Page:The Ballads of Marko Kraljević.djvu/227



the court poetry that is said to have flourished in the time of Tsar Dushan and before it, nothing has come down to us, and after Kossovo (1389) anything in the nature of court poetry must speedily have ceased to exist. But Serbian minstrelsy did not altogether perish; the popular ballad gained new force and significance, and in all probability the heroes of Kossovo were already widely sung during the life-time of many who had actually fought in that battle. For the Serb is a born maker, and the two Greek historians Ducas and Laonicas, who are thought to have lived within seventy-five years of the date of Kossovo, are both familiar with the traditional story of the struggle. Laonicas, indeed, relates how a Serbian knight called rode alone into the Turkish camp. Pretending to be a deserter with important information he gained access to Murad's presence and slew the Sultan with a spear-thrust. Ducas tells much the same story but does not give the name of the Serbian knight; he says, moreover, that the weapon used was a dagger, on which point he is in agreement with the existing poems.

An anonymous translation of Ducas in Italian contains many additional details that are certainly drawn from poems, quite in the manner of Pitscottie's "Chronicle," and as this Italian version dates from the fifteenth century, it is clear that Murad's death at the hands of Miloš had become a well-known ballad theme very soon indeed after the event.

But the earliest direct references to the poems are in German, and occur in the writings of Kuripešić who travelled from Vienna to Constantinople in 1531.

Stephan Gerlach relates in his diary (1573-78) that near Pirot the ruins of a castle were pointed out to him as being once the abode of Miloš Obilić: "Die Christen sagen, das Milosch Coboli, welcher den türkischen Kayser Murat erstochen, da seine Wohnung gehabt habe." With reference to dancing and the singing of folk-songs he says: "Nach dem Essen haben die Jungfern in einem Reyhen getantzt und Chorweise gesungen, je zwei und zwei miteinander… ."

With regard to the Marko ballads, the oldest known (a pesme dugog