The Ballads of Marko Kraljevie. Translated by D. H. Low.
(Cambridge University Press. 15s.)—These lively ballads form a cycle relating the tremendous deeds of the Serbian hero, Marko Kraljevic. They are of traditional origin and were written down little more than a hundred years ago. Marko stands out as a more natural character than the usual figure of heroic ballads, and even shows a certain economy in his heroism at times. Probably this is because the ballads are compara- tively recent, having arisen during the Turkish domination in the fifteenth century, when the events related might have been in living memory. The line-for-line prose translation is a great improvement on the free metrical rendering which makes tedious so many adaptations of folk-poetry, for the bards or guslars who made these ballads were great story-tellers—their technique is superb, we should say now, and exactitude of translation alone can do them justice. Their conciseness of effect is the better brought out in this case as each line, following the original, is complete in sense. The loss of rhythm does not outweigh the advantages thus gained of spirited comedy and swift narrative (apart from the repetitions essential to all oral poetry) which Mr. Low presents us in unaffected diction.
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