Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/393

 Shakespearian Story in Serbian Folklore. 85

uttering a word, she gracefully removed her casque with the chibouk, and behold ! the two long plaits uncoiled before the dumbfounded gaze of the outwitted gallant ! With one violent wrench, Marko burst his chains, seized his sword, smote off the head of Ibrahim, and also of a vizier who was standing by, and of a large multitude of Turks besides, and then returned with his faithful wife to Prilep. •

The second song — the ballad of "Marko Kraljevic and Gjura Golemovic " {Kraljevic Marko u narodnim pesmanta) — also concerns Kraljevic Marko. His antagonist this time, however, is not a Turk, but another well-known Serbian hero Golemovic. The wager again results from the praises bestowed by Marko on the wisdom of his wife at a banquet where the heroes are drinking wine together. Each man stakes his head, as in the other ballad. The gallant is also similarly disguised, Marko lending him his horse, his armour, his clothes and his gloves. Only when Golemovic arrives at Prilep, he is received by Angjelija herself and not by her slave. Although she clearly divines his intention, she pretends not to have realised that he is not her husband, but at nightfall she contrives to slip away, and to send her slave Kumrija — who consents to do so for a goodly reward — in her place to the bed-chamber where the knight is expecting her. Next morning Golemovic severed the slave's hair and took away her gold ring. The end is not the same as in the preceding ballad. The heroine does not go to seek her husband, but simply sends him a letter telling him what has happened. Golemovic ends by committing suicide.

The third song — "The Wife of Jankovic Stojan " (Milan Ostetnik, Razne srpske narodne pjesme) — is a ballad of Southern Dalmatia. All the personages are different. The heroes are Jankovic Stojan, a favourite hero in our national poetry, and Ivan Krusevac, otherwise unknown. The wager is concluded under the same circumstances as in the other ballads. We have the banquet of the heroes, their vauntings, and the praise bestowed by Stojan upon his