Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/143

 and the singing was on the verge of tears. Many of the prisoners walked to and fro with their balalaikas, their sheepskins over their shoulders, twanging the strings with a jaunty air. In the special division they even got up a chorus of eight voices. They sang capitally to the accompaniment of balalaikas and guitars. Few of the songs were genuine peasant songs. I only remember one and it was sung with spirit:

And I heard a variation of that song which I had never heard before. Several verses were added at the end:

For the most part they sang what are called in Russia “prison” songs, all well-known ones. One of them, “In times gone by,” was a comic song, describing how a man had enjoyed himself in the past and lived like a gentleman at large, but now was shut up in prison. It described how he had “flavoured blancmange with champagne” in old days and now:

A popular favourite was the hackneyed song:

and so on. There were mournful songs too. One was a purely convict song, a familiar one too, I believe: