Page:The Ballads of Marko Kraljević.djvu/16

 Kačić made such skilful use of his themes, his additions and alterations were made with such easy mastery of traditional epithet and formula, that the South Slavs themselves overlooked the signs of modern treatment and accepted the book as a genuine record of the past. Numerous manuscript copies were made, certain pieces found their way into the rustic repertory, so that peasants and countrymen sang songs from Kačić in the fields.

Hitherto, the interest in Kačić had been entirely confined to the narrow limits of his own people, and even there, although the songs in the Razgovor were remembered and repeated, the name of the maker tended to sink into oblivion. But in 1760, the very year in which Kačić died, there was published in Edinburgh the first instalment of Macpherson's Ossian. The effect on the weary literature of the time was magical. Here was something strange and fresh and compelling! A wind from the wide spaces of sea and moorland blew into the crowded haunts of men, and under the new influence the forgotten treasures of ballad poetry were eagerly sought after and as eagerly displayed. The appearance of Percy's Reliques marks a turning-point in literary history. It is true that Percy manipulated his material with less adroitness than either Kačić or Macpherson, he nevertheless rescued a number of venerable ballads from impending destruction, the new spirit breathed authentically in him and his book became an inspiration.

Immense as was the influence of Ossian and the Reliques in Britain, it was perhaps even greater in Germany and on the Continent generally. The world was ripe for a breach with a monotonous literary convention. The polished age, the age of good sense, yearned in its heart for the primitive and the passionate. Ossian became a fever, an obsession that revealed itself often in childish and extravagant ways. All over Europe rocking-cradles