cantos.

Part of Poland being incorporated in the Austro-Hungarian empire, it
cannot be amiss to mention here the fact that its literature is
particularly rich in folk-tales, animal epics, apologues, religious
legends, and hero tales, although none of the poetical versions of
these works seem to be of sufficient weight or importance to require
detailed treatment in this volume.

With the exception of ancient Greece,--whose epic literature is so
rich and still exerts such an influence as to demand separate
treatment,--there do not seem to be any epics of great literary value
among the various races now occupying the Balkan Peninsula. Old
Rumanian literature, written in the Slavic tongue, boasts a few rhymed
chronicles which are sometimes termed epics, while modern Rumanian
prides itself upon Joan Delaemi's locally famous Epic of the Gypsies.

In Servia one discovers ancient epic songs celebrating the great feats
of national heroes and heroines, and relating particularly to the
country's prolonged struggle for independence. After translating the
main works of Tasso from the Italian for the benefit of his
countrymen, one of their poets--Gundulitch--composed a twenty-canto
epic entitled Osman, wherein he described the war between the Poles
and Turks in 1621. The Servian dramatist Palmotitch later composed the
Christiad, or life of Christ, and in the nineteenth century
Milutinovitch wrote a Servian epic, while Mazuranie and Bogovitch
penned similar poems in Croatian. As for the Bulgarians they do not
seem to have any epic of note.

Turkish literature having been successively under Persian, Arabic, and
French influence, has no characteristic epics, although it possesses
wonderful cycles of fairy and folk-tales,--material from which
excellent epics could be evolved were it handled by a poet of genius.
The Asiatic part of Turkey being occupied mainly by Arabians, who
profess the Mohammedan religion, it is natural that the sayings and
doings of Mohammed should form no small part of their literature. The
most important of these collections in regard to the Prophet were made
by Al-Bukhari, Muslem, and Al-Tirmidhi.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: See the author's "Legends of Switzerland."]

HEBREW AND EARLY CHRISTIAN EPICS

JOB

The Book of Job ranks as "one of that group of five or six world poems
that stand as universal expressions of the human spirit." For that
reason it is considered the representative Hebrew epi