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

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

The Servians are accustomed to divide their songs into two great
portions. Short compositions in various measures, either lyric or
epic, and sung without instrumental accompaniment, they call _shenske
pjesme_, or _female songs_, because they are mostly made by females.
The other portion, consisting of long epic tales in verses of five
regular trochaic feet, and chanted to the _Gusle_, a kind of simple
violin with one chord, they called _Yunatchke pjesme,_ that is,
_heroic_ or _young men's songs_; for it is an interesting fact, that
the ideas of a _young man_ and of a _hero_, are expressed in Servian
by one and the same word, _Yunak_. The first are, in a very high
degree, of a domestic character. They accompany us through all the
different relations of domestic life; as well through its daily
occupations, as through the holidays and festivals which interrupt its
ordinary course. Much has been said, and