cherish her nor
appreciate her as she deserved to be: and it was with a heart weighed
down with foreboding as well as with sorrow that he followed the wedding
party into the school-house.

CHAPTER XVI

"The waters of the Maros flow sluggishly."

But even the bridegroom's unconventional and reprehensible conduct had
not the power to damp for long the spirits of the guests.

By the time the soup had been eaten and the glasses filled with wine,
the noise in the schoolroom had already become deafening, and no person
of moderate vocal calibre could have heard himself speak. The time had
come for everyone to talk at the top of his or her voice, for no one to
listen, and for laughter--irresponsible, immoderate laughter--to ring
from end to end of the room.

The gipsies were scraping their fiddles, blowing their clarionets and
banging their czimbalom with all the vigour of which they were capable.
They, at any rate, were determined to be heard above the din. The
leader, with his violin under his chin, had already begun his round of
the two huge tables, pausing for awhile behind every chair--just long
enough to play into the ear of every single guest his or her favourite
song.

For thus custom demands it.

There are hundreds and hundreds of Hungarian folk-songs, and to a
stranger's ear no doubt these have a great similarity among themselves,
but to a Hungarian there is a world of difference in each: for to him it
is the words that have a meaning. The songs are, for the most part,
love-songs, and all are written in that quaint, symbolic style, full of
poetic imagery, which is peculiar to the Magyar language.

When we remember that in the terrible revolution of '48, when these same
Hungarian peasant lads who composed the bulk of Kossuth's followers
fought against the Austrian army, and subsequently against the combined
armies of Russia and of Austria, when we remember that throughout that
terrible campaign they were always accompanied by their gipsy bands, we
begin to realize how great a part national music plays in the national
spirit of Hungary. The sweet, sad folk-songs rang in the fighting lads'
ears when they fell in their hundreds before the superior arms and
numbers of their powerful neighbours, they inspired them and urged them,
they helped them to win while they could, and to yield only when
overwhelming numbers finally crushed their powers of resistance. Gipsy
musicians fell beside the young soldiers,