2 in
the churches of Kola and Gnesen, the places where St. Adalbert lived
and died. It is a prayer to the Virgin, ending with a sixfold Amen;
and was formerly sung by the soldiers when advancing to battle. For
that reason probably we find it frequently called a war song.

The popular ballads, published by Woicicki and Zegota Pauli, are not
distinguished in any way from those still extant among the Slovakians,
Bohemians, and Lusatian Sorabians. It can only be matter of surprise,
that they have imbibed no more of the wild and romantic character of
the ballads sung by the Ruthenians, with whom they live intermingled
in several regions. They are ruder in form; and alternately rhymed, or
distinguished from prose only by a certain irregular but prosodic
measure, sometimes trochaic, but mostly dactylic. With the classical
beauty of the Servian songs they can bear no comparison; in which
latter the perfect absence of _vulgarity_ may perhaps be partly
accounted for, by their having been produced among a people where no
privileged classes exist. Only in their wedding songs, and other
similar ones, is there a striking affinity; it is in general in these
relics of ancient times, that the popular poetry of the nations of the
Eastern and of the Western Stems meet in one distinct and fundamental
accord.

Many of the more ancient ballads extant among the Poles we find also
in one or other of the Western Slavic languages. For example, the
following; which exists in the Vendish language in a shape more
diffuse and twice as long; and also in Slovakian, still more
sketchlike. That the Polish ballad is derived from a time, when the
horrid invasions of the Tartars were at least still distinctly
remembered, we may safely conclude. In the Slovakian ballad the
invaders are called Turks; in the Vendish ballad, probably the latest
of the three, they have lost all individual nationality, and have
become merely "enemies," or "robbers."

THE INVASION OF THE TARTARS.[60]

Plundering are the Tartars,
Plundering Jashdow castle.

All the people fled,
Only a lad they met.

"Where's thy lord, my lad?
Where and in what tower
Is thy lady's bower?"

"I must not betray him,
Lest my lord should slay me."

"Not his anger fear,
Thou shalt stay not here,
Thou shalt go with us."

"My lord's and lady's bower
Is in the highest tower."

Once the Tartars shot,
And they hit them not.

Twice the Tartars shot,