HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

426 ALBERT B. LORDrequest to his page Jarema that leads to Xvedir's proper burial. Thisis not an epic, but strictly a ballad, and a very fine one, I might say.Indeed, the quality of the dumy as ballads is very high.But not all the dumy are balladic. The duma "Pro Kiśku Samijla"(About Kiśka Samijlo), for example, is not a ballad but all epic. It isthe story of an escape, beginning with the Cossacks as captives andending with their arrival on home territory. It differs from escapestories in South Slavic epic most notably because its prison scenetakes place on a galley, not on dry land. Also, although escape storiescan be found, especially in the hajduk traditions, South Slavictradition tends to deal more with rescue and release for ransom.While actual rescue songs are almost non-existent in Ukrainian,there are several dumy other than that of Samijlo Kiśka that dealwith prisoners or captives who talk about being released for ransom,or who escape. In the dumy there is mention of ransom, as in theduma "Pro plac nevil'nyka" (About the lament of a captive), but noransoming. Escapes occur in the dumy about Ivan Bohuslavec' andMarusja Bohuslavka, but they do not have the developed narrativewe associate with epic. The subject of escape or rescue is treated inthe dumy, to be sure, as in the other three Slavic traditions, but inquite a different manner. The dumy seem to stand alone in theirelegiac starkness, as for instance, the duma about the brothers ofSamarka and the duma about the brothers from Azov.Another possible exception to the classification of the dumy asballads is the justly famous duma about Ivan Konovcenko. In thefullness of its narrative this duma is epic and so I prefer to classify it,but the subject of a mother's curse and its tragic consequences iscloser to the ballads, with their propensity for domestic tragedy.I suspect that on the whole the dumy and their counterparts in theother Slavic traditions are later phenomena than the byliny and theSouth Slavic epics. The emphasis on "Cossack" alone is sufficient toindicate this. The hajduk songs in South Slavic are generally youngerthan the return songs or wedding songs, which are based on myth.The hajduk songs are closer to and overlap with historical songs.***In Slavic scholarship it is customary to divide traditional sungnarrative into ancient, mythological, or historical. Since the history ofthe people of each tradition is peculiar to them, in spite of similarityof experiences, comparative study of the historical songs wouldconstitute comparative history. But some songs in all four traditions