Chapter X: E. Wandering Songs, Ballads

The Ukrainians have many of the common songs whose themes are proper to all the rest of the world’s peoples--_songs that are the common treasury of mankind_; such as songs of the mediaeval chivalric knighthood, or adopted according to the characteristic views and inclinations of the Ukrainians. The general, universal ballads were remodeled into typical Ukrainian; popular heroes and fictitious persons introduced so as to render them indigenous. Following are some of the general subjects:

1. A widow and her daughter by mistake marry their own son and
brother.

2. Sweethearts drown themselves because parents opposed their
marriage.

3. A man commits suicide on the grave of his wife whom he killed
through misunderstanding.

4. A father sells his daughter to bandits, while her brother rescues
her.

5. Foreigners seduce a girl, promising to marry her, but they burn
her having tied her to a pine tree.

6. A woman marries another man, thinking her husband to have died in
war; he appears at her wedding.

7. A Cossack kills his perfidious sweetheart.

8. A girl poisons her perfidious fiancé.

A mother is the cause of the death of her grand-child and daughter-in-law through her severity. The daughter-in-law had been compelled to do most of the work; she went to reap the corn on Sunday leaving her child asleep. Being in a hurry to milk the cows, she forgot the infant in the field. Being reminded of her child by the mother-in-law, she ran wildly and was told by an eagle that three hawks--“nurses”--have killed the child:

... The first one pecks the eyes
The second one plucks the little heart
The third one pulls the little bones....

In her despair the young mother returned home asking the mother-in-law to hand her a knife, ostensibly to cut some cloth, but stabbed herself therewith, exclaiming:

... There, mother, thou hast three sins on thy soul:
The first sin--the holy Sunday
The second sin--the little infant
The third sin--I, young Hala....[1]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lysenko: “Collection of Ukrainian Songs,” Vol. V, p. 17.