is attempt to fix them by writing,
seemed to them an idle and useless occupation. The only reason which
they could conceive for it was, that the learned idler meant to
ridicule them; and his request was frequently answered by the words:
"We are no blind men to sing or recite songs to you."

Of the heroic poems, he tells us, that they are not only chanted, but
often recited, as _we_ are accustomed to _read_; and that in this
latter way, old people teach them by preference to the children. His
own father, grandfather, and uncle, were wont to recite and to sing
them; and the two latter even composed not a few. Among those from
whose lips he took down the present collection, were lads, peasants,
merchants, as also hayduks, i.e. highwaymen, in Servia a mode of life
less disreputable than with us, and somewhat approaching to heroism.
Further, at least seven or eight were blind men; all of them
professional bards, and almost the only persons willing to satisfy
him. The _shenske pjesme_, or female poems, he had to catch by chance;
and short as they are, it was easy to keep them in memory after having
heard them once or twice.

While these latter poems are mostly sung without any instrumental
accompaniment in the spinning-rooms, in the pastures, or at the
village dances; on the other hand the tavern, the public squares, the
festive halls of the chiefs, are the places where the Gusle is heard
which accompanies the heroic ballads. The bard chants two lines; then
he pauses and gives a few plaintive strokes on his primitive
instrument; then he chants again, and so on. He needs these short
pauses for recollection, as well as for invention. Although these
ballads are chiefly sung by blind men, yet no hero thinks it beneath
him to chant them to the Gusle. Pirch, a Prussian officer, who
travelled in Servia some twenty years ago, tells us, that the Knjas,
his host, took the instrument from the hands of the lad, for whom he
had sent to sing before his guest, because he did not satisfy him, and
played and chanted himself with a superior skill. Clergymen themselves
are not ashamed to do it. Nay, even Muhammedan-Bosnians, more Turks
than Servians, have preserved this partiality for their national
heroics. The great among them would not, indeed, themselves sing them;
but they cause them to be chanted before them; and it happened, that a
Christian prisoner in Semendria obtained his liberty by their
intercession with the Kadi, which he owed m