Page:The Ballads of Marko Kraljević.djvu/19

 year the same author produced the complete work under the title of Reise in Dalmazien. With Teutonic fidelity he reproduced the Serbian text of the "Klaggesang" including misprints—and gave an accurate rendering of Fortis' Italian version. This book, containing the Serbian original and the German translation of the Italian translation, was the material before Goethe when he set to work on that rendering of his own which has taken its place as a little masterpiece of the translator's art.

Although it has been shown that Fortis was first in the field, it must be stated here that the specimens of Serbian folk-song to which he drew the attention of the learned, owed their wider publicity to the efforts of Herder and the happy collaboration of a poet of world-wide renown. Stimulated thereto by the romantic revival in England, Herder had begun his celebrated collections of folk-poetry. He did not confine his labours to the German field, his taste was catholic and he laid under contribution all nations and all tongues. Thus in the first part of the Volkslieder (1778) we find two pieces from the Serbian: the first, translated by Herder himself, is entitled "Ein Gesang von Milos Cobilich und Vuko Brankovich, Morlakisch." The other, the "Klaggesang von der edlen Frauen des Asan Aga," is the work of Goethe.

In 1779 Herder published the second volume of Volkslieder. It contained two additional pieces from the Serbian, namely,