Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/460

 436 Modern Ricssian Popular Songs.

' Don't love, my dear, for wealth, Love only for sympathy. We need not have a palace. We may just live in a cottage."

" I used to say to my boy

I am not of a rich house.

He would say, — " My own darling,

I don't care anything about the house ". "

" I have a lot of wealth : One room is full of stones, Another full of bricks. I don't want to take up with A rich young man."

Very often the girl objects to the size of her lover's family, and in one song the young man tries to win her over by pointing out the smallness of his family : —

" I'll put on my new boots And I'll go to court my girl To whom I would say, — " Marry me, my darling, I have a very small family, Only father, mother, and a little sister"."

The family regime, as described in the old folk-songs,, made itself felt particularly strongly in the question of marriage. The severe rule of the parents, who made the whole family submit to their will in all questions of family life, did not recognise the right of the children to choose freely their husbands or wives, and establish their own lot independently of the parents. The children submitted to this control as to an inevitable fate. But at present the youth in the Russian village protest against this interference in their intimate life, and are not afraid to enter into con- flict with the parents, to stand out against their despotism and cruelty. In one song the son invites his father to discuss with him the question of the choice of a wife which