an-
other proof; the Russians of those parts (Volînia and
White Russia) being much addicted to a belief in
wer-wolves, to which the legend seems to refer. This,
however, is a superstition widely spread throughout
Europe. Karamzin rationalises the story after a sin-
gular fashion; he considers that it arose from the fact
that during the winter the Neuri dressed themselves
in the skins of wolves; others, believing both the
Budini and Neuri to have been Finns, trace the
legend to the great reputation formerly enjoyed by
them as wizards. Thus we find that Ivan the Ter-
rible, in his last illness, sent for several witches from
Lapland that he might consult them. With refer-
ence to the serpents, some Slavonic scholars are
inclined to consider them as used figuratively. The

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 41

Old Slavonic mythology is full of stories about ser-
pents and dragons, as will shortly appear in my
chapter on Bulgarian literature.

The Slavonic element among the Scythians of
Herodotus has been well discussed by Dr. Kurd
de Schlözer.¹ He agrees with Schafarik, that
although the arrival of the Slavs in Europe was
later than that of the invasions of the other Indo-
European peoples, still by the time of Herodotus,
the fifth century before our era, all the tribes
known later under the name of Slavs had occupied
European territory. The departure from Asia and
arrival in Europe of a tribe so numerous would
have produced a great commotion among the neigh-
bouring peoples—a movement which certainly would
not have escaped the notice of the Greek and Roman
writers if it had happened at a period nearer to our
era. In the curious tale given by Herodotus (iv., 5,
6), he sees with much reason an allusion to the Slavs.
A hero named Targitaus has Jupiter for his father,
and the daughter of the river Borysthenes for his
mother. He had three children. Lipoxais, Arpoxais,
and Colaxais, the youngest of the three. In their
reign several golden implements fell from heaven,—a
plough with its yoke, an axe, and a vase. The eldest
of the brothers perceived them first, and approached
to pick them up, but as he came near, the gold took
fire and blazed. He, therefore, went his way, and the
second coming forward made the attempt, but the

¹ “Les Premiers Habitants de la Russie: Finnois, Slaves, Scythes, et Grecs.” Paris, 1846.

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

42

same thing happened again. The gold rejected both the eldest and the second brother. Last of all the youngest brother approached, and immediately the flames were extinguished; so he picked up the gold and carried it to his home. Then the two elder agreed together, and made the whole kingdom over to the youngest born.

Upon this Dr. Schlözer very truly remarks that such a legend could never belong to a nomad people, as the Scythians in the limited sense of the word were. We seem to have an echo of the stories of the peasants Mikoula Selianinovich, Piast and Premysl, and their labours with the plough. The theory that among some of the Scythian tribes grouped in such an obscure manner by Herodotus the ancestors of the Slavs may be found has been supported in recent times by Zabielin. He also thinks that their original settlement was in Volinia and White Russia. The blood of the inhabitants is probably purer there because the barrenness of the soil and the numerous marshes have turned away conquerors, whether coming from the north or the south.¹ The human bones which have been found under the ancient tombs or *kourgans* and the sites of fortified camps (*goroditcha*) in the governments of Chernigov, Kiev, Pskov, Novgorod, and St. Petersburg are accompanied by objects indicating a rudimentary civilization, which, according to the form of the skull, have belonged to a Slavonic race. The ancient burial customs so

¹ See Reclus, "Géographie Universelle," vol. v., p. 299.

THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SLAVONIC RACES. 43

familiar to us from the fourth book of Herodotus continued in these countries till the tenth or eleventh centuries, as the Byzantine coins prove which have been found in the kourgans, where the warrior rests with his arms and the corpse of the wife is still decorated with ornaments. Sometimes the obsequies were accompanied by the sacrifice of domestic animals, as the favourite charger or dog of the hero; and his slaves, male and female, are also added. In one of these vast kourgans we meet at the same time with the calcined bones of human beings, horses, birds, fish, arms, implements and jewels. A large tomb of this description called the Chernaia Mogila (Black Tomb), near Chernigov, was explored by Samokvasov and described in the Russian Review, *Drevnaia i Novaia Rossia* (Old and New Russia), which unfortunately has now ceased to appear.

Besides the accounts given by Jordanes, and Procopius of the Slavs, which have been already frequently quoted, we get the curious description given by the Byzantine Emperor Maurice (582—602 A.D.), from which the following salient points may be selected.

He tells us that the Slavs in his time were very numerous and very fond of liberty: they were hardy and very hospitable, showing much delicacy of feeling in their attentions to their guests. Their women were especially noted for their fidelity to their husbands, which was so great that at the death of her husband the wife would frequently refuse to survive him. We are also told of them that they were in the habit of

44

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

using poisoned arrows. Somewhat amusing is the quaint but rather incredible story told by Theophanes, who flourished about A.D. 817.¹ "On the following day three Slavonians by race but wearing no weapons were seized by the Romans; they had only harps in their hands. But the king asked whence they came and where was their dwelling, but they replied that by race they were Slavonians, and that they dwelt at the extreme of the western ocean, and that the Chagan had sent an embassy to them and presents to their rulers to join him in an expedition against the Romans. Their rulers, therefore, had commissioned them to make an apology to the Chagan, because it was not possible on account of the length of the journey to send him any troops. They moreover asserted that they had made a journey of eighteen months and had thus come upon the Romans. They said they carried harps, because they were unacquainted with the use of iron, and the emperor, having wondered at their stature and the strength of their bodies, sent them to Heraclea."

¹ See "Monumenta Poloniæ Historica," by Bielowski, p. 4.

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

45

CHAPTER III.

EARLY RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

THE old Russian literature may be divided into two classes :—

(1) Oral.

(2) Written.

Russian literature is very rich in national songs and legends; and some of these, to judge by the allusions found in them, may claim very considerable antiquity. They are called by the native scholars Bîlini, which may be translated "Tales of the olden time," and have been divided into the five following classes :—

1. The Cycle of the Bogatîri Starshii, or Older Heroes.

2. The Cycle of Vladimir, Prince of Kiev.

3. The Cycle of Novgorod.

4. The Cycle of Moscow.

5. The Cycle of the Cossacks.

To these two more might be added—viz., those referring to the time of Peter the Great and the Modern Period, but in this work I can only allow myself brief allusions to them. The metres in which these bîlini are chanted are irregular; the ear being apparently satisfied with the ictus on some particular syllables.

46

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

The study and collection of these poems only dates
from the commencement of the present century. It
may easily be imagined that they would have presented
but little attractions to the Gallicised courtiers of the
time of Catherine, a period when the French language
seemed on the point of supplanting Russian as the
medium of communication among the upper classes.
We find the nobility corresponding almost entirely in
this language, and very curious French they occa-
sionally wrote, to judge by some of the specimens
given in the Russian review, *Starina*. In 1804 a
small collection was published, based upon a publica-
tion attributed to Kirsha (the abbreviation of Cyril)
Danilov. These ballads had been taken down about
the middle of the eighteenth century among the
workmen in the iron-foundries of Prokofii Demidov,
descended from the blacksmith of Toula, who had
been enriched by Peter the Great. The songs met
with much success: the Russians saw a past revealed
to them of which they had had but little idea, and as
the romantic school of literature began to develop
itself under the influence of Zhukovski and Poushkin,
and the somewhat *couleur de rose* history of Karamzin
made its appearance, the legends were more than
ever welcomed. The first edition contained only
twenty-nine pieces, but the second, published in 1818,
had sixty, and the year following there appeared at
Leipzig a small work entitled, "Fürst Wladimir und
dessen Tafel-runde, alt-russische Heldenlieder." Here
translations of some of these poems are given, and, as
M. Rambaud tells us, of some others of which the

EARLY RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

47

originals are now lost, so that the collection did not
begin too early. From 1852 to 1856 Sreznevski, the
eminent scholar, whose loss Russia is now deploring,
was collecting them in the governments of Olonetz,
Tomsk, and Archangel. Since this time the publica-
tion of these interesting poems has been going on,
just as the impulse of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border" gave rise to so many other collections.

As might naturally be expected in popular poetry,
although the ballads themselves are ancient, the
phraseology has become more and more modernised,
and anachronisms are frequent. Thus we have allu-
sions to guns and telescopes; and the Germans are
mentioned at a time when the Russians could not
have had any intercourse with them. We get the
usual conventional epithets found in all epic and
ballad poetry. The wine is "green"; the Prince is
the "bright sun"; the earth is "damp"; the Tatar
is the "unbeliever." Three is a magic number: the
hero sleeps three and sometimes twelve days. When
there is fighting it generally lasts three days and three
nights. The heroes' drink is of three kinds,—wine,
beer, and mead. Potyk plays three games of chess
with the heathen king. Forty thousand is the invari-
able number of an army.¹

A discussion on the origin of these bilini has been
aroused by the work of Vladimir Stasov. Contrary
to the opinion of the majority of Russian scholars, he
considers that the lays are in their origin Oriental,

¹ Wollner, "Untersuchungen über die Volksepic der Gross-
russen." Leipzig, 1879.

48

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

have been introduced into the country, comparatively speaking, recently, and have only undergone a few modifications to Russify them.

The heroes of the first cycle are mythical beings; their stature is gigantic, and their strength superhuman. Among such may be mentioned Volga Vseslavich, Mikoula Selianinovich, and Sviatogor. Volga Vseslavich is represented as the son of a serpent. He is capable of undergoing all sorts of transformations like Proteus. Sometimes he is a wolf, sometimes a falcon. When the city of Kiev is about to be besieged by the King of India, or the Sultan of the Turks, according to the variants of the legend, Volga becomes a bird, flies to Constantinople, and hears all the plans of invasion under the Sultan's window. He and his drouzhina, or band, succeed in massacring the Sultan and exterminating his people. According to M. Rambaud, this is merely a legendary poem on the well-known expedition of Oleg against Constantinople, as narrated by Nestor.

In Mikoula Selianinovich, or Nicholas the son of the Villager, we have the glorified peasant. He corresponds to the Przemysl of the Cechs and Piast among the Poles. We see the republican and pastoral tendencies of the Slavs in the circumstance that a peasant is made the hero of a series of bilini. On one occasion Mikoula is met by Volga and his drouzhina, while ploughing; but when the warrior and his company attempt to lift the peasant's plough

¹ "La Russie Épique," p. 36.

EARLY RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

49

and find themselves unable, he, with a single touch, raises it from the earth and hurls it to the clouds. Sviatogor is another of these legendary Titans; one story represents him as stretched at full length upon a mountain. Ilya Murometz, of whom I shall speak more anon, wishes to challenge him to battle, but his most formidable blows can hardly arouse the giant from his dream; he thinks that they are only pebbles falling upon him. At the third blow he turns and says to the hero, "You are brave as a man, remain brave among them; you will never be able to measure your strength with me. See what my size is; the earth itself cannot contain me; I have at last found this mountain, and rested on it."¹ We here meet with some of the well-known tales of our childhood.

I now come to the cycle of Vladimir, the prince of Kiev, which we must remember was the first seat of the Russian nationality, and is still a sacred place to the Russians, endeared as it is with so many historical associations. The great glory of this cycle is Ilya Murometz, whose achievements form the subject of many a picturesque lay. A Russian author has, with great force and beauty, applied the tale of Ilya Murometz to his own country. It has been the sleeping giant, full of strength and latent energy: "What ails Ilya? He is heavy, and we will make sport of his lumbering and unmanageable bulk." Meanwhile, ever stronger grows the giant, who at last

¹ Rambaud, "Rus. Épique," p. 42.

E

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

50

leaps up and stands in all the vigour of his massive
frame to confront and confound his enemies.

Some have compared Vladimir with his Drouzhina
to Arthur and his Round Table. There is something
in the parallel, but it must not be pushed too far. We
can hardly call the members of the drouzhina knights,
and there are none of the aristocratic notions, prevalent
in the West, to be found in the companionship. On
the same seat sits a rich boyar, the son of a merchant,
and Ilya Murometz, the peasant. To this cycle belong
the heroes Dobrîna Nikitich, Alesha Popovich (son
of the priest), who conquered the gigantic dragon
Tougarin, Soloveï Boudimirovich, Diouk Stepanovich,
who crossed the Dnieper by a single leap of his horse,
and others.

The cycle of Novgorod is not so rich in legends as
that of Kiev, but nevertheless contains some very in-
teresting bilini. The stories that are told bear out
the accounts of the luxury and turbulence of the great
Slavonic republic, such as it has been handed down
to us in the chronicles, of which more anon. To this
cycle belong the stories of Vasilii Bouslaevich and
Sadko, the rich merchant. The great prosperity of
Novgorod is familiar to all readers of Russian history;
it formed one of the members of the Hanseatic League,
and its geographical position was favourable as being
on one of the old high-roads of trade. Moreover, it
never fell under the yoke of the Tatars.¹ Ivan III.,

¹ “The celebrated saying, ‘Quis potest contra Deum et magnam Novgardiam?’ first occurs in Albertus Crantius, who wrote in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” —KARAMZIN.

EARLY RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

51

however, was resolved to consolidate the Russian empire; he easily picked a quarrel with the refractory republic; in 1478 an end was put to the vech, or popular assembly, and the bell was carried off to Moscow, where it is still shown.

The fifth cycle deals with the autocracy. Among the events celebrated are the taking of Kazan in 1552, and the conquest of Siberia by Yermak the Cossack. Many are the lays treating of Ivan the Terrible, and the instrument of his cruelties, Maliouta Skourlatovich, who stood in the same relation to him as Tristan l'Hermite did to Louis IX. of France, being his intimate associate and the instigator of many of his cruelties.

The bîlinas previously mentioned have lived for centuries on the lips of the peasants. It is not a little strange that the first ever committed to writing were copied out by one Richard James, an Oxford graduate, who was in Russia in 1619 as chaplain of the embassy. The manuscripts are preserved among the Ashmolean Collection, and have been printed by several Russian editors.¹

As a specimen of these interesting poems, so little known in our own country, let us take the lay of the rebel who is to be executed, and who dies in a very penitent and devout frame of mind, grateful to his Tzar for punishing him :—

¹ See "Istoricheskie Ocherki Rousskoi Narodnoi Slovesnosti i iskousstva" (Historical Sketches of Russian Popular Literature and Art), by Bouslaev. St. Petersburg, 1861, vol. i., p. 470.

E 2

52

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

Ah ! my head, my dear head,
My head that long hast served me.
Thou hast served me, my dear head,
Thirty and three years.
Not swerving from my trusty steed,
Not turning my foot from the stirrup,
But, my head, thou hast not gained
Either glory or joy,
Nor good words for thyself,
Nor lofty glory.
Yonder along the Masnitzkaia,
By the gates of the Masnitzkaia
They are leading a prince, a boyar.
Before him walk priests and clerks :
They bear in their hands a great book ;
After them comes a troop of archers ;
They carry their halberds uncovered ;
At his right side
Walks the stern executioner,
In his hands he carries the broad axe,
At his left side
Goes his sister.
She weeps, as a river flows ;
She groans, as brooks murmur.
Her brother soothes her,—
Do not weep, do not weep, my sister.
Dim not thou with tears thy bright eyes,
Flush not thy white face ;
Nor make sad thy joyous heart.
What now dost thou wish—
For my lands, my estates,
My rich possessions,
My gold or silver ?
Or dost thou weep my ruined fortunes ?
Ah, my light, my dear brother,
I do not desire them,
Either thy lands or thy estates,

EARLY RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

53

Or thy rich possessions,
Nor thy gold nor silver;
Only I desire, brother,
To see thy prosperity restored.
To this answered her brother,—
Thou, my light, my sister,
Thou mayst weep, but tears avail not,
Thou must pray, but prayers avail not.
Thou mayst entreat the Tzar, nor does that avail thee.
God to me has been full of pity,
The Tzar has been full of mercy;
He has ordered them to sever my traitorous head
From my sturdy shoulders. —
They took the prince to the lofty scaffold,
To the place appointed.
He prayed to the Saviour, to the miraculous picture;
He bowed low on all sides,
Farewell, world, and pious people,
Pray for my sins,
For my heavy sins.
Hardly could the people see him
When his treacherous head was cut off
From his sturdy shoulders.

The following curious poem gives an account of
the expedition of the Cossack Yermak, by which
Siberia was made subject to Russia. I have trans-
lated it quite literally, with a slight abridgment here
and there to avoid the constant repetitions :—

On the glorious steppes of Saratov,
Below the city of Saratov,
And above the city of Kamîshin,
The Cossacks, the free people, assembled;
They collected, the brothers, in a ring;
The Donski, Grebenski, and Yaitzki,
Their hetman was Yermak, the son of Timofei;

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

'Dear sister, maiden of Kosóvo,
Dost thou see, love, those war-lances,
The highest and the thickest?
There flowed the blood from the heroes,
To the stirrups of the good horse,
To the stirrups and to the girths,
And to the silken girdle of the hero.
There they have all fallen:
Go now to thy white house,
Stain not with blood thy skirt and sleeves.'
When the maiden heard these words,
Tears flowed on her fair face;
She went to her white house,
And mourned from her white throat,
Ah, unhappy one, what a fate has come to thee!
'If, unhappy woman that I am, I touch the green pine,
Soon will the green tree be withered.'

Besides the historical persons who figure in the
ballads, there is the great legendary hero, Marko
Kralevich, who, like the Russian Ilya Murometz, has
many of the characteristics of a supernatural being.
He lives a hundred and sixty years, and no sword or
club can kill him. His victories, chiefly over the
Turks and Hungarians, are told in the most
exaggerated phraseology. It is the incarnation of
manhood and prowess which we find in the popular
poetry of all nations. At last, in the glory of his
strength, Marko perishes on the field of battle, but
the circumstances of his death are enveloped in
mystery. According to some he was conveyed from
the scene of strife to a secret cave, where his wounds
were healed, and where, like our own Arthur in his
"isle-valley of Avilion," he lies hidden, destined to

SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES.

163

appear on some future occasion to rescue his people
from their oppressors. Almost as mysterious a being
as the hero himself is his horse Sharatz, who was pre-
sented to him by a vila or fairy. I have already
alluded to the Samodivas and Samovilas of the Bul-
garians. The songs of these mysterious beings are of
such bewildering sweetness, like those of the sirens
of old, that men who listen will eventually lose their
reason; on the other hand, they are capable of
human passions, and we find them enamoured of
Servian and Bulgarian heroes, and luring them away.
Sometimes, also, they carry off the fair maidens of
a district, as in the story of "Kilmeny," the best
thing written by the Ettrick Shepherd. Many of the
love-songs and poems relating to domestic life are
exquisite, and show great refinement of feeling. All
this must necessarily be a source of amazement
to those who are prepared to find in the Serbs
only a barbarous people. After the death of Vouk
Stephanovich a supplementary volume was published
by his widow, which her husband had left pre-
pared for the press ("Srpske Narodne Pyesme iz
Herzegovine. Vienna, 1866"). A good collection
of songs of the Montenegrins ("Tzrnogortzi") was
also edited at Leipzig in 1857 by Milutinovich,
under the pseudonym of Choubr Choikovich. We
cannot hope for a much further prolongation of
this delightful period of popular poetry in Slavonic
countries. Such productions only emanate from a
people conscious of great national struggles and
national triumphs, before naïve emotions and fresh

M 2

166

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

work, most of which are devoted to the topics on
which Slavonic song seems never to grow weary, viz.,
the sad episode of the battle of Kosóvo. Miklosich
remarks very truly, that although the modern Croatian
lays have adopted the metre now so much in vogue
in Servia, yet at one time they could boast of one of
their own, something like the old-fashioned English
Alexandrine, or the πολιτικοί στίχοι of the de-
generate periods of Greek literature. He compares
it to the verses quoted by Lord Byron from the
"Lamentable History of Miss Bailey":—

"A captain bold, of Halifax, who lived in country quarters.

The popular poetry of no other Slavonic race
exhibits this metre.

The loss of culture which Servia was obliged to
suffer when passing under the yoke of the Turk was
in some measure compensated by the outburst, in the
succeeding century, of a vigorous national life among
the Dalmatians, especially in the little republic of
Ragusa (called by the Slavonians Dubrovnik), which
reached a high pitch of civilisation. During the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries this
city, now in a state of decay, was a kind of Slavonic
Athens. The influence of Italian literature then cul-
minating, was further strengthened by crowds of
learned Greeks, Chalkokondylas, Laskaris, and others,
who found refuge within its walls when Constantinople
was taken by the Turks.

The city of Ragusa (to use its Italian name, which
is more familiar to us) was founded by fugitives from

SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES.

167

Epidamnus in the middle of the third century A.D. It is said to have been called from the rock Lausa, close by which it is situated.¹ Although surrounded by powerful neighbours, it managed for a long time to preserve its independence, and had extensive commercial relations, not only with the interior of the Balkan peninsula, but with Italy, Sicily, Spain, Greece, Alexandria, and the East. Its relations with Venice were very close, and a dialect of Italian was spoken within its walls as well as Slavonic. It is thus that we find Italian and Slavonic forms of the names of the leading Ragusan families. Gradually the Venetians became masters of the whole Dalmatian coast, with the exception of Ragusa. The little republic did not lose its independence till the year 1808, when it was taken by the French and annexed to the newly-founded Illyrian kingdom. But this creation was not destined to last long; by the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Ragusa and the Dalmatian coast were handed over to the Austrian empire.

It does not come within the scope of my little book to give a complete account of Dalmatian poetry.Lyrics generally and the lyric drama seem to have been its staple productions. Hannibal Lucic (1480-1525) was a very popular poet in his day, author of love-songs, a drama, and translations, published first by his son, Anthony, at Venice, in 1556, and reprinted by the indefatigable Dr. Gaj, who occupied himself

¹ Thus: Lausa, Rausa, Rachusa, Ragusa. See Pipin and Spasovich, 168.

168

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

with editing the Dalmatian classics at Agram in 1847. Very celebrated in its time was the "Jegjupka" or "Gipsy" of Andrew Cubranovic (1500-1559). We are told of the poet that he was originally a silver-smith, but deserted this craft and betook himself to that of the Muses. "The Gipsy" is said to have been evoked in this wise. The author was, on one occasion, following a young lady, the object of his affections, and urging his addresses, when she turned round and said scornfully, in Italian, to her attendant, in the hearing of the poet, "Che vuole da me questo zingaro?" (What does that gipsy want with me?) The despised lover took up the word of reproach, and wrote a poem in which he introduced a gipsy prophesying their various fortunes to a company of ladies, and concluding with an expostulation to the hard-hearted nymph for her obduracy. Schafarik speaks of this piece with great enthusiasm, and calls it "a truly splendid flower in the garden of the Illyrian Muses."

The chief of the Ragusan poets was Ivan Gundulic (sometimes called by his Italian name of Gondola). The "Osman" on which his fame rests is an epic in twelve books, and celebrates the victory of the Poles under Chodkiewicz over the Turks and Tatars in 1621 at Choczim. Gundulic died in the year 1638, aged fifty, having discharged several important public offices in the state. "His death," says Schafarik, "was not too early for his fame, but too early for literature and the glory and prosperity of his country." After the earthquake of 1667 Ragusa never recovered

SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES.

169

its former prosperity. The influence of the Renaissance and of Italian literature upon the Dalmatian authors is very conspicuous, as is shown in the abundance of translations from the Greek, Latin, and Italian classics. Professor Armin Pavic has written an excellent history of the Ragusan drama, which tells us how active it was.

I shall include in this chapter a few remarks on the scanty literature of the Slovenes. We find them frequently styled Wends, and their language Wendish, —an inconvenient term, as it causes some confusion with the tongue of the Lusatian Wends, who belong to the western branch of the great Slavonic family, and are included partly in Prussia, partly in Saxony. Their literature will form the subject of a future chapter. The Slovenish language is spoken in Carinthia, Carniola, and a portion of Styria, where it begins just south of Klagenfurth. It is also the vernacular of some parts of Hungary. These provinces have accompanied the various fortunes of the Austrian empire. The importance of Slovenish literature is indeed slight, but their language (for it can assert higher claims than those of a dialect) has acquired a great interest from the views of Kopitar, Miklosich, and others, who regard their country as the cradle of the old Slavonic, now used only as the ecclesiastical language.¹ It was here, according to some traditions, that Cyril and Methodius principally laboured.

I have already alluded to the efforts of Ljudevit

¹ See the further discussion of this subject in the first chapter.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

Gaj to construct a regular South Slavonic language, and to weld the Servian, Croatian, and Slovenish into one harmonious whole. Great difficulties, however, stand in the way. If a mere literary language is created, it will become unintelligible to the humbler classes, and this will greatly assist the insidious efforts at Germanisation which are constantly going on under the influence of the Government. If the people are to remain Slavs, they must be educated in their native language. Slovenish stands in nearly the same relation to Servian and Croatian as Slovak to Bohemian—it has preserved many older forms. Slovenish has kept the dual not only in pronouns and substantives, but even in verbs; and many other peculiarities could be specified approaching far closer to the antique type. A fair idea may be formed of the area over which this language is spoken if we consider it as extending to Klagenfurt in the north, Fiume (Slavonic, Reka) in the south, Agram and Varasdin on the east, and the Adriatic on the west.

A good grammar of it was published by Kopitar at Laibach in 1808, which contains an introduction with a classification of the Slavonic languages. This was an invaluable work for the time; nothing so good on Slavonic philology appeared till the "Institutiones Linguæ Slavicæ Dialecti Veteris" of Dobrovsky, in 1822. An excellent grammar of Slovenish, by Schuman, a pupil of Miklosich, has recently been published at Laibach. The orthography of the language has been very much improved, and it is to be hoped that some of the Germanisms which now disfigure it will be

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expelled. A very elaborate "Deutsch-Slovenisches Wörterbuch" was published at Laibach in 1860, in two stout octavo volumes. The expenses of its production were defrayed by a sum of money left by Bishop Wolf. I am told by a Slovenish friend that the Slovenish-German part is in course of preparation, and may be expected before long. Although so little cultivated, this Slavonic language is one of the most interesting on account of the curious forms it exhibits.

In the old Slovenish language are the celebrated Frisingian manuscripts, so called because discovered at Frising, in Bavaria, in 1807; they are now preserved in the museum at Munich. They have been assigned to the ninth or tenth centuries; and, if this date is correct (and there does not seem any reason to dispute it), this must be the oldest piece of Slavonic writing in existence. These fragments have been edited by Köppen, Kopitar, and Miklosich. Their contents are of a religious character. Schafarik is inclined to take a later date than some other Slavists, and assigns them to the tenth century. We must remember that Christianity was taught among the Slovenes very early: even in the seventh century Italian missionaries from Aquila, and German from Salzburg having visited them. Their history as an independent people was soon brought to a close. After having formed a portion of the great Slavonic empire of the half-mythical Samo, who ruled from 627 to 662, they fell under the yoke of the Bavarians, and subsequently became

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subject to the Franks. Since this time they have
formed a portion of the German, and subsequently
the Austrian, empire, and duchies have been carved
out of their territories. Considering the great perse-
cutions which they endured for so many centuries,
it is indeed marvellous that their language has been
so well preserved. The celebrated Baron Herberstein,
whose work, "De Rebus Muscoviticis," furnishes
such an interesting account of Russia in the sixteenth
century, was a Slovene by birth, having been born at
Vipach, in Styria. He has told us how his Slavonic
origin was a frequent cause of reproach to him among
his schoolfellows.

Professor Jagic, in an article in the *Archiv fur
Slavische Philologie*, I. 450, explains the Latin letters
in which the Frisingian fragments are found as follows.
He supposes that some German preacher of the
Latin rite, struck with the great success which the
Slavonic missions had had among the Slovenes,
adopted part of their ritual, with some slight modifi-
cations. The language is at best of a very mixed
character, and seems to complicate rather than explain
the difficulty of the origin of the Palæoslavonic.
The whole question of the lives and working of Cyril
and Methodius is involved in difficulties. It has
never been clearly made out at what time and where
the version of the parts of Scripture which they trans-
lated was executed. Some have thought that the
Slavonic apostles carried their version with them
from Thessalonica into Moravia; others that it was
made when they were among the western Slavs, and

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173

Professor Miklosich thinks that the Slovenes extended over a much wider extent of territory than at present. Political and religious feelings have been imported into this question, which, as Pîpin truly observes, has almost become an Austrian-Catholic dispute against a Russian-Orthodox.

The Slovenes are poorer in ballads than most of their Slavonic brethren, so that here we have no fine collection of national poetry to fall back upon dating from a remote past. A vigorous impulse was given to their language and literature by the labours of Primus Truber, born in 1508 near Laibach, still the great centre of Slovenish culture. He was an indefatigable Protestant preacher, the intimate friend of Melanchthon, one of those noble-hearted workers whom we frequently find in the early history of a language. Persecution was soon active against him and the detestable Ferdinand I. (almost as hateful as the second of his name, who deluged Bohemia with blood) issued orders for his arrest—a proceeding which would probably have been followed by his summary execution. Truber, however, fled to the court of Christopher, Duke of Wurtemberg, who protected him. Here a printing-press was set up under the patronage of Ungnad, Baron von Sonneg, and other Protestants, which was busily employed several years. The Glagolitic types, with which most of the books were printed, became, curiously enough, at a later period, the property of the College de Propagandâ Fide, at Rome. The productions of this press are regarded as great bibliographical curiosities. The

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Gospel of St. Matthew was published in Slovenish in 1555, and, two years later, the whole New Testament. A copy of this rare work is preserved in the Bodleian Library. Although the sphere of his labours was necessarily limited, we find in Truber as genuine a worker as Luther or Calvin. Considering that his efforts were to evangelise his people, shall we not say of him “magna voluisse magnum”? Piety, love of country, learning, energy, all were there; only the vulgar element of success was wanting, and his poor Slovenes were too few to spread his fame. Let us direct attention, be it but for a moment, to this neglected apostle of an obscure country, and piously clear the weeds from his grave. He died in 1586, having seen a good old age; but his labours were destined to be brought to nothing by the odious policy of Ferdinand II., whose misdeeds are fully recorded in history.¹

A good co-operator with Truber was Juri Dalmatin, the year of whose birth is unknown. He studied at Tübingen, and appears to have been a learned man, as he talks of having translated the Scriptures from the “springs” of the original languages. In 1583 he went to Wittenberg to superintend the publication of his Bible, which duly appeared the following year. This Bible is justly called by Schafarik “the masterpiece of the old Protestant literature of the Wends.” It is now a great bibliographical rarity, but remains a

¹ Kopitar does not hold the worthy father quite guiltless of having foisted Germanisms upon the language, especially an *article*, which no Slavonic language ought properly to have.

SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES.

175

monument of the piety and learning of the man who accomplished so grand a labour. The latter days of this worthy preacher seem to have been greatly troubled, on account of the persecutions previously mentioned. We hear accounts from Valvasor, in his well-known "Honour of the Duchy of Carniola" (Ehre des Herzogthums Krain),¹ of his being protected and concealed by Baron von Augsberg in a crypt under a stable in his castle. It is a great pity that so little has been written in a form accessible to Western readers on the labours and sufferings of the chief workers of the Reformation in these provinces. It is clear enough in the history of the world that not merely heroism of the individual is necessary, but there must be some grand show-place for him in which he may display his heroism, if he is to get recognition. How many readers have heard even the names of these obscure apostles?

As Truber was to the Slovenes, so was Michael Bucic (between 1564-1574) to the Croatians. He made use of the so-called Provincial Croatian dialect, which the most approximates to the Slovenish.² Thus, in Croatia, as in Carinthia, the cultivation of the national language was greatly fostered by Protes-

¹ This work, although written in German, is regarded with great pride by the Slovenes. It appeared in 1689 in folio at Laibach. The author impoverished himself by publishing it, owing, among other causes, to the expensive plates.

² Classed as Croato-Slovenish in the list of dialects in the first chapter.

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tantism. Bucic published several books in Croatian, but the details of his life are meagre. He was ultimately driven from his native country, but his fate is not known. Literature in the province of Croatia did not have a very great development. The cause of this may be traced to its union with Hungary. It was thus politically separated from Dalmatia, and from Servia it was divided both politically and religiously. Latin became the language of the Church and of culture, as in Hungary. Many of the nobles, however, showed a patriotic spirit, and did what they could to foster their native tongue. Thus we are told that Count George Zrinski, who died in 1603, had a printing-press on his estate.

In the South-Slavonic provinces, as in Bohemia, Protestantism was flourishing very vigorously till stamped out by Ferdinand II. The sanguinary means by which this was accomplished are to be read of in some of the darkest of those pages upon which the history of the House of Habsburg is recorded,—at best but a dreary catalogue of civil and religious persecutions. It is gratifying to think that the attempt to force all these peoples into a most unwilling homogeneity has resulted in a complete failure, never more conspicuous than at the present time. In the year 1584, the first Slovenish grammar was printed at Wittenberg by Bohoric, a schoolmaster of Laibach and pupil of Melanchthon. In 1592, the first Slovenish dictionary was published by Hieronymus Megiser, under the following title: "Dictionarium quatuor linguarum, videlicet Ger-

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177

manicæ, Latinæ, Illuricæ, quæ vulgo Slavonica appel-
latur, et Italicæ sive Hetruscæ auctore Hieronymo
Megisero. Gratz, 1592.” After the Protestant move-
ment had been annihilated by Ferdinand II., a com-
plete torpor fell upon the unhappy country, as in
the case of Bohemia. This gloom lasted during
almost the whole of the eighteenth century. But a
revival took place at the beginning of the present,
and the Slovenes can now show a fair array of authors.
Two literary societies have been founded, which busy
themselves with the publication of a journal and
useful books. The great centre of this activity is
Laibach.

N

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WESTERN BRANCH.—EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

IN treating of early Polish literature, I shall fix for my period that which extends from the earliest times till the year 1606, which marks the arrival of the Jesuits in the country under the influence of Sigismund III., and here we shall find in reality that the Polish literature, however much it has been developed in modern times, in the early period is one of the scantiest.

The language is still spoken by about ten millions of people, and probably, after all, the Pole has more to dread from the German than from his brother Slavonians. Polish is being faster eliminated from the Grand Duchy of Posen than from Galicia and Russian Poland. It is not recognised as an official language in the former country any more than in the territories appropriated by the "Moskals," but the Germans alone have been guilty of the insolence and bad taste of changing the names of many Polish towns and villages, which had become historical, into such monstrosities as Bismarcksdorf, Weissenburg, and Sedan. A recent writer in the Bohemian Journal has noticed the gradual receding of the Polish language from Lithuania, where, we must

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179

remember, it was rather superinduced as the idiom
of the upper classes and culture, and was never
on the lips of the people properly so called. The
Lithuanian language, which must always possess
a great fascination for the student of comparative
philology, has not risen above the dignity of the
tongue of peasants. Before this country was attached
to Poland, the White Russian was the official language,
and in this the laws of the land were promulgated.

We cannot promise our readers the same feast of
popular poetry among the Poles as they will find
in other Slavonic countries. Legendary lays in the
style of the Russian bilini are wholly wanting,
but they undoubtedly existed in the earlier times.
Just as Macaulay detected and restored to something
like its original shape a lyric fragment in the
chronicle of the Monk of St. Gall, so a curious
reader may find, from the poetical colouring of
the page, many a lay imbedded in the prosaic
writings of Gallus, Kadlubek, and Dlugosz. Wisz-
niewski, in his "History of Polish Literature," has
collected several of these allusions, and Gallus, the
old Latin chronicler of the twelfth century, gives a
long translation of a poem written on Boleslas (or,
in Polish, Boleslaw) the Brave, which I will not inflict
upon my readers, however interesting it might prove
to the antiquarian. Some old Polish songs of the
sixteenth century are printed in Wojcicki's "Library
of Ancient Writers," but the work most complete
in its plan is that of Oskar Kolberg, the publication
of which was commenced at Warsaw in 1857. This

N 2

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bids fair to be an exhaustive collection of Polish
songs, proverbs, and traditions, and is well worth
the attention of those who busy themselves about
folk-lore. Before dismissing this subject of popular
literature, allusion may be made to the works of
Oleska, and Zegota Paul on Galician poetry: there
are also the "Songs of the Polish People of Upper
Silesia," edited by Julius Roger, Breslau, 1863; a
collection of national tales and proverbs of Galicia,
published by Baracz; and the "Aberglauben aus
Masuren," by Töppen, will be found interesting.¹

A great deal of the early literature written in Poland
is in the Latin language. The use of Latin seems to
have soon begun among this people, probably intro-
duced by the foreign ecclesiastics with whom the
country was flooded. The earliest specimen of the
Polish language is the so-called Psalter of Queen
Margaret, discovered in 1826, at the convent of St.
Florian, near Linz, in Austria, which dates from the
middle of the fourteenth century. It was edited by
Dunin-Borkowski, at Vienna, in 1834. It has since
formed the subject of a valuable monograph by
Professor Nehring. According to an article by
Leciejewski in a recent number of the "Archiv," in
its present form it is but a copy of a much older
text. Connected with this period is the ancient
Polish hymn or war-song (for it was a mixture of
both), attributed to St. Adalbert of Prague, a great

¹ I regret that, after careful search, I have not been able to find any specimens of Polish popular poetry which would possess attractions for the general reader in a translation.

EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

181

apostle among the Slavs. This is the *Piesn Boga Rodzica*, an address to the Virgin Mary, which is said to have been always sung by the Poles when advancing to battle. It will be found pre-fixed to the "Historical Songs" of Niemcewicz, and has been translated after a fashion by Bowring ("Specimens of the Polish Poets," p. 12). Rakowiecki is inclined to think that this production dates from a period not earlier than the fourteenth century, but the whole history of the celebrated song has been fully handled by Nehring in the "Archiv für Slavische Philologie" (vol. i., p. 73). The oldest known text of it is in a manuscript of 1408, preserved in the Biblioteka Jagiellonska at Cracow. Janko von Melstin, the Castellan of Cracow, left a sum of money to the church of All Saints at that city, to provide for the singing of this song on certain occasions. In the deed of gift it is entitled, *Salutaris illa et plena cœlestibus mysteriis cantilena Boga Rodzicza Dziewicza*.

In a manuscript of 1456 we have another copy of the song, with the addition of six verses. The first printed form of it appears in 1506 in Laski's "collection of Polish Laws." The legend, which assigns its composition to St. Adalbert, was gradually springing up, "Prima omnium devotissima et tanquam vates regni Poloniæ cancio seu canticum Boga Rodzicza manibus et oraculo St. Adalberti scripta." This poem always enjoyed great popularity among the Poles. As a proof, we might quote the entry in the account-book of Sigismund I., preserved among the

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national archives of Warsaw,—*Rustico qui cantabat
Bośa Rodzicza coram domino principe, ad mandatum
S. M. dedi 3 grossos.* The old historian Dlugosz had
long before called it *patrium carmen*. The result of
Professor Nehring's investigations is that the song
was probably modelled upon Bohemian hymns, and
he cites some from which particular expressions have
been taken. I have thought it allowable to discuss
at some length the origin of this remarkable poem,
which has exercised such a talismanic influence upon
the Poles, and concerning which there is no account
in the English language which can be relied upon.
This poem was translated into Latin Sapphics by the
Polish poet of the Renaissance, Sarbiewski, of whom
I shall shortly speak more at length. A great many
Church songs were composed by a certain John
Lodzia, who was bishop of Posen from 1335 to 1346,
one to the Virgin Mary,—“Salve, salutis Janua,”
another beginning, “Lux claescit in vitâ,” &c. These
productions appear to have enjoyed great popularity
in Poland for a long time. Unfortunately, they are
in Latin, and cannot have reached the people. It is
this exotic culture, so prevalent throughout Poland
at all stages, which almost justifies the severe remark
of M. Courrière that they have always been the least
Slavonic of the Slavonic peoples. Of Lodzia we
are told by the old chroniclers that he was greatly
addicted to the Muses, but led a life much too
jovial for an ecclesiastic.¹ And here I may find

¹ Röpell, "Geschichte Polens," ii. 561.

EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

183

a convenient place for mentioning the fragments of
Polish manuscripts which careful antiquaries have
succeeded in discovering, hidden as they were in
public or private libraries, sometimes even fastened in
the binding of a book, as several precious Bohemian
pages have been found. Two fragments of this kind
were published by Dr. Celichowski in 1875; the
same scholar also printed at Posen the Latin-Polish
vocabulary appended to the "Jus Magdeburgicum,"
dating from the fourteenth century. This "Jus
Magdeburgicum" was the code of laws by which the
German artisans in the large towns were governed,
for we must not forget that the trade of Poland was
chiefly in the hands of foreigners.¹

Macieiowski has printed a version of the 50th
Psalm, which he assigns to the end of the thirteenth
century. The "Psalter of Queen Margaret," as it has
been called, belongs undoubtedly to the second half
of the fourteenth century. It has been named from
Margaret, the first wife of King Louis of Hungary.
This princess died in 1349. The book has been
supposed to belong to her, from the letter M.
inscribed upon it, and the arms of Anjou. Röpell,
however, rather leans to the opinion that it belonged
to Mary, the daughter of Louis.

The so-called Bible of Queen Sophia, or Bible of

¹ This probably explains the language of Boorde: "Theyr rayment and apparel is made after the High Doche fashion, with two wrynckles and a plyght: *theyr speech is corrupt Doche.*" See Boorde's "Introduction of Knowledge," p. 169. Reprint by Mr. Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society.

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Szaroszpatak, has been edited by Malecki. Mention
of this remarkable book was made in the description
of a tour by Count Teleky; this attracted the atten-
tion of Dobrovsky, the eminent Slavist, who brought
it to the notice of Bandtkie, author of a " History of
Polish Literature "; scholars, however, did not occupy
themselves with it till it was again brought forward in
the second edition of Dobrovsky's " Slavin " edited by
Hanka. The Bible is imperfect, and only contains
the early books, e.g., the Pentateuch, Joshua, Ruth,
and Kings.¹ It is said to have been written for Sophia,
the fourth wife of Jagiello about the year 1455, but
the tradition is perhaps not very well founded. Besides
the Psalter previously mentioned, the memoirs of a
Janissary, about which I shall speak at greater length
shortly, and the chronicle of Chwalczewski, it forms
the most valuable memorial of the Polish language
as it existed before the sixteenth century. A few
other remains may be mentioned, the Prayer-book
of Waclaw (Modlitwy Waclawa), edited by Alexander
Prezdziecki, the fragment of a sermon on marriage
(Ulamek starozytnego kaszania o malzenstwie) printed
by Gloger, a letter of St. Bernard by Kluczycki; to
these may be added notices of some Polish glosses
and verses in three Latin manuscripts by Szujski
also of a manuscript of Polish sermons by Ketrynski.
Altogether it may be said that the number of known

¹ There are, however, portions of Judith, Tobit, and Daniel
To judge by the facsimile appended to Malecki's elaborate
edition, the codex must be a very handsome one. He traces
the first mention of it to the year 1604.

EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

185

Polish manuscripts written before the sixteenth cen-
tury, although small, has been greatly augmented by
discoveries during the last few years.

The early writers in Latin deserve a brief mention.
One of the first was Martin Gallus, supposed by some
from his name to have been a Frenchman. This,
however, has been disputed by Lelewel, who considers
that it was merely a translation of some such name as
“Kura” into Latin. Röpell remarks with truth that
all we know with certainty about him is that he lived
at the court of Boleslaw III., surnamed the Wry-
mouthed, whose praises he sings. There seems to be
considerable reason to believe that he was a foreigner;
but even his Christian name, Martin, is more or less of
a conjecture. He lived between 1110 and 1135, and
has left us a chronicle written in Latin in a style
unusually crabbed; Mickiewicz, however, in his
lectures praises his descriptive powers. This work
is of great value as containing the earliest forms
of the many quaint legends with which Polish
history is so thickly garnished. To this must be
added the chronicles written by Matthew Cholewa
and Vincent Kadlubek or Kadlubko (perhaps a
corrupt version of the German Gottlieb), two bishops
of Cracow, and that of Bogufal, bishop of Posen;
all made use of Latin, just as was customary with our
own mediæval chroniclers. Kadlubek died on the
8th of March, 1223. About 400 years later (viz. in
1633) his bones were brought to Sandomir and he
was canonised. The style of this work is somewhat
inflated, but the great popularity which it enjoyed

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

for a long time in Poland is shown by the many
manuscripts of it still existing. The chronicle of
Bogufal, which is written in a very dry, annalistic
manner, extends to the year 1250. Other chroni-
clers followed, such as Dzierswa and Janko von
Czarnkowo, but the teaching was always ecclesiastical
and the idiom Latin. In England the influence of
a healthy spirit of nationality succeeded in shaking
off the pedantries of monkish compilers on the one
hand, and the spurious French of the school of
“ Stratford atte Bow” on the other; but the use of
the classic tongues was firmly engrafted in the Polish
people by the multitude of foreign ecclesiastics who
inundated the country. No Robert Grossetête, as
in England, appealed against them, no statutes of
provisors or præmunire limited their numbers and
authority. All compositions written in a language
foreign to their author are at best sickly exotics; and
we may safely say that had Gibbon carried out his
intention of writing his great work in French, he
himself would have been as much a loser as the
English language in being deprived of so noble a
monument.

The unfortunate tendency of the Poles to copy
other people, even at the period of their greatest
prosperity, when, if ever, a national spirit asserts
itself, is seen in the number of foreign words intro-
duced into the language, terms of trade from the
German, of fashion from the French, and of science
from the Latin. One of the quaintest pages of the
historian De Thou, is that in which he describes the

EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

187

entry of the Polish embassy into Paris to offer the
crown to Henri de Valois. The inquisitive courtiers
of the capital were as much astonished at the elegant
French and Latin of the strangers as they were at the
peculiar costumes, their closely-cropped heads, and
the quivers of arrows at their backs. The Polish
Jesuits employed a vicious style in their numerous
sermons, orations, and works of devotion, and, turning
the language from its natural channels, tried to force
its constructions into analogies with the classical
idioms. The encouragement of this hybridism con-
tinued from the time of Sobieski till the extinction of
the monarchy, the kings of the house of Saxony,
ending with the coarse and illiterate Augustus III.,
being absolutely ignorant of the language themselves
and in no way encouraging it. The cultivation of
Polish was never more active than when the country
had been dismembered; the exiles, who probably
now found their native tongue to be their greatest
bond of union, busied themselves in developing it,
and the works of Lelewel, Niemcewicz, Mickiewicz,
Slowacki, and Krasinski were produced.

With the reign of Casimir III. (1333-1370), called
the Great, begins the period of national prosperity in
Poland. In this reign were passed the Statutes of
Wislica, a complete code of Polish laws. These were
promulgated in Latin, but a translation into Russian
was published for the benefit of the King's other sub-
jects. In 1386 Lithuania was joined to Poland by the
marriage of its Prince Jagiello with Hedwig (Jadwiga),
the Polish heiress. The Queen was mainly instru-

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

mental in creating the University of Cracow, but it
was not actually founded till 1400, when she was no
longer living. In the year 1474 the first printing-
press was set up at Cracow, which continued to be
the capital of the kingdom till it was removed to
Warsaw by Sigismund III. The press at which this
first book was printed was that of Günter Zainer, who
was probably, to judge by his name, a German. The
writings in Polish during this period, as previously
stated, are exceedingly meagre. A few hymns (the
doctrines of Wickliffe and Protestantism were gaining
ground among them as among their brother Cechs)
and some statutes are all that have come down. In
a law of Casimir IV., in 1442, we have some curious
old forms, showing how much nearer the Polish
language of that time was to the Palæo-Slavonic.
Writers in Latin abounded at this time; of these
the most celebrated was Jan Długosz (Latinised into
Longinus, and we must remember that every man
turned his name into Latin then), bishop of Lemberg
(Pol. Lwow), now capital of the Austrian province of
Galicia. His history is very valuable for its matter,
and is by no means wanting in beauties of style. He
is the great authority for the reigns of the three first
Jagiellos. Unfortunately, it is in Latin, for Polish
authors despaired of composing history in their native
tongue, and at that time the same opinion appears to
have been prevalent in England.

Długosz was a scholar of great learning, a talented
diplomatist, and a citizen of sturdy and unstained
character. For the compilation of his history he

EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

189

accumulated a vast stock of materials, both from
Polish and foreign sources; in the latter part of his
life he learned Russian, so as to be able to read the
Chronicle of Nestor.¹

At this time the Poles were not without some
legendary poetry, but it has, unfortunately, disap-
peared, leaving only the titles and commencement
of the verses, as is the case with the songs in the
"Complaint of Scotland."² In 1828 was printed at
Warsaw, in the "Collection of Polish Authors" (Zbior
Pisarzow Polskich), a manuscript supposed to have
been written about 1500, entitled "Memoirs of a
Polish Janissary" (Pamietniki Janczara Polaka), to
which allusion has been made previously. The story
is interesting, and contains some important historical
details, which have been cited by Mickiewicz in his
lectures. It has been shown, by the Bohemian scholar
Jirecek, that the writer was a Serb, Michael Kon-
stantinovich, of Ostrovitza. His "Chronicle," which
describes the defeat of Wladyslaw III. at Varna, and
Jan Albrecht in Bukovina, was probably written by
him in Poland, and in the Polish language, from
which it was translated into Cech. Michael was
born in 1430, and taken prisoner by the Turks in
1455. He served among the Janissaries ten years,
while Mehmed II. was sultan, and then escaped to
Hungary.

About this time (1473) Poland produced her one

¹ Pipin and Spasovich, ii. 468.

² See "The Complaynt of Scotlande," 1549, edited by Dr. Murray for the Early English Text Society.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

man of genius, universally known, Copernicus, a native of Thorn, whom Germany has in vain attempted to appropriate. It seems probable that the family of Copernicus had originally emigrated from Bohemia, as would appear from the name (Kuprnik).

The period from 1548 to 1606 is considered to be the golden or classical age of Polish literature. The country seemed to have a great future before it, and to bid fair to become the dominant power in Eastern Europe. Under the first Sigismund Poland was the land of religious toleration, and many sectaries found refuge in the country, including the Socini. Lelius Socinus had visited Poland in 1552; Faustus arrived in 1579 and settled at Cracow, whence, after a sojourn of four years, he transferred his residence to Pawlikowice, a village in its vicinity, belonging to Christopher Morsztyn, whose daughter Elizabeth he soon after married. He endured persecution from the Romanists, and on one occasion his library and manuscripts were destroyed by a mob. He afterwards removed to Luklawice, also near Cracow, and remained there till his death in 1607. Socinus did not compose a catechism of his religious belief, although he intended to do so. Some of his followers collected and arranged the doctrines either established or approved of by him, and they published their catechism at Rakow in Polish in 1605.

Protestant doctrines were professed by many of the most noble families in Poland, and there were many presses devoted to their propagation. According to Krasinski, Skarga, the eminent preacher, of whom

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191

more anon, complains that more than two thousand
Romanist churches were converted into Protestant
ones. As in Bohemia so in Poland, the Jesuits were
most active in getting possession of and burning all
documents connected with the spread of Protestant-
ism. It is impossible to travel in either of these two
countries or in the Slovenish and Croatian provinces
of Austria without coming upon their traces. In no
part of Europe, not even in Spain or Italy, was their
work more complete and efficacious.

In the diet of 1552, deputies were chosen to
be sent to the Council of Trent. These were
Drohojowski and Uchanski, two Polish bishops,
both of whom were well known to lean to
Protestant views. In fact the Pope had written
to the king of Poland in 1556, about Uchanski,
describing him as "maxime hæresis infamiâ la-
borantem." Modrzewski was appointed secretary,
and the views he propounded as to the demands
which the deputies should make from the Holy See
are very extensive. They are given at length by
Krasinski,¹ and show plainly what religious men in
Poland thought. At the diet of Piotrkow in 1555
the chamber of nuncios, or house of commons, re-
presented to the king the necessity of convoking a
national synod, composed of all religious parties.
The king was to preside, and the Church was to be
reformed by adopting the Holy Scriptures as the

¹ See "History of the Reformation in Poland," by Count Valerian Krasinski, i., 219.

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only basis of its reconstitution. Representatives of all the religious sects of Poland were to be admitted on equal terms with the Roman ecclesiastics, and the most eminent Reformers of Europe, such as Calvin, Beza, and Melanchthon, were to be invited. The eyes of the Reformers were, however, especially turned to the well-known John Laski, or à Lasco as he is sometimes called in a Latinised form of his name, a man well known in our own country.

Gradually, however, as before mentioned, the Jesuits brought about a complete change. The national elementary schools, chiefly in the hands of the Protestants and Calvinists, are said to have amounted in the sixteenth century to 1,500, with 30,000 pupils. They disappeared without a trace. The Socinian school at Rakow was closed in 1638, by the orders of the diet, and finally all Socinians were expelled from the Republic by a law of the year 1658.

Thus this state of things was soon to pass away under the great Jesuit reaction. The country reached the height of its prosperity in the reign of Sigismund II. (Augustus), 1548-1572. After this it began to decline, the fierce political factions having its end, and, worst of all, the *liberum veto*, viz., the power which a single nuntius had of stopping the proceedings of the diet. This occurred for the first time in 1652, when Sicinski, the deputy for Upita, uttered the words, "*Niepozwalam*," I forbid.¹

¹ Szujski, one of the last historians of Poland, justly remarks upon this privilege, that it soon led to a *liberum conspire*.

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193

This was in the reign of John Casimir. "Ruptures of this kind," says Lelewel, the Polish historian, "now became more and more frequent. The queen, Louisa Maria, knew how to profit by them, and, unfortunately, exercised a great influence over the king." Legnich, in his "Jus Publicum Regni Poloni" (1742), enumerates thirteen occasions on which this pernicious custom had broken up the diet. It was not put a stop to till just before the final partition of Poland. In 1561 a translation of the whole Bible was published at Cracow. Previous to this there had been a version of the New Testament by Seklucyan printed at Königsberg, originally a Polish town, in 1551. The Bible of 1561 forms a handsome folio with many curious woodcuts, and is now a book of great rarity. The Jesuit Wujek made another translation in 1599. The first Protestant Bible was published in the year 1563 at Brzesc, and another translation in 1632 at Danzig. The latter has been in use ever since. Education spread more and more, but it was confined to the clergy and nobility, the peasantry everywhere remained in the grossest ignorance. The development of the native language was still depressed by the influence of Latin, which was extensively employed, both in historical compositions and poetry. The reputation of Casimir Sarbiewski (or, in the Latinised form, Sarbievius) has been spread through Europe. His lines are frequently quoted by persons who have little or no idea of the nationality of their author. But of all writers in Latin it is probable that Martin Kromer (1512-1589) has gained the greatest reputation. His

O

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book, "De Origine et Rebus Gestis Polonorum, Libri XXX." (the Latinity of which might almost be compared to that of Livy or Tacitus), gives a complete view of Polish history from the earliest times to the end of the reign of Sigismund I. It is needless to say that, in a work written at such a time, a thoroughly critical spirit can hardly be expected, and accordingly all the untrustworthy, but still very amusing, legends of early Polish history are related with the same minuteness and picturesqueness with which Livy describes the death of Servius Tullius or the warlike achievements of Coriolanus.

The earliest Polish poet is Rej of Naglowic. His father, of a very old family, had settled in Galicia, or Red Russia, where our author was born, about 1507. Like many men who have become celebrated afterwards, he passed his youth in idleness, and began his studies late. He wrote many works of various merit, and, as this was a great period of religious dispute throughout Europe, soon distinguished himself as a defender of the doctrines of Calvinism, to which he was attached. He translated the Psalms, wrote commentaries on the Gospels (Postylla Polska), a catechism and an Explanation of the Apocalypse. In 1560 appeared his "Picture of the Life of an Honourable Man" (Wizerrunek Własny Zywota Człowieka Poczciwego), a long rambling poem, full of quaintness, something like the "Steel Glass" and other productions of our own Elizabethian authors. His best work was written in his old age, viz., "Zwierciadlo albo Zywot Pocz-

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195

ciwego Czlowieka” (The Mirror, or Life of an Honour-
able Man), published in 1567. The critics agree in
praising this poem as being full of good sense and
deep reflection conveyed in a lively and dignified
style.¹ Rej died in 1569. The influence of the
Renaissance was now strongly felt in Poland, and had
its representative in Jan Kochanowski, called the
Prince of Polish Poets, born in 1530. The Kocha-
nowskis were a poetical family. Andrew, the brother
of John, translated the Æneid; his cousin, Nicholas,
wrote some miscellaneous poetry; his nephew, Peter
(1566-1620), translated the “Jerusalem Delivered”
of Tasso. The life of John Kochanowski was un-
eventful. His culture was foreign, chiefly acquired
in Italy and at the University of Padua. He also
lived several years in Paris. He returned to Poland
in 1557, and some time afterwards married and
settled on his paternal estate, Czarnolas. The latter
part of his life was rendered melancholy by the death
of his favourite daughter, Ursula. The poet himself
died in the year 1584.

In the writings of Kochanowski we see the influence
of the literatures of Rome and Greece, of Petrarch
and of Ronsard, the acquaintance of the latter of
whom the poet made in France. The Polish writer
attempted many styles of composition. In epic
poetry he wrote "The Game of Chess," an imitation
of Vida; "The Standard or Investiture of Prussia"
(Praporzec albo hold pruski)—a fine description
of the fealty given by Albert of Brandenburg

¹ Pipin and Spasovich, ii. 484.

02

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to Sigismund Augustus, in which the history of
Poland is represented in a series of pictures; "The
Expedition to Moscow of the Hetman Christopher
Radziwill" (1581), &c. He was the author of the
first drama, "The Sending of the Greek Ambas-
sadors" (Odprawa Poslow Greckich), which was acted
at the marriage of Jan Zamoyski and Katherine
Radziwill, on the 12th January, 1578. Before this
time mysteries and sacred dramas had been frequent
in Poland. At first they were played in churches,
but, as in the twelfth century, Pope Innocent III.
severely blamed the clergy for this breach of clerical
decorum, they were transferred to churchyards and
schoolrooms. Religious plays of this kind, accord-
ing to M. Spasovich, are still occasionally acted in
Poland on Saints' days.

But to return to Kochanowski. The subject of his
drama is taken from Homer; the ambassadors are
Ulysses and Menelaus, who come to Paris to demand
surrender of Helen. This piece of the Polish poet
has earned the very warmest commendations of the
critics. Besides these works, Kochanowski published,
in 1578, an excellent translation of the Psalms, still
in general use; at this time, in England, we could
only solace ourselves with the doggerel of Sternhold
and Hopkins. He wrote also odes, elegies, epigrams,
and idyls. In a satire addressed to Sigismund
Augustus, he lashes his countrymen for their mania
for imitating foreigners and passion for luxury—
two faults which accompanied the Polish nation to
the close of their history. In the year 1580, on the

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197

death of his beloved daughter Ursula, whom he
called the Slavonic Sappho, and to whom he hoped
to hand on his lyre, he composed his "Treny"
(Lamentations), so justly praised by Mickiewicz in
his "Lectures on Slavonic Literature." These verses
alone would show Kochanowski to have been a true
poet.

Besides these he gave his countrymen versions of
portions of Homer, Horace, and Cicero, and of the
so-called Anacreontic odes which enjoyed such a
popularity for many centuries, and passed for genuine
productions of the Teian bard. Besides Polish
poems, he was author of some elegies and epistles in
Latin, one of which is amusing as satirising the
French and Henri de Valois. Most readers have
read how the cruel poltroon fled from Cracow,
pursued by the nobles of his court with cries of
"Serenissima Majestas, cur fugis?" and never
slackened rein till he saw himself safe beyond
the frontier. Kochanowski has a sarcastic epistle,
addressed "Gallo Crocitanti," from which I take the
following lines :—

Et tamen hanc poteras mecum requiescere noctem,
Nec dubiis vitam committere, Galle, tenebris.
State, viri: quæ causa fugæ? non Trinacris hæc est
Ora, nec infames funesto vespere terræ
Sarmatia est quam, Galle, fugis, fidissima tellus
Hospitibus.

Kochanowski still keeps his popularity among his
countrymen, and many of his best lines have passed
into proverbs. One of them is quoted in a letter

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

which the uxorious Sobieski wrote to his wife, the
fair Frenchwoman who may be said to have almost
changed the destinies of Europe, giving her an
account of the glorious battle in which the Turks
were driven from Vienna.¹

Kochanowski was convinced that he would be
immortal, and, in an imitation of Horace, pro-
phesied that he would be read by the Russian,
the Tatar, the German, the Spaniard, and even the
remote Englishman.² Some of this prediction has
not yet been verified, and I fear that to most of my
countrymen the very name of Kochanowski is un-
known. Perhaps this little book may do something
to remove the total ignorance.

The priest, Stanislaus Grochowski (1554-1612)
need not detain us long. He is chiefly a writer of
fulsome panegyrics; among the rest he has verses on
the False Demetrius and his wife, Marina Mniszek.
For his satire, "The Women's Circle" (Babie Kolo),
he seems to have got into a good deal of trouble with
the bishops of his time.

In the person of Szymonowicz, whose name has

¹ It is well known that Sobieski had belonged to the party in the interests of France, and was consequently opposed to that of Austria. Louis XIV. had, however, treated slightly the Polish Queen, who, as mentioned above, was of French extraction, and so great was her influence over her husband, that Sobieski was induced to assist the Austrians against the Turks.

² Slavonic authors have not always been noted for a modest opinion of themselves. The lines of Derzhávin; in which he prophesies his coming glories, will occur to all students of Russian literature.

EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

199

been Latinised into Simonides (1554-1624), a writer
of pastorals has appeared. These productions are
very much praised by Mickiewicz in his lectures.
He considers Szymonowicz the second best writer of
bucolic poetry after Theocritus. According to this
critic he greatly surpasses Virgil, who had no dramatic
talent, which Szymonowicz has, and is also a better
painter of nature. He is certainly free from the
strange jumbles of the Latin poet, who is always
mixing up the mountain scenery of Arcadia with the
flat plains of Mantua. The most celebrated of his
poems are "The Pair of Lovers" and "The Reapers."
But Szymonowicz was something more than a poet;
he was a philanthropist. He everywhere appears as
the advocate of the unhappy serfs, and puts into their
mouths many lamentations about their hard fate.
This was not done with a view to any democratic
propaganda, because it was impossible that artificial
productions of this nature could circulate among the
illiterate peasantry; but with the object of telling
some very disagreeable truths to their masters which
might lead to the amelioration of their condition.¹
The next poet of importance who ornaments Polish
literature is Klonowicz, or, as his name was Latinised,
Acernus (1545-1602).² His works may be classed
under two heads: 1st, Descriptive, including his poems,
"Flis," in Polish, and "Roxolania," in Latin; and
2nd, Didactic, such as "Worek Judaszow," or "The
Bag of Judas," and "Victoria Deorum;" the former

¹ Pipin, ii., 499.

² The word *klon* signifies maple (Lat. *acer*).

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

in Polish, the latter in Latin. "Flis" is a name given to the boatmen of the Vistula, and under this title the poet represents himself as sailing from Warsaw to Danzig. Hence he takes occasion to describe the scenery on the banks, and to give many directions about shipbuilding. In the "Roxolania" we have a picture of Galicia, or Red Russia, his native country. "The Bag of Judas" is a strange poem, rightly styled by M. Spasovich as little more than a legal treatise in verse. The false school of didactic poetry seems to have early taken as strong hold of the Poles as it did of the French in the eighteenth century. The "Victoria Deorum" is a long Latin poem on moral philosophy. The title is taken from a portion of the work which describes the battle between Jupiter and the giants. The poem has an undercurrent of politics, like the double allegory in the "Faërie Queene." The Titans are the Polish magnates and szlachta; Jupiter is the king. I will just mention in passing Orzechowski, a priest, who wrote a strange work, entitled "Quincunx," a strong assertion of the authority of the Church.

Rhetoric and pulpit eloquence, as may easily be imagined, were greatly fostered by the Jesuits, who now began to swarm into Poland. Among the most successful cultivators of these forms of literature was Peter Skarga, the court-preacher of Sigismund III., who earned the appellation of the Polish Chrysostom. Skarga has left a host of sermons and religious works behind him, among which may be mentioned "Lives of the Saints," "Discourses for Sundays and Saints'

EARLY LITERATURE OF POLAND.

201

Days,” “Discourses on the Seven Sacraments,” &c. For a glowing eulogy of him we must turn to the “Lectures on Slavonic Literature,” by Mickiewicz, previously mentioned. He expressly praises his sermons preached before the Diet: on account of his freedom of speech, Skarga is said to have been many times in danger of his life. He everywhere, however, appears as the uncompromising advocate of the order of the Jesuits, which he joined in 1568. He had much to do with the stamping out of Calvinism in Poland, and the Greek Church in Lithuania. It is a pity that in some respects the Poles did not listen to his fiery eloquence. In the third of his sermons before the Diet (Kazanie Sejmowe) he foretells only too clearly the downfall of his country, in consequence of the perpetual feuds among the nobles, as was prophesied nearly a century later by John Casimir, the king, when he abdicated. Skarga is considered by Polish critics to have raised the prose style of the language to its highest pitch of excellence; some, however, object to the many Latinisms which he introduced. The writing of history in Latin was still actively pursued; in addition to Kromer, previously mentioned, we have Wapowski and Guagnini (an Italian, in the Polish form Gwagnin). The first historical work compiled in Polish was the “Kronika Polska,” reprinted at Warsaw in 1823. This was a very considerable production for those times; and England, we must remember, could not at that time boast of a national historian, unless we wish to see one in Holinshed, Hall, or Grafton. A

202

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very curious work is the "Coats of Arms of the Polish Knighthood" (Herby rycerstwa polskiego), Cracow, 1584. Here the armorial bearings of Noah, Alexander the Great, and Darius are given among others.

In 1582, Stryjkowski published his chronicle at Königsberg (Krolewiec). It is a book quite *sui generis*, containing a great quantity of valuable information about Lithuania and the eastern parts of Poland. The author not only learned the Russian and Lithuanian languages, but traversed all the most remarkable portions of the countries described in search of antiquities. His work is full of information, but is put together without much skill.

With this work I close my account of early Polish literature, bringing it down to the year 1606, called by critics the commencement of the influence of the Jesuits.

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

203

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EARLY LITERATURE OF BOHEMIA.¹

THE present century has witnessed what must certainly be considered a remarkable phenomenon—the resuscitation of the language and literature of Bohemia. Speaking roughly, from 1620 to 1820 there was no such thing as a Bohemian nationality. At the close of the eighteenth century, Dobrovsky had looked upon the total extinction of the Cech language as proximate. Pelzel, in 1798, compared the condition of Bohemian with that of the Lusatian-Wendish, or Sorbish, at Leipzig, in the fourteenth century, which was occasionally heard from peasants in the marketplace, but was rapidly receding. In German, Pelzel wrote his history; and in the same language nearly all Drobrovsky's works are composed.

The French Revolution, which stirred so many nationalities, was certainly not without its influence upon the Bohemians. The labours of Dobrovsky, a patriot as well as scholar, created a band of enthusiastic students, who applied themselves to the

¹ In this chapter I have occasionally called the Cech language Bohemian. It is right that the reader should know clearly the relation in which these appellations stand to each other. The name Cech is that used by the natives; the word Bohemia (Boii-heim) carries with it the name of the Celtic tribe which originally occupied the country. See page 33.

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history and antiquities of their country. Up to that
time Bohemian early literature had been neglected,
and many valuable memorials had been allowed to
perish. There was now to be a close search all over
the country to gather these neglected relics, and
some startling results, as I shall show, followed.

The earliest period of Bohemian civilisation
had witnessed two influences,¹—first, Latin-German;
and, secondly, Greek-Slavonic. The use of the Latin
alphabet may have been introduced even in heathen
times from the connexion of the country with
Germany, and would be increased by the baptism of
the Moravian prince, Moimir. Rostislav, a prince
of Moravia, invited the celebrated missionary,
Methodius, into his territory, who was afterwards
appointed by the Pope Archbishop of Moravia, and
there baptised the Cechish prince, Borivoi, and his
wife, Liudmila, now included among the saints of
the country. The legend of Saint Wenceslaus, pre-
served in Russian memorials, tells how Liudmila
herself wrote books, and caused her grandson, Wen-
ceslaus, to study Slavonic works. According to
tradition, even in the latter part of the eleventh
century there existed a Slavonic school (famosum
studium Sclavonicae linguae) in the Vysehrad, and
there St. Procopius, the Abbot of the Sazavski
Monastery, studied. To this Procopius tradition
assigned the Cyrillic part of the Gospels of Rheims,
mentioned in a previous chapter. Among the
fragments of Palæoslavonic given by Professor Jagic

¹ P. and S., ii., 803.

205

in his interesting "Specimina Linguæ Palæslo-
venicæ," St. Petersburg, 1882, is one from a Panno-
nian-Moravian "Service-book" (*Slouzhebník*) of the
Roman Catholic Church, which was discovered at
Kiev. The language of this production shows many
Bohemian influences, and exhibits such an early form
of the Old Slavonic language that the Professor does
not hesitate to assign it to the tenth century (p. 33).
These fragments would thus follow next in order in
point of antiquity to the Frisingian mentioned in a
preceding chapter.

But things changed after the death of Methodius;
the Pope condemned the Slavonic liturgy, and the
Sazavski Monastery was given to Latin monks. From
this time the Latin ritual prevailed, but many remains
of the old church were to be found scattered among
the people, upon which, no doubt in a great measure,
Hus built his reforms. Even in the fourteenth cen-
tury there were "schismatics and infidels" (according
to the expression of the papal bull of 1346) who
would not use the Latin ritual, and for these
Charles IV. founded the Slavonic monastery of
Emmaus, where monks, invited from Bosnia, Dal-
matia, and Croatia, performed the service in the
Slavonic language. A solitary relique of this orthodox
period of the Bohemian Church, according to many
critics, is the hymn, *Hospodine pomiluj ny* ("Lord
have mercy upon us"). This ancient piece is printed
in the "Vybor z Literature Ceske" (vol. i., p. 27),¹

¹ A valuable work published by the Bohemian Literary Society. It gives extracts from the leading authors with biographical and critical notes. Two volumes have appeared.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

both in its most ancient form and in the modified
one in which it is still sung in the churches.

We now come to more slippery and uncertain
ground. In 1817 was discovered the fragment called
*Libusin Soud* ("the Judgment of Libusa"), which was
sent to the newly-founded Bohemian Museum anony-
mously, but the sender was afterwards ascertained to
have been Kovar, the steward (*Rentmeister*) of Count
Colloredo. From the time of its appearance, the
genuineness of this poem was stoutly contested. The
curious reader will find a full discussion of the
subject in Jirecek's "Genuineness of the Königinhof
Manuscript" (*Die Echtheit der Königinhofer Hand-
schrift*). It must be confessed that the question
is surrounded with difficulties, and the argument
insisted upon by the brothers Jirecek, that, at the
time when these productions came to light, there
was no one sufficiently acquainted with the old
Bohemian language to fabricate them, seems to
be partially met by the fact that two poems for a
long time deceived experts, which have since been
ascertained to be spurious—the Love-song of King
Wenceslaus, and the Song on the Vysehrad.¹ Both
of these were unfortunately included in the valuable
"Selections from Bohemian Literature" previously
mentioned, of which two volumes have already ap-
peared. Their existence shows that a forger was
busy somewhere. These questions seem as little

¹ It is but fair to state, however, that these two pieces con-
tain many clumsy expressions not found in those poems which
are claimed to be genuine.

207

likely to be settled now as they ever were, and
Professor Sembera, of Vienna, has recently thrown
down the gauntlet again, asserting that "The Judg-
ment of Libusa" was fabricated by Linda, a Bohemian
poet of third-rate merit, whose works are now almost
forgotten, and Hanka, the custodian of the museum
library, and discoverer of the manuscripts of Königin-
hof. Dobrovsky did not hesitate to brand this poem
as a forgery.

The story of the Princess Libusa will be found in
the old chronicler, Cosmas of Prague, who is full of
wonderful legends, probably belonging to the common
stock of the Aryan mythologies. It reappears sub-
sequently in the so-called chronicle of Dalimil, of
which I shall have occasion to speak at some length,
and forms an amusing chapter in the history of
Wenceslaus Hajek. However mythical this lady may
be, the Bohemians have accepted her as their tutelary
Athena, as we are reminded by her statue erected
in the Museum Buildings at Prague. The poem repre-
sents how Libusa, the daughter of Krok, was a
princess and judge among her people, like the
Veleda of Tacitus; but, when called on one occasion
to settle a question of inheritance between two rival
claimants, one of them, Chrudos, refuses to abide
by her decision. He says that the land is but ill-
governed which is ruled by a woman, and Libusa,
disgusted at her want of influence over her savage
subjects, recommends them to choose a man capable
of wielding a sword. The difficulty was solved, as
all readers of Bohemian history know, by her marriage

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

with the good peasant, Premysl, from whom sprang the old line of Bohemian princes. According to Cosmas, the buskins of the worthy countryman were to be seen in his time suspended in the citadel of Prague.¹ The manuscript of the Judgment of Libusa will be found in the National Library at Prague. Sembera quotes the opinions of some palæographers who dispute its authenticity; the linguistic forms are perplexing; he asserts that the concoctor considered that, the nearer he got to the ecclesiastical Slavonic, the older he would make his poem appear. We shall presently see how these same ideas actuated the forger of the modern glosses in the “Mater Verborum.” Want of space prevents us from doing anything like justice to this intricate question, but a cloud seems to hang over many of the earlier specimens of Bohemian literature. The piece has been assigned to the ninth, or even the eighth century, by those who vindicate its authenticity.

I now turn to the celebrated Königinhof Manuscript. The following are the circumstances of its discovery:—In 1817, Hanka, then a very young man, and engaged in editing selections from Old Bohemian literature, paid a visit to a friend at Königinhof (Kralove Dvur), a village in the north-eastern corner of Bohemia. Here he was introduced to the vicar of the place, named Borc,² who casually men-

¹ Tollit secum suos cothurnos ex omni parte subere consuto, quos fecit servari in posterum et servantur Wissegrad in camera ducis usque hodie. See Schafarik, “Slawische Alterthümer,” ii., 422.
² Pronounce Borts.

209

tioned that some old weapons, including arrows, were
still preserved in a room in the church. On search-
ing these stores several manuscripts were found, and,
among others of less value, the collection of historical
and lyrical pieces which has since become so famous.
Concerning its genuineness there has been a storm of
controversy, in which the works published on both
sides would themselves form a literature. The assail-
ants urge the sentimental tone of many of the pieces,
more resembling the style of poetry of the beginning
of this century; the anachronisms (e.g., mention of
drums and tournaments), and the incorrect linguistic
forms. Persons from the Slavonic mythology are intro-
duced in great abundance, such as Tras and Morena,
and make us think of the additions to the "Mater
Verborum." Lumir, the bard, who, with his voice
and song, could move the Vysehrad, reminds us of
Boian, the nightingale of ancient days, in the Rus-
sian "Story of the Expedition of Igor," mentioned
in a previous chapter. A very stout defence, how-
ever, is made in M. Jirecek's book. It is but fair
to say, that some of the arguments which apply
to the "Judgment of Libusa" do not affect this
collection. We are told that many words, which
Hanka himself could not explain, or explained
wrongly, have been made clear by the discovery of
subsequent manuscripts, especially the "Legend of
St. Catherine," preserved in Sweden, whether many
Bohemian treasures were taken during the Thirty
Years' War. In the Vybor the date of the Königinhof
Poems is fixed at the thirteenth century; but, in a

P

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

THE FORSAKEN.

Ah! ye woods, ye gloomy woods,
Woods of Miletin,
Why are ye green
In winter as well as summer?
I should be glad, did I not weep,
Were not my heart troubled;
But tell me, good people,
Who would not weep thus?
Where is my father, my dear father?
Buried in the earth.
Where is my mother, my good mother?
The grass grows over her.
I have no brothers, no sisters—
And they have taken away my love.

The tone of this poem reminds us of Burns's lyric, "The Lovely Lass of Inverness," but the lay of the Scotchman is more direct and impulsive.

THE CUCKOO.

In a broad field an oak stands;
On the oak a cuckoo
Utters her note, and laments
That it is not always spring.
How could, then, the corn ripen in the field
If it were always spring?
How could the apple ripen in the garden
If it were always summer?
Or how could the corn freeze in the heap
If it were always autumn?
How sad it would be for a maiden
If she were always alone!

An English version of these poems, including the "Judgment of Libusa," was published by the Rev.

213

A. H. Wratislaw, at Cambridge, in 1852. To this the reader must be referred who wishes to become more acquainted with the subject. The translations are in rhyme, and scrupulously accurate. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of those of Sir John Bowring, which contain many ludicrous errors, owing to his imperfect acquaintance with the Bohemian language. In fact, with but few exceptions, up to the present time Slavonic literature has been either entirely ignored in this country, or presented in a travestied and garbled form. Hence the majority of Englishmen have a fixed idea that nothing of the kind exists. Perhaps some of the extracts cited in this little book may do something to disabuse them of such prejudices and erroneous opinions. I have devoted considerable space to the discussion of this Königinhof Manuscript on account of the great interest the subject has aroused among foreign critics. The manuscripts containing these poems are freely shown to visitors at Prague. Moreover, the Kralodvorsky Rukopis has been photographed, and the various readings described most minutely in a pamphlet by the present librarian, M. Vrtatko. Everything appears to have been done by the authorities to avoid mystification. Unfortunately, the subject has never been debated in a temperate manner. The great animus shown by the Germans is only too apparent in their attacks.

Whatever may be the case as regards the genuineness of this collection, that the hand of the forger, led by a narrow spirit of false patriotism, was being

214

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

employed, is clear from the additions which have
been made to the " Mater Verborum " in the
library of the Museum at Prague. This valuable
codex, which is on parchment, and of the thirteenth
century, is a Latin vocabulary compiled by Solo-
mon, Bishop of Constance, in Switzerland, who died
in 920.

To this some Bohemian monk had added important
glosses. The manuscript was presented to the
Museum, soon after its foundation, by Count Joseph
Kolovrat-Krakovsky, but since its reception there a
number of glosses have been added by a later hand.
The illuminations have also been tampered with, and
to two of the figures the names Vacerad and Miroslav
have been added. All these additions to the original
were adopted by Palacky and Schafarik in their
"Oldest Monuments of the Bohemian Language"
(Die ältesten Denkmäler der böhmischen Sprache),
and have in this way found their entrance into many
works on Bohemia. Some of the critics have pointed
unmistakably to Hanka as the forger. If for no other
reason, it would be suspicious that among the glosses
we find many forms which in his imperfect knowledge
of the structure of the Bohemian language he had
supposed to exist, but which subsequent philological
investigations have shown to be impossibilities. And
thus I gladly leave this uncertain ground for one
which is more certain, and feel how difficult it is for a
foreigner to enter into such minute points of criticism.

One of the first results of the acquaintance of
the Cechs with Latin literature was the development

215

of religious poetry and the legend. We thus have
a great many versified lives of the saints, which need
not be cited here at length. Among these is the
legend of St. Procopius, previously alluded to, and
the legend of St. Catherine, which is considered the
best of these productions. The manuscript of the
latter poem has been brought back from Sweden,
whither it had been removed during the Thirty Years'
War, and is now preserved at Brünn in Moravia.

A work of some importance is the so-called chronicle of Dalimil. It belongs to the fourteenth century. This production, reminding one of our own Robert of Gloucester or the Bruce of Barbour, is a tedious and somewhat colourless production; it is written in octosyllabics, and extends from the creation of the world—your old chronicler never began later—till the year 1314. The literatures of most European countries have productions of the same kind, destitute of poetical merit, but interesting to the philologist and antiquarian. From the notice, prefixed to the selections in the "Vybor," we gather that the author was a Bohemian knight; but nothing is known of any person named Dalimil. The work is inspired by a frantic hatred of the Germans, as just at this time the princes of the House of Luxemburg (which gave to the Bohemians, among others, John, the blind king, slain at Crecy, their best sovereign, Charles IV., and his drunken and notorious son, Wenceslaus), were introducing everywhere German habits and the German language. The chronicle is, of course, uncritical, and full of the picturesque stories

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

told by Cosmas,¹ and forming an integral part of Bohemian history till the end of the eighteenth century. The once popular work of Wenceslaus Hajek teems with these legends. In 1762, Gelasius Dobner published a Latin translation of Hajek with critical notes, a work which, as F. Prochazka said, "mentiendi finem fecit" in Bohemian history.

The stories about Krok and his three wise daughters, and the fruitless attempt of the prophetess, Libusa, to enforce her decisions, have been already told; Libusa, or Lubusa, as she is called, thus replies, according to the chronicle :—

I will now tell you frankly
Although you have ill-treated me,
And have so despised me,
He would be a depraved man
Who would do evil to the commune for his own advantage.
The commune is the protection of all;
He who attacks it wants sense.
If you lose the commune, do not count upon a place of refuge.
Without the commune there will be a continual quarrel.
It would have been better for you to have acquiesced in my
decisions
Than to have a man for ruler.
The hand of a maiden strikes lightly,
But there is great pain in the blow of a man.
You will first understand me
When you see your ruler on a throne of iron.
If a stranger shall rule over you,
Your language shall not last long,

¹ The old Bohemian chronicler, who occupies the same place among the Cechs as Nestor among the Russians and Gallus among the Poles. He died in 1125.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

The countryman chides the strangers for inter-
rupting his labours; he prophesies that he shall
rule over them with a rod of iron because they would
not obey the maiden. Out of his spade, which had
been stuck in the earth, grew five branches, and
out of the branches nuts. Libusa is married to this
worthy, and the city of Prague is afterwards founded.
The prophetess herself gives orders for its erection,
and its name is to be taken from the word *prah*,
signifying door-sill.¹

There, where I show you,
On the Moldau below Petun,
A carpenter is making a door-sill with his son ;
On account of this sill, call the place Praha.

Here and there we have some curious stories illus-
trating the animosities between the Germans and
Bohemians; the latter seem to have had a presenti-
ment that they were to be overwhelmed by the
stronger nationality. In one part we are told of
a prince who ordered the noses of all the Germans
in the country to be cut off, and sent them home in
this plight. He also gave a *hrivna* (a piece of gold)
to any man who brought him a hundred German
noses. In the early chronicles of our own country
we find similar curious stories illustrating the feeling
existing between the English and Welsh.

The English reader may well be surprised at the

¹ This derivation, like many others of the same kind, is a whimsical one. Tomek (“Dejepis Prahy,” vol. i., p. 4) more properly connects it with *prazili*, to burn wood, to clear a part of a forest.

219

literary activity of this little country at so early a
period—the period, let us remember, of our own
Wickliffe, Chaucer, and Gower. But the fate of the
two lands was to be widely different: England to
advance in constitutional development, and con-
tinually to extend her territory; Bohemia to lose
her civil and religious liberty, and to have all her
political aspirations crushed. The influence of Ger-
man romanticism was now to be very great among
the Cechs. Together with tournaments and other
knightly institutions, the minne-singers also appeared
at the German courts, among whom King Wen-
ceslaus I. was, according to tradition, included.
To this period belongs the Alexandreis, a trans-
lation from the German or Latin. There is little
distinctly Bohemian about the poem. Tales of
Troy, Alexander the Great, Arthur and his Round
Table, and Charlemagne and his Peers, formed the
great subjects of literature throughout Europe at
the period. More curious matter can be found in
the "Satires on the Trades" (Satyry o remeslnicich),
and a poem on the Ten Commandments. Some of
these pieces show a good deal of humour, and re-
mind us of Dunbar and Lindsay. They are anony-
mous; but we meet with a man whom we can
definitely fix upon as an author in Smil of Pardubic,
surnamed Alaska, a leading Bohemian of his day.
But little is known of his life; he was killed in a
skirmish in the year 1403, three years after our own
Chaucer died. His chief work is the "New Council,"
one of the innumerable beast-epics so much in vogue

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

in the Middle Ages. Others are, however, assigned to him, of which the most original and amusing is the "Dialogue between the Groom and Scholar" (Podkoni a Zak), a quaint piece of mediæval humour, which gives us a picture of Bohemian social life.

A valuable legal document belongs to this period, the "Book of the old Lord of Rosenberg." It is the earliest specimen of Bohemian prose, and extremely curious as illustrating legal customs among the Cechs. Rosenberg was Royal Chamberlain from 1318 to 1346, and died the following year. Another legal work of importance is the "Exposition of the Law of the Land of Bohemia" (Vyklad na právo zeme Ceske), by Andrew of Dubá, Chief Justice of Bohemia from 1343 to 1394. For those interested in Slavonic legislation, the best work is by Macieiowski, previously mentioned.

Large portions of the Bible were translated into Bohemian during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The version was completed at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Wickliffe says of Anne of Luxemburg, the first wife of Richard II., "Nobilis regina Angliae soror Cæsaris habet evangelium in lingua triplici exaratum scilicet in lingua bohemica, teutonica et latina."¹ There are two early versions of the Psalter, the Clementine at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, and the Wittenberg at the beginning of the fourteenth also. It is to be regretted that such doubts have been thrown upon the fragments of the early version of the Gospel

¹ Pauli, "Geschichte von England," iv., 705.

221

of St. John. This manuscript is said to have been
found by Hanka in the binding of a book entitled
"Disciplina et Doctrina Gymnasii Gorlicensis," 1595,
but Sembera refuses to believe that it is genuine.
He is wrong, however, in supposing that such a book
does not exist, for it may be seen in the Library of
the Bohemian Museum. The Bohemians have not
allowed Sembera to make his attacks with impunity,
and, in the year 1881, what seems a satisfactory de-
fence of these fragments by Dr. John Gebauer was
published by the curators of the Bohemian Museum.
Since the death of the iconoclastic veteran, which
occurred more than a year ago, a posthumous work
by him has appeared, attacking the Kralodvorsky
Rukopis. The great animosity with which these literary
disputes are carried on can only be explained by the
political hatred existing between the Cech and the
German the latter is very eager to stamp out all
signs of Slavonic nationality in the territories which
he has appropriated. Unfortunately, as in the case
of Sembera, many of the foes of Bohemia are of her
own household.

Another early chronicle deserving of mention is
that by Pulkava, a priest. It extends from the earliest
times to the year 1330. Pulkava died in 1380. His
work is in prose, and was originally written in Latin,
but afterwards translated by the author into Cech.
I now come to the curious prose-poem called "The
Weaver" (Tkadlecek), after the name of its author,
who lived in the first half of the fourteenth century.
In this production he celebrated the fair Adlicka, one

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

of the beauties of the Bohemian Court. The piece
is full of the usual conceits of the age; thus we are
told that "that super-excellent, widely-renowned
queen of highest race, who is named Honour, sent
her mantle, embroidered with various imperishable
flowers, to her by her highest confidant, whose name
is Circumspection." We might here be almost reading
a Bohemian translation of Skelton's "Garlande of
Laurell." The piece is somewhat monotonous, but
the style is easy and elegant. Whether it is original
or only an adaptation is a matter of controversy. It
very much resembles a production called "Der
Ackermann aus Böhmen," of which four manuscripts
have been preserved. Dobrovsky considered the
Bohemian to be the original; according to an in-
teresting article by Gebauer ("Archiv für Slav. Phil.,"
iii., 201), they are probably both adaptations of a
piece which is now lost.

As a specimen of this curious production, which is
not without a certain dignity and pathos, I add the
conclusion of the address of Misfortune to the
Weaver :¹ "How much more fortunate, then, dost
thou desire to be, that I may honour thee more than
the Emperor Julius, or the King Alexander, or the
excellent, truly excellent Emperor Charles, at this
time King of Bohemia? Who, powerful as they

¹ I have made use of the version of Mr. Wratislaw so as to
call attention to his work, "The Native Literature of Bohemia
in the Fourteenth Century," which will enable the reader to
form a correct idea of the great intellectual activity of the
little country at so early a period.

223

were, could not at times escape my power and my
contrariety. Prithee inquire how many of my mis-
adventures have happened to those only whom thou
knowest, and of whom thou hast heard in thine own
days, whether of higher or lower rank; and neither
thou nor any one else will be able to express in writing
or words how many times this has happened to them.
And, passing over all other misadventures, write down
only those which those kings who have been in the
land of Hungary have had from me; there will be no
end to them. Ah! if thou wilt, as thou canst, recol-
lect thine own adversities only in thine own mind;
how many of them hast thou also had from me?
For it would have been more proper to cry out
against me about them, or to argue with me about
that which once threatened thy life, thy property, thy
honour, and all the good that thou hadst, and it would
have been convenient to speak of that rather than of
that damsel of thine. Therefore, Weaver, hold thy
peace, speak no more with me of thy darling. Take
me not for so weak a power, think not that I am thine
equal. . . . Know that I rule thee and every man
mightily by my power. Thou seest thyself that I pass
by nothing; I let nothing pass me without an answer
from me. I do as the sun, that shines to the whole
world, and is light in itself; to young and old, to
Pagan and Jew, to Christian and Greek, to good and
bad, to poor and rich alike. Even so there is none of
these that has not at some time experienced my
assaults. Endure them likewise, Weaver, according
to custom."

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No one can deny that there is something dignified and pathetic in these lines, and they form a very interesting specimen of early Bohemian literature.¹

Passing by a number of mediæval legends and tales, common to the literature of other European nations, and of which Bohemian versions exist, such as the story of “Flore et Blancheflore,” there were also others that had to do with native subjects, as the two chronicles of “Stilfrid and Bruncvik,” supposed by some to have been originally written in verse. By these productions we see that the Bohemians and Western Slavs generally were under the influence of Latin culture, and we have found the Eastern Slavs under that of Byzantine Greek. The two lines are pretty clearly marked out.

But the great glory of Bohemian literature in the fourteenth century is Thomas of Stitny, a voluminous writer, chiefly on religious subjects. The notices of his life and works I shall take from the introduction to the selection in the “Vybor” (vol. i., p. 635). The biography of Stitny is, at best, but scanty. He was born of a noble family, probably about 1330, and was certainly alive at the close of the same century. He appears to have been a well-educated man, to have studied at the University of Prague, then newly founded, and also to have been acquainted with the German and Latin languages. His chief works are

¹ Some of the expressions remind one of the old Russian poem, entitled “Grief and Misfortune” (Gore i Zlostchastic).

225

a treatise on "General Christian Matters," in six books, which was edited in 1852, and the "Books of Christian Instruction," reprinted, with an introduction, by Vrtatko, the present librarian of the Museum, in 1873. The style of Stitny is easy and flowing, and we can see from his writings that Bohemian prose was developed at a time when our own was in but a rudimentary condition. In some respects I might compare him with Reginald Pecocke, who, however, flourished a century later than Stitny. The man seems to have been very much before his age in using his native language as a vehicle for religious and philosophical treatises. He says in one of his works: "Why should I, being a Cech, be afraid to write to my countrymen in Cech? I will write in Cech, because I am a Cech, and Almighty God loves Cech as much as He does Latin." The writings of Stitny amount in number to twenty-six; of these many still remain in manuscript, but at this we must not be surprised, when we remember that only quite recently a society has been formed in England to edit the unpublished works of Wickliffe. The philosophy of Stitny has formed the subject of a book by Hanus, published in 1852.

The next work of importance is a Bohemian version of "The History of the Trojan War," composed by Guido of Colonna, from Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, which, to judge from the number of manuscripts in existence, would appear to have been a favourite work among the Bohemian knights. It was one of the first books printed in the Cech

Q

226

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

language, and issued from the press in 1468, at
Pilsen.

I now come to the great name of Hus,¹ a man who
has covered his country with glory, and earned a
splendid reputation as one of the precursors of Luther.
It would be idle to recapitulate the facts of his life;
they belong to universal history, and are well known
to all readers. I shall here only deal with the literary
side of his character. During the latter part of the
fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century,
the University of Prague was at the height of its
splendour, and the doctrines of Wickliffe soon spread
among the professors and students. Owing to the
connexion between England and Bohemia in the time
of Richard II. many Czech students came to the
University of Oxford, among others a monk named
Hieronymus, better known as Jerome of Prague. In
the same way an Englishman, named Payne, going
to Prague, spread abroad the teaching of Wickliffe.
This man was for some time principal of St.
Edmund Hall, Oxford, 1410-1415. He soon enjoyed
a great reputation among the Hussites, and was sent
as a delegate to the Council of Basle. Cochlœus, in
his "Historia Hussitarum," thus speaks of him :—
"Petrus Payne ingeniosus magister Oxoniensis, qui
articulos Wiclephi ex libris ejus punctatim et seriatim

' For a full and fresh account of Hus, based upon original
documents, see the third volume of Professor Tomek's "His-
tory of the City of Prague," p. 433. I have retained the
Bohemian spelling of the name, which, in the original language,
signifies "goose."

227

deduxit et suis opusculis pestiferis imposuit, arte inferiores sed veneno pervicaciores; quæ Wicleph obscure posuit iste explanavit." Payne is supposed to have died at Prague in 1455.¹

Hus was born in 1369, took the degree of M.A. in 1396, and was made rector of the University in 1402. The Papal schism at this time raging, and only to be terminated by the Council of Constance, caused the doctrines of Wickliffe to be more widely spread, and Hus became one of their great propagators. His Bohemian writings were collected and edited by Erben in 1865-68; they are of a miscellaneous character, and for the most part controversial. The "Vybor," vol. ii., contains selections from his Postils, and from a work entitled, "The Daughter; or, the Knowledge of the Right Way to Salvation" (Dcerka; aneb o poznani cesty prave k spaseni). The great Reformer did almost as much for his native tongue as Luther for German. He corrected the translation of the Bible, re-arranged the Bohemian alphabet, and fixed the orthography. Nine letters written by Hus while in prison have been preserved. Of these, three are printed in the second volume of the "Vybor"; there is also an account of the death of Hus by Peter Mladenowic, who acted as notary to one of the noblemen who accompanied him to the Council of Constance, and was an eye-witness of the proceedings from the beginning. Hus, as is well known, was burnt in 1415, and his disciple, Jerome, the year following.

¹ Krasinski, "Reformation in Poland," i., 72.

Q 2

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

I must pass over here the Hussite Wars. Nor can I pretend to give anything like a complete list of the many writers of political and religious pamphlets. Several heroes of the time were as vigorous with the pen as with the sword. There is a lack, however, of original work, as in so much of our own literature at the period. Bohemia, during the Middle Ages, saw an Occleve and a Hawes, but certainly never boasted a Chaucer. Translations of the travels of Marco Polo and our Sir John Mandeville enjoyed great popularity. Peter Chelcicky deserves a passing notice as a popular writer. He was one of the leaders of the United Brethren, and, like our own Bunyan, of humble origin, being a cobbler by trade; hence his nickname, Kopyta, or the shoe-last. His works were all written between 1430 and 1456. The two most celebrated are his "Postils" and the "Net of Truth" (Sit víry). The opinions of this man are, indeed, very striking if, we consider the age in which they were uttered. He is as outspoken against war as a Quaker, and looks upon the artificial distinctions of society with the most democratic contempt.

In 1488 the whole Bible was printed in Bohemia for the first time. The first regular printing-press at Prague had been set up the preceding year. Bohemian Bibles were also printed at Nuremberg and Venice. At the latter place the Calixtines had a very handsome edition committed to the press in the year 1506. Under George Poděbrad, a native, who had been elected king, the national language and literature were still further developed. Poděbrad had

229

already been regent, and enjoyed much influence
among his countrymen; and the Bohemians were so
moved by the eloquence of the Calixtine priest, John
Rokycana, who urged the Diet not to appoint a
German prince, but a man of their own nation, that
he was unanimously elected by the states. The
Emperor Frederick was at first opposed to the ap-
pointment, but was ultimately compelled to assent;
and, at a conference in 1459, invested George with
the insignia of royalty. Distasteful as this election
had been at first to the Germans, it was still more
offensive to the Pope, who disliked the Calixtine
opinions of Poděbrad; and when that monarch after-
wards offered to lead an army against the Turks, the
Papal legate was instructed to say that it was far more
advantageous for Christian potentates to turn their
arms against the heretic king than against the infidels.
In the year 1464, Poděbrad sent an embassy to the
French king, Louis XI., to attempt a settlement of
the religious difficulties then agitating the Christian
world; but the mission was a failure. The Bohemians
were too deeply tinged with heresy for the most
Catholic king to care for closer dealings with them.
An account of this embassy was kept by one of the
attachés, named Jaroslav, and the manuscript was
preserved in the archives of the town of Budweiss. In
1827 it was discovered there by Palacky, the cele-
brated historian, who printed it in the "Journal" of
the Bohemian Museum in 1827. On this occasion it
appeared with several gaps, as the censorship was
strict in Austria, and publications in the Bohemian

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

language were viewed with particular disfavour. At a later period, when these rules had been relaxed, and it seemed possible to print the manuscript in its entirety, the document had disappeared, spirited away probably by some over-officious ecclesiastic, who thought its contents injurious to the interests of the Roman Catholic Church.¹

Passing over a few chroniclers, such as Vavrinec z Brezové (born, 1370, and died, according to Jungmann, in 1455), who wrote in Latin a valuable "Historia de bello Hussitico," of which there is an early Czech translation, and Bartosek z Drahynic, we come to the period of the Renaissance. One of the most interesting writers of this time was Jan Hasisteinsky z Lobkovic, whose satire, "Lament of St. Wenceslaus over the Morals of the Cechs," was written in Latin. He was also a remarkable traveller, having visited Jerusalem, Arabia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily, and other places. The Cechs were always fond of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land; and in Martin Kabatnik, a member of the United Brethren, we have one of these travellers. He was a citizen of Leutomischel, and himself unable to read and write. His work was accordingly taken down from his dictation by Adam Bakkalar (the Bachelor?), a notary of the same town. Kabatnik commenced his journey in March, 1491, and returned in November, 1492. The manuscript of this interesting voyage is preserved at Prague. It has been printed many times,

¹ See the Introduction to the "Diary of an Embassy," translated by A. H. Wratislaw, 1871.

231

first in 1518, and forms one of the curious memorials
of the Old-Bohemian press.

Valuable works on law were written by Ctibor and
Viktorin. The latter also translated some of the
writings of St. John Chrysostom and St. Cyprian. In
his introduction to the former, he makes a good
defence of writing in the Bohemian language. Jan
Ceska translated portions of Cicero and Velensky,
Seneca. Gregory Hruby z Jelené (called Gelenius,
in the fashion of Latinising names which was then
so very prevalent) published versions of Chrysostom,
St. Basil, Cicero, Petrarch, Erasmus, and others;
and his son, Sigismund, at the invitation of the great
Dutch scholar, went to Basle and worked at new
editions of the Greek and Latin classics. Besides
these labours, he published, at Basle, in 1536, his
"Lexicon Symphonum," which may be styled an
early attempt at comparative philology, for in it he
strives to show the connexion between Greek, Latin,
German, and Slavonic. Space ought to be found
here for a few words on the writings of Dubravius,
bishop of Olmutz, although unfortunately he used
the Latin and not the Bohemian language. He was
born about 1489 and died in 1553. His curious
book on fish-ponds and fish (*Libellus de piscinis et
piscium, qui in eis aluntur, naturâ.* 1547.) is partly
known to Englishmen by the citations in Izaak
Walton, with whom the bishop was a great authority
on these points. The work, however, which especially
entitles him to mention is his elaborate history of
Bohemia, in thirty-three books, from the earliest days

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

to the coronation of Ferdinand I. at Prague in 1527
—the termination of Bohemian independence. It is
the same period at which Palacky brings his monu-
mental history to a close. The work of Dubravius
with those of Cosmas and many others will be found
in the "Rerum Bohemicarum Antiqui Scriptores,"
Hanover, 1602.

When we consider the learned men produced by
Bohemia at this period, we cannot wonder that they
are proud of it, and call it their golden age. But a
great disaster was now to fall upon the Bohemian
people and the Bohemian language. At this time
its history as a separate nation begins to wane.
Although the scope of this little work is not his-
torical, a short digression may perhaps be pardoned.
In the year 1471 the illustrious Poděbrad died. In
1526, in the reign of Louis, king of Hungary and
Bohemia, the sanguinary battle of Mohacs was fought,
on which occasion the Cechs and their allies were
defeated. The king was killed while attempting to
escape from the battle. Louis was the last male of
his family, and accordingly Ferdinand I. of Germany
claimed both the vacant crowns,—Hungary, by virtue
of a family compact, for this was a period of European
history, we must remember, when a nation was fre-
quently treated as an entailed estate, and Bohemia, in
right of his wife, Anne, sister of the deceased monarch.
These pretensions were, however, quite new to the
Magyar and Cech, among whom the monarchs had
up to this time been elective. In Bohemia he was
only opposed by Albert, duke of Bavaria, and was,

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accordingly, accepted as king on the 22nd October, 1526. On the 4th February, 1527, he and his wife were crowned in the cathedral of Prague. The new monarch soon found himself in opposition to his subjects; he had stipulated at his coronation to govern according to the laws of the much-beloved Charles IV. In Bohemia the power of the sovereign was extremely limited, since, without the consent of the Diet, he could not impose taxes, raise troops, make war or peace, coin money, or pass and abrogate laws. But there were not only political, but religious difficulties to be surmounted by Ferdinand; in no European country did these rage so much as in Bohemia; the Cechs had already led the van in liberty of opinion, and the doctrines of Luther rekindled the torch which had been for some time smouldering. Ferdinand proceeded very gradually in his work of disintegration; he tried to weaken the independence of the city of Prague by separating the magistrates of the old and new town, and declaring that all attempts to reunite them were high treason, an ancient and ill-defined accusation in Bohemia as in England.

For some time, the states showed a vigorous resistance, but afterwards yielded; and when Ferdinand came to Prague in 1547 four of the ringleaders in the opposition were executed.¹

¹ For a complete and interesting account of these struggles, see "Resistance of the Bohemian States to Ferdinand I." by K. Tieftrunk (in Czech). I must here acknowledge my obligations to the "History of Bohemian Literature," by the same author.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

In spite of their grievous political struggles, this
seems to have been a period of great intellectual
activity among the Bohemians, and many works were
published in the Czech language, upon which German
had as yet made no serious encroachments. In the
year 1533 appeared the first grammar, by Benes
Optat. Verse writers abounded at the time, but no
poet of eminence. Jungmann, in his "History of
Bohemian Literature," a monument of erudition, gives
us long lists of compositions of this kind, but they
can only be interesting to the antiquarian and the
philologist.

A man of note, however, was Veleslavin, 1545-1599,
an indefatigable worker in literature, being, like our
own Caxton, both printer and author. Balbinus the
Jesuit, a Bohemian patriot of the seventeenth century,
who did much for his country at a period of great
degradation, has well said: "Quidquid doctum et
eruditum Rudolpho II. imperante in Bohemiâ lucem
adspexit, Weleslawinum vel autorem vel interpretem
vel ad extremum typographum habuit." Valuable
works on natural history were produced at this time,
such as herbals, among which may be mentioned a
translation from the Latin of Andrew Matthiolus
by Thaddeus Hajek. This Matthiolus, or Matthioli
(by birth an Italian) was the physician of the Arch-
duke Ferdinand. A copy of the "Herbal" is shown
among the treasures of the Museum at Prague: it
is illustrated with excellent woodcuts. Many good
works on law appeared; and there are huge masses of
sermons which I shall not disinter. Simon Lomnicky

235

(born in 1560) has left a great deal of poetry; he was the laureate of the Emperor Rudolph II., who did so much to make Prague a literary and artistic centre. He also saluted the unfortunate "Winter King" and his wife, the Princess Elizabeth of England, with a "carmen triumphale." The poet was severely wounded at the battle of the White Mountain, and spent the rest of his life in poverty, but the stories of his sufferings have probably been greatly exaggerated. Lomnicky is at best but a poor writer: Jirecek says, with truth, that his compositions are but little better than rhymed prose.¹ His comic pieces and satires have merit; his didactic poem, "Instruction to a Young Nobleman," has some good sound sense in it, but the metre is heavy. To this period belongs the Bohemian historian, perhaps more correctly *chronicler*, Hajek. But little is known of his life, except what may be gathered from his writings. He appears to have been a Roman Catholic priest, and to have died in the year 1553. This chronicle is a very interesting production, but, of course, cannot be expected to show much critical power: these were not the days of criticism. He incorporates the old legends of Cosmas and Dalimil, just as Kromer, the Polish historian, tells the stories of Popiel and other traditions, but happily for his country, Hajek uses the Czech language. The work was very popular, and was soon translated into German. Interesting also is the journey of Christopher Harant into the Holy Land.

¹ "Anthology," vol. iii., p. 275.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

A new edition was published by the Bohemian Literary Society, in 1854. The unfortunate author was one of those decapitated on the memorable June 19, 1621, on the subjugation of the country after the terrible battle of the White Mountain. Harant set out on his journey at the end of April, 1598, with some companions, all dressed as friars of the order of St. Francis. The description of Jerusalem and the holy places is very full, but the book is too much swollen by historical and geographical digressions. The amount of learning contained in it is great, and gives one a favourable idea of a Bohemian nobleman of the time. Interesting also is the book of Wenceslaus Vratislav, of Mitrovic (1576-1635), describing his captivity during three years in a dungeon at Constantinople. The letters of Karl ze Zerotin, a Bohemian nobleman of this period, have been recently edited by Vincent Brandl. This eminent man belonged to the sect of the Moravians, and was for some time in the service of Henri IV. of France, concerning whom he has left some interesting details. He was with this monarch at the siege of Rouen,¹ which was raised on the 20th of April, 1592. From some unexplained cause, we find that Zerotin left the king's service. He remained faithful to Ferdinand II. during his struggles with his rebellious subjects, but for all that was subsequently compelled to leave his country on account of his refusal

¹ See the interesting article of M. Léger in "Nouvelles Études Slaves," "Quelques Documents Tchèques relatifs à Henri IV.," P. 247.

237

to quit the communion of the Bohemian Brothers. He accordingly retired to Breslau, in Silesia, where he died in 1636.

After the battle of the White Mountain (Bila Hora), in 1620, when the forces of the newly-elected King Frederick were defeated, the Bohemian nationality fell. The whole country was to be Germanised, and books in the Czech language were hunted up in all quarters and burned. The Jesuits were very active in these labours; one especially, Andrew Konias, probably the greatest book-burner whom the world has ever seen, boasted that he had been instrumental in destroying 60,000 volumes. Bohemia, after these tragic events, sank into a deep lethargy. Her nationality was annihilated. Carlyle has graphically told us that Germany came out of the Thirty Years' War brayed as in a mortar, but Bohemia suffered even more than her enemies. She also had the misfortune of seeing many of her most precious Slavonic manuscripts carried off.

With the year 1620 terminates the golden age of Bohemian literature. With the exception of a few names worthy of honourable mention, it was not to be resuscitated till the second decade of the present century.

And here a few words may be said about the Slovaks, a people living in the north-western corner of Hungary. Their language is interesting to philologists as exhibiting an earlier form of Czech, which latter they used for a long time for such literary works as they put forth. They continued to employ it till

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

the close of the eighteenth century, when Bernolak published the first Slovakish grammar at Presburg, in 1790.¹ The attempt to form a new literary language was, perhaps, on some grounds to be deplored. The Slovakish has to struggle between Magyar, German, and Bohemian influences. The Magyar is anxious to depress the Slav, and to spread his own language throughout the so-called kingdom of Hungary. He has, in a great measure, succeeded; the Slovakish nobility are now almost entirely Magyarised, to take Kossuth alone as an instance. For a short time a Literary Society existed among the Slovaks for the publication of good books and a journal. This was suppressed by the Magyars, who do all they can to heap contempt upon the Slovaks. A favourite saying among them is *Tot nem ember* "the Slovak is not a man." But let us hear the account of M. Reclus, who may be considered an unprejudiced observer: "Les Slovaques sont aussi bien doués physiquement que leurs pères de la Vallée de l'Elbe; en général, grands, robustes, bien faits, agréables de figure, ils ont la tête moins forte que celle des Tchèques, mais leur front est large et découvert, bien encadré d'une chevelure abondante." Lastly, the Bohemian resents the attempts at separation by the Slovak, and considers him to be weakening the Slavonic cause by his division. It seems most probable that in the long run the German language will be the gainer by the struggles between these nationalities. Some years ago

¹ The latest Grammar is by Victorin, the last edition of which was published in 1865. There is also a Dictionary by Loos.

239

a work was published by the Czech Literary Society (Matice Ceska), entreating the Slovaks to abandon their attempt, and citing a formidable list of authorities against them. The wars between the Magyars and Slovaks, which ended in the complete subjugation of the latter, cannot be described here. There is no early Slovak literature, with the exception of a few songs of trifling importance.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

## CHAPTER IX.

### THE WENDS IN SAXONY AND PRUSSIA.

THE little Slavonic island, as it were, in a German sea, which is situated partly in the Prussian and partly in the Saxon territories, has attracted scarce any attention in the rest of Europe. The German affects to treat the Wend of Lusatia with somewhat of the contempt assumed by the Englishman for the Celt, and hopes for his speedy amalgamation with the Teutonic race. It must be noted that these Slavs never call themselves Wends, but Lusatians, Serbs, or Sorbs.

They are the remnants of the powerful tribes which once occupied nearly the whole of North Germany. According to Budilovich, previously cited, who has published a valuable map, clearly showing the spread of this little Slavonic people, they number 96,000 Upper Lusatians, and 40,000 Lower, giving a total of 136,000. Pfuhl, however, the author of the best Wendish dictionary, makes the numbers much higher, amounting even to 200,000.

As the object of my little work is not historical, it will be impossible to trace the early fortunes of these tribes, who have successively passed under the dominion of the Poles, forming part of the kingdom of

241

Boleslas II. and the Cechs. In the early part of the seventeenth century most of the Lusatians had become annexed to the Electorate of Saxony, with the exception of the small part about Kotbus, which had belonged to Brandenburg since 1445.

But in 1815, after the resettlement of Europe, consequent upon the fall of Napoleon, a great part went to Prussia, and, according to the statistics of Budilovich, all the Lower Lusatians, amounting to 40,000, belong to Prussia, and of the Upper Lusatians, 44,000, so that the greatest portion of this people are under her direct sway; but a closer union between all the Sorbs has been created since the war, in which Saxony was made an integral part of the German confederacy.

In an interesting article, contributed in the year 1856¹ to the Bohemian Magazine, by Michael Hornik, or Hornig, we have an account of such authors as have made use of the Sorbish language. The details are, at best, but scanty, and I have extended the scope of this chapter somewhat later than the other ones for this very reason. Treating of the Upper Lusatian first, Hornik divides the period of its development into three; but it is with the two first of these only that we shall have to do.

(1) 1512-1704.

(2) 1704-1837.

(3) 1837-1856.

The first printed book in the Sorbish language was

¹ "Part I.," p. 67.

R

242

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

the little Catechism of Luther,¹ which was published in 1597 by the Pastor Worjech, or Warichius, as he was sometimes called, according to the fashion of Latinising names. This, however, was not the first time that any Sorbish words had been in print, for we find the names of plants in that language given in the work of Franke, published in 1594, called “Hortus Lusatiæ.”

In the year 1627 a translation of the “Penitential Psalms” was published by the Pastor Martin, and in the year 1659, a Bible history for Roman Catholics. In the year 1706 Michael Brancel, or Frencel (as he was called by the Germans), published a translation of the New Testament into Sorbish. When Peter the Great passed through Saxony on his travels, Brancel presented some of his labours to the tzar, with an address. In 1689, Zacharias Bierling published a grammar of the language, which he quaintly entitled, “Didascalia, seu Orthographia Vandalica,” in which he adopted an orthography more nearly resembling German, contrary to the Jesuit Ticinus, who, following a very just analogy, had adopted the Czech and Polish as a model, using the following sensible remarks:—“Accedit, quod nostra soror sit Bohemicæ, utpote ex eadem matre Slavicâ originem trahens, et proinde congruum est, ut iisdem characteribus utatur.”

In the years 1693-96 a dictionary of the language was published by Abraham Frencel, son of the above-

¹ The same book, the translation of which forms so interesting a memorial of the Old-Prussian language.

243

mentioned author. Frencel, following the usual vagaries of the authors of his time, as such writers as Minshew among ourselves, derives Sorbish from Hebrew. Many of his works still remain in manuscript. He had faith in his native language, for he prophesied a great future for it, and that he would have many followers in his attempt to trace its grammatical laws, "quos linguæ sorabicæ dulcedo ac necessitas mecum in sui amorem atque studium rapiet." Towards the close of the same century (in 1696) a Roman Catholic version of the Gospels and a hymn-book (*kancional*) were compiled. During the Thirty Years' War the country of the Sorbs was very much devastated, and the people suffered severely; and the same horrors occurred in the Seven Years' War in the next century. The Brothers Martin and Jiri (George) Simon, founded a Sorbish seminary in Prague in 1704; the first was a Carmelite chaplain there; the second a priest at Bautzen. Many authors of religious works appeared about this time, but their productions cannot interest the general reader, and it would be useless to make a mere catalogue of names. For the Roman Catholics, Swotlik translated the Bible from the Vulgate. His version, unfortunately, is still confined to manuscript. Another one, however, was printed in the year 1728. In 1806, Möhn translated some extracts from Klopstock's "Messiah" in the metre of the original. Attempts were also made at the same time to publish some periodicals in Sorbish, with but little success, however.

R 2

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

244

With the year 1837 a new and important period of Sorbish literature begins, but it cannot be discussed in these pages, as I profess to deal only with the earlier times.

I shall now take a short glance at the condition of the Lower Sorbish, which has always been much less developed than the Upper. The first book printed in it was by Albin Möller, in 1574, consisting of a hymn-book and catechism. We can see that the torch was kindled by the Reformation, as in the case of other Slavonic languages. Chojnan, a pastor in Lubin, during the period 1642-1664, wrote the first grammar, which has remained in manuscript; in the latter half of the same century Körner also compiled a dictionary, which likewise has remained unpublished. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, Bohumil (Gottlieb) Fabricius published his translation of the New Testament (first edition, 1709). King Frederick I. of Prussia encouraged the labours of Fabricius, but his successor, Frederick William (1714-1740), was no friend to the Sorbs, and endeavoured in every way to amalgamate them with his German subjects. At the end of the eighteenth century Frico published a translation of the Old Testament.

At the present time we find almost the same struggles going on between the Germans and the Sorbs as between the English and the Welsh. Everything which ridicule and other agencies can bring about has been done: the language has been driven from the schools, and German pastors, where possible,

245

have been forced upon the congregations. We are told that one poor woman, upon the death of whose husband a funeral-sermon was preached, remarked that all she could understand of the discourse was that her deceased partner was named Hans. The Germans, as Hornik tells us, are indefatigable in their eagerness to uproot the Wendish language, consoling themselves, sometimes, with the idea that the schools will destroy it, and sometimes, the railways. It is just the same talk which we constantly hear from the English Philistines, whose object is to stamp out the Welsh language. In spite of all these efforts at Germanisation, the Sorbs still maintain their nationality, though Herr Andree, in his "Wendische Wanderstudien" (Stuttgart, 1874), would have us think otherwise. In this case, however, the wish is probably father to the thought. According to Hornik, it is the great object of the German officials to make the Wendish-speaking population appear as few as possible in all Government reports.

At the present time they appear to be a cheerful, well-conducted people, devoted to agriculture. They are all Protestants, with the exception of 12,000 Roman Catholics. In the year 1854, about 400 Sorbs, for the most part from Prussia, emigrated to Texas under the leadership of their pastor, Kilian. Here they settled in Bastrop County, and have preserved their native language till the present day by means of their schools and their two churches, where the service is conducted in the Wendish language.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

In later times¹ the Sorbs have occasionally distinguished themselves and made some political figure. Meantime their Casopis, or journal, appears twice a year at Bautzen, and contains many excellent articles written both by Upper and Lower Wends, dealing with Wendish philology and their early and modern history. Before leaving this interesting little people, we must not forget the large collection of their popular songs published by Haupt and Schmaler in 1842-3. Attention may also be called to "Wendische Sagen, Märchen und abergläubische Gebräuche, gesammelt und nacherzählt von Edm. Veckenstedt, 1880." These are the great days of folk-songs and folk-tales, and nationalism in literature. Even so obscure a people as the Lusatian Wends may be found to yield a treasure to those who are curious in these matters.

¹ See Hornik's Essay in "Slavianski Slovnik," p. 94.

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

247

CHAPTER X.

THE POLABES.

BESIDES the Lusatian Wends, of whom such scanty
fragments now exist, there were two other great
Slavonic families which once occupied the northern
coast of Germany. They have been classified by
Schafarik, in his "Slavische Alterthümer," as follows:—

1. The Lutitzer, or Weleten, who inhabited the country between the Oder, the Baltic, and the Elbe, called in Slavonic Labe, whence the name Polabe, or people living on the Elbe; these again were divided into many subordinate tribes, which need not be recapitulated here. The traces of some of these peoples may be found in the local nomenclature,—all the north part of Germany being studded with towns and villages which carry with them unmistakable proofs of their Slavonic origin.

2. The Bodritzer, also sub-divided into many tribes,
dwelling westward of the Lutitzer in the present
Mecklenburg and Holstein.

Of the Slavonic languages spoken in the north
of Germany the Lusatian Wendish and Kashubish
(a dialect of Polish, and therefore included under
that language) are alone living. Polabish is the
only one of those which are extinct which has
bequeathed any memorials to us, and these memo

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

rials are but scanty. It is considered by Schleicher, owing to the possession of nasals and other peculiarities, to have more affinity to Polish than Czech. During the first five-and-twenty years of last century, this Slavonic language gave its expiring gasp in the eastern corner of the former kingdom of Hanover, and especially in the circuit of Lüchow, which, even up to the present time, is called Wendland—Wends being the name by which the Slavs were of old time called by the Germans, and the term is still applied to the Sorbs and the Slovenes. The language of the latter, being sometimes styled Wendish, causes an unnecessary confusion with the Lusatians, whereas the Slovenes belong to the eastern and the Lusatians to the western branch of the great Slavonic family.

Between the years 1691 and 1786 certain vocabularies and dialogues in this language were taken down, and it is upon these that Schleicher has based his grammar.¹ The following are some of the chief memorials of this interesting language :—

¹ See "Laut- und Formenlehre der polabischen Sprache, von August Schleicher," St. Petersburg, 1871. This was a posthumous work, edited by Leskien. There is also a work by the Russian Slavist, Hilferding, "Pametniki nariechia Zalabskikh Drevlian i Glinian," St. Petersburg, 1856. Schleicher appends a vocabulary, in which he corrects the orthography of the Polabish words. Of the highest value are the collections published by Dr. Pfuhl, in the Journal of the Lusatian Society, mentioned in the previous chapter. Here the vocabularies and other fragments are printed *verbatim*; and, without wishing to undervalue the importance of the glossary of Schleicher, it seems preferable to have the words in such orthography as

THE POLABES.

249

1. A German-Wendish Dictionary, compiled at the end of the seventeenth century by Christopher Henning, by birth a Lusatian, who spent the last forty years of his life as a clergyman in the little town of Wustrow (Slavonic, Ostrov), near Lüchow. The pastor was inducted in 1679, and died in the year 1719, aged seventy. His first collection was accidentally burnt in the year 1691; but he went to work again with a brave heart and finished a second in 1705. Most of his words were taken down from the lips of a peasant, named John Janisch. In the time of Henning, the young people were already ignorant of the language, and the old people gave their information about it reluctantly from fear of being laughed at. Divine Service is said to have been held in Wendish at Wustrow even so late as the year 1751. Of the materials accumulated by Henning two MSS. remain, the first of which is preserved in the library of the Upper Lusatian Learned Society ("Oberlausitsche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften") at Görlitz, and the other at Hanover. Of one of these a copy was made, which was long preserved in the family of the Von Platows, and printed by Count Potocki in his "Voyage dans quelques Parties de la Basse-Saxe pour la Recherche des Antiquités Slavs ou Vendes," Hamburg, 1795. This work teems with mistakes and is now valueless; it belongs to the category of such publications as Masch's

suggested itself to the person who heard them and took them down. I have used Dr. Pfuhl's collections throughout this chapter.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

“Idols of the Obotrites” (Die gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Obotriten).¹ In these productions and many similar ones before the time of Dobrovsky we get a great deal of Slavonic enthusiasm, but little science or criticism. An Englishman is forcibly reminded of the vagaries of such Celtomaniacs as Dr. Pughe.

2. The Lord's Prayer. Of this two versions have been preserved: one is appended by Henning to his Dictionary, and there is another version preserved in the year 1691 by the pastor, Mithof, who was a friend of Leibnitz.

3. A Comic Song, being a kind of catch, to be sung by three persons, preserved by Henning, and printed in the collection of Lusatian songs published by Haupt and Schmaler at Bautzen, previously alluded to.

4. A little French-Slavonic vocabulary compiled in the year 1698 by Johann Friedrich Pfeffinger, and included by Eccard in his “Historia Studii Etymologici Linguæ Germanicæ,” Hanover, 1721. Said by Hilferding to be full of errors.

5. Slavonic Words and Dialogues collected by a certain farmer, named Johann Parum-Schultz, at Süthen, in the country, formerly occupied by the Slavonic tribe of the Drevianians. This indefatigable man appears to have occupied himself many years with a kind of chronicle of the chief events of his parish. Amidst a great deal of miscellaneous and

¹ Vide *supra*, p. 9.

THE POLABES.

251

trivial information, he has recorded much that is valuable, especially when he treats of ancient customs prevalent in his neighbourhood, or once existing, of which an account had been given him by elderly persons. On page 131 of his manuscript, the compiler remarks that in this year (1724 or 1725) he wishes to say something about the Wendish language. Some of the old people spoke half Wendish, half German. His sister, about five years younger, understood something of the Wendish language, but his brother, eight years younger, nothing at all. He (the compiler) was a man of forty-seven years of age. When he and about three other persons in his village were gone, no one would know properly how a dog was called in Wendish. This precious manuscript is still in the possession of his descendants in Süthen, his native village. Unfortunately, eleven leaves have been torn out by an unscrupulous person to whom it was lent.

6. A collection of 300 words, printed in 1744 in the "Hamburgische Vermischte Bibliothek" of no especial value.

7. The Lord's Prayer and a Protestant *Beichtformel*, or Form of Confession, taken down about the middle of last century by the burgomaster Müller at Lüchow, from the dictation of his grandmother, Emmerentia Weling. In the same way, the late Edwin Norris told us that he could repeat the Lord's Prayer and Creed, which he had learned from the dictation of an aged Cornishman who had retained it in his memory long after the language had ceased to be spoken. This *Beichtformel* has been printed

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

in a very careless manner in Potocki's work, previously
alluded to.

8. One hundred and one Slavonic or Wendish words, with German translation, taken down by a certain Hintz, at Lüchow.

I have thought myself warranted in giving at some length the sources of our information about Polabish, because the works in which these vocabularies have been reprinted, are in languages which it is not very much the fashion to study in this country, and therefore the account may be new to some of my readers. The parallel between Cornish and Wendish is curious; both died out in the eighteenth century, and have left but few memorials. As many of these vocabularies were taken down by men but ill-acquainted with any Slavonic language, from the mouths of people who in their turn were imperfectly acquainted with German, we can easily imagine that many mistakes have arisen. Sometimes matters were even more complicated; because the only German which the Polabish peasant understood, besides his native Slavonic, was Platt-Deutsch. Some amusing examples are given by Schleicher in his Grammar (pp. 12, 13), of which the two following may suffice. Thus Pfeffinger, in his little French-Slavonic Vocabulary, which I have marked No. 4 in my list of documents, has the following: "De l'Acier, Stohl, ou Eycratina." Here the peasant has misunderstood him, and has given him the past participle of the verb "to steal," "oukradenii, gestohlener."

Henning has entered among his words, greusvai,

THE POLABES.

253

Bär, ursus, and the mistake must have arisen in the
following way :—the Platt-Deutsch equivalent of the
German Birne is Bere, and this led the Slav to give
the Slavonic word for pear.

These, with a few other less important vocabularies,
are the last remaining fragments of the language of
the Polabish Slavs, who have been either extirpated
by the Germans or mixed up with them, leaving only
memorials in the bullet-shaped Slavonic skull, the
provincialisms of here and there an obscure village,
and some names of places.

The subject of the Germanisation of the Baltic
Slavs has been thoroughly handled by Perwolf, in his
work published at St. Petersburg in 1876. The
Teutonic hand has lain heavily upon the unfortunate
Slavs from the time of Charles the Great to that
of the Prussian kings almost within our own time.
In the fourteenth century, we are told that the
Hochmeister of the Teutonic order, Siegfried von
Feuchtwangen, used to say that he never enjoyed a
meal unless he had previously hanged a couple of
Prussian,¹ Pomeranian, or Polish peasants.

In conclusion, I have thought it worth while to
add a few words on Slavonic proverbs. Of these
there are rich collections, as might be expected among
peoples who have so much oral literature.

¹ By this word is meant, not the German Prussians, as we
are accustomed to use the word, but the original Prussians; a
people cognate with the Lithuanians and Letts, whose language
became extinct in the sixteenth century, and has left only a few
vocabularies, and a translation of Luther's catechism. Vide
supra p. II.

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EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

On the Russian proverbs good works have been published by Snegîrev and Dahl, and of the Malo-Russian by Dragomanov (Malorousskia Narodnia Predania i Razskazî). An excellent work is that published by the poet Celakovsky at Prague, in 1852, in Cech, "The Wisdom of the Slavonic People in Proverbs" (Mudroslovi Slovanského Narodu v Prislovich). They help us to form an idea of the modes of life and habits of thought of these races. Let us take as examples the following Russian ones :—

Poverty is companion of stupidity.

White hands love the labour of others.

The ears do not grow higher than the forehead.

In a good head are a hundred hands.

Liberty is better to a bird than a golden cage.

To speak truth is to lose a friend.

The grave sets the crooked man straight, and a stick the obstinate man.

Measure ten times, but only cut once.

Dear but precious, cheap but spoilt.

We do not plough or sow for fools, they grow of themselves.

If you make yourself a sheep, there are plenty of wolves ready.

Ivan plays on the pipe, but Mary is dying of hunger.

Play for the cat, tears for the mouse.

As the priest, so is the parish.

A flattering speech is more powerful than a stick.

You cannot drain a river with a spoon.

Better to live in poverty than with riches in slavery.

THE POLABES.

255

The tongue is little, but it commands the whole
body.

The following are from the Polish :—
Bread on a journey is never a heavy burden.
Plenty of talk and the wolf gets among the sheep.
When you've no goods, the king can take nothing.
Where God builds a church, the Devil builds a
chapel.¹

A fool gives, a wise man takes.

One fool makes many.

There must be great hunger when one wolf eats
another.

One raven does not pick out the eyes of another.

Ignorance causes astonishment.

He who gave teeth will give bread for the mouth.

He who does not wish to give has plenty of ways
of excusing himself.

To him who rises early God is bounteous.

He who doesn't know how to pray ought to go to
sea.

The favour of a lord rides on a piebald horse (i.e.,
is full of variety).

The silence of a fool makes him pass for a wise
man.

You can't shut the door with your head.

Thanks pay no taxes.

The rabbit has more than one entrance to its hole.

Drunkenness is voluntary madness.

¹ Cf. the well-known lines of Defoe.

APPENDIX.

I HAVE relegated to this part of my book a few points
of more minute detail, which may be interesting to
the specialist.

Page 4.—The monograph by Miklosich is entitled, “Die Slavischen Elemente im Neugriechischen.” Colonel Leake had long before remarked: “In many instances the ancient name has received a Sclavonian termination in *ista*, *itsa*, *itzi*, *ava*, or *ova*; in others the name is entirely Sclavonian, and often the same as that of places in the most distant parts of Russia, or other countries where dialects of Illyric are spoken.”

Page 8.—This curious craze about the Slavs is still turning up, but cannot now be considered worthy of any serious attention. It will be observed that the *t* in the word Wiltshire is derived from the word *tun*, and the form is Wilsætas; we never find Wiltsætas.

Page 15.—The word *ploug* is connected by Schleicher with the root *plou*, *navigare* (See “Die Formenlehre der kirchenslawischen Sprache,” p. 161); also in the same work the remarks on the foreign words in Palæoslavonic (p. 141), where Schleicher holds the Slavonic *khleb*, bread, to be derived from the Gothic *plaibs*.

Page 34.—As regards the word Antes, the other name applied by Jordanes to the Slavs, they appear never to have used it themselves, and Schafarik connects it with a Gothic root.

APPENDIX.

257

Page 35.—A proof that the words *slava* and *slovo* are from the same root is afforded by the Little-Russian language, in which *slava* means *discourse*. See Piskounov, “Dictionary of the Oukraine Language” (“Slovnitza Oukrainskoi Movi”), Odessa, 1873.

Page 62.—The use of the word *pogan*, pl. *poganî*, among the Slavs led the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus into a strange mistake when he wrote: “καὶ γὰρ παγανοὶ κατὰ τὴν τῶν Σκλάβων γλῶσσαν ἀβάπτιστοι ἑρμηνεύονται.” See Mr. Freeman’s interesting paper, “Some Points in the Later History of the Greek Language” (*Journal of Hellenic Studies*, vol. iii., part 2). He justly remarks: “Constantine’s knowledge of Latin must have been but small.” His mistake certainly proves that the word must have become thoroughly Slavonised.

Page 91.—The reproaches which Ivan addresses to these monks would make us believe that they were in the habit of leading very jovial lives, and fully supporting the traditional views of the monastic character.

Page 92.—It was edited by Bodianski in 1848. Krizhanich was very bold in his views; he even went so far as to hope to create a common Slavonic language, which should be intelligible to all members of the family, whether Russians or Poles, Serbs or Cechs.

Page 113.—A version of the New Testament into Malo-Russian was published at Vienna in 1871 by Koulish and Pouloui.

Page 188.—A very interesting account of the foundation of the University of Cracow is given by Caro in the second volume of the “Geschichte Polens.” A Jew was provided for the scholars from whom they might borrow, when in need, at the rate of 19 per cent. (ii. 337).

s

258

EARLY SLAVONIC LITERATURE.

Page 190.—According to another account, the family of the astronomer came from a place near Frankenstein, in Silesia, formerly called Koppirneck, now Köppernick.

Page 205.—Besides the hymn, “Hospodine pomiluj,” there is also another of great antiquity addressed to St. Wenceslaus, beginning, “Svaty Václave, vevodo ceské zeme” (Holy Wenceslaus, lord of the Bohemian land). See Tieftrunk, “History of Bohemian Literature,” p. 24.

Page 206.—The whole history of the discovery of the Bohemian manuscripts will be found described in “Die Cecho-Slaven, von Vlach und Helfert,” Vienna, 1883.

As early as the years 1803 and 1804 fragments of writing had been noticed in the crypt of the church at Königinhof by a certain Franz Stovicek, but the discovery was allowed to go by without any further attention.

The difficulty about drums being mentioned in the Königinhof manuscript has been fully met by its defenders. They are mentioned by Leo the Deacon, in the tenth century, who tells us that the Byzantine emperor, John Zimisces, in his journey from the Balkan to the Danube, ordered the drums to be beaten (rà τύμπανα παταγεῖν).

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