Page:Cheskian Anthology.pdf/23

. He gives the ancient text, and a modern rendering on the opposite side of the page. Of these interesting fragments W. Swoboda published a close and well-written version at Prague in the same year. These poems, written on parchment, were discovered in a chamber belonging to the church of Králodworsky (Königinhof) amidst a number of worthless documents. The MS. has been decided by competent judges to have been written at the end of the thirteenth century, though some of the poems are probably considerably older. They appear to have belonged to a far more extensive collection, of which they formed the 26th, 27th, and 28th chapters. Dobrowsky, in his history of the bohemian tongue and literature, lands the facility of style, the purity and correctness of the language, the grace, and the strength of these valuable records. As a specimen of the old bohemian language, and of the changes it has undergone during six centuries, I give the shortest of the poems with Hanka’s modernised version.