Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/369

Rh ear. No one else can use them, while they render the reading of his own works difficult and intolerably tiresome.

The last publication of a text of Ollantay was by the Rev. J. H. Gybbon Spilsbury, at Buenos Ayres in 1907, accompanied by Spanish, English, and French translations in parallel columns.

There is truth in what Zegarra says, that the attempts to translate line for line, by von Tschudi and myself, 'fail to convey a proper idea of the original drama to European readers, the result being alike contrary to the genius of the modern languages of Europe and to that of the Quichua language.' Zegarra accordingly gives a very free translation in French.

In the present translation I believe that I have always preserved the sense of the original, without necessarily binding myself to the words. The original is in octosyllabic lines. Songs and important speeches are in quatrains of octosyllabic lines, the first and last rhyming, and the second and third. I have endeavoured to keep to octosyllabic lines as far as possible, because they give a better idea of the original; and I have also tried to preserve the form of the songs and speeches.

The drama opens towards the close of the reign of the Inca Pachacuti, the greatest of all the Incas, and the scene is laid at Cuzco or at Ollantay-tampu, in the valley of the Vilcamayu. The story turns on the love of a great chief, but not of the blood-royal, with a daughter of the Inca. This would not have been prohibited in former reigns, for the marriage of a sister by the sovereign or his heir, and the marriage of princesses only with princes of the blood-royal, were rules first introduced by Pachacuti. His imperial power and greatness led