Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/164



NDER this article you are not to expect an Iliad of Homer or the Songs of an Ossian. How can such poetry be thought of among the poor Sclavonian races? What I intend to give are effusions of a tender, and often an echoing heart, simple natural poetry; a small contribution to the collections of the popular ballads of the European nations, from a people inhabiting the upper regions of the Gulf of Finnland, whom no man would suspect of possessing a poetic vein.

More than once I have been in doubt, at one and the other ballad, whether I should commit it to paper or not. But, if we place ourselves in the sphere of ideas of such a simple people, and consider that to them with whom a plated button, a piece of linen, and old dollar, descends from a great-great-grandfather as an inheritance to the latest posterity, a gaudy silken ribbon is wealth: In like manner, though to such as are accustomed to gems and jewels, and all the tinsel of the earth, these artless lays may appear contemptible; yet, to those who can enter into the feelings and views of a particular person, or of a particular nation, they may be welcome, if not actually pleasing.

I was present at one of their marriage ceremonies. But many of the particulars are entirely gone out of my mind; and scraps and fragments are hardly worth relating. Presents were distributed among the guests, who in return gave some small piece of money. On the entrance of the bridegroom, a song was struck up, which, with an English translation, I subjoin in the Esthonian tongue, to enable the