contessa Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington Martinengo-Cesaresco

Obscure in their origin, and for the most part having at first had no such auxiliary as written record to aid their preservation, the single fact of the existence of folk-songs may in general suffice to proclaim them the true articulate voice of some sentiment or feeling, common to the large bulk of the people whence they emanate. It is plain that the fittest only can survive—only such as are truly germane to those who say or sing them. A herdsman or tiller of the soil strings together a few verses embodying some simple thought which came into his head whilst he looked at the green fields or the blue skies, or it may be as he acted in a humble way as village poet-laureate. One or two friends get them by heart, and possibly sing them at the fair in the next hamlet: if they hit, others catch them up, and so the song travels for miles and miles, and may live out generations. If not, the effusion of our poetical cowherd dies away quite silently—not much to his distress, for had its fate been more propitious its author would probably have been very little the wiser. One celebrated poet, and I think but one, has in our own times begun his career in like manner with the unknown folk-singer. The songs of Sandor PetÖfi were popular over the breadth of the Hungarian Puszta before ever they appeared in print; and those who know him, know how faithfully he breathes forth the soul of the Magyar race. In a certain sense it is true that every real poet is the spokesman of his people. No two works, for instance, are so characteristic of their respective countries as the Divina Commedia and Faust. Still, the hands of genius idealise what they touch; the great poet personifies rather than reflects his people, and if he serves them as representative, it is in an august, imperial fashion within the Senate House of Fame, outside whose doors the multitude hustles and seethes. When we want to see this multitude as in a mirror, to judge its common instincts and impulses that go very far to cast the nation in the type which makes it what it is, it is a safer and surer plan to search out its own spontaneous and untutored songs than to consult the master work attached to immortal names.

How far the individuality of a race is decided or modified by the natural phenomena in which it is placed is a nice point for discussion, and one not to be disposed of by off-hand generalities. In what consists the sympathetic link, sometimes weak and scarcely perceptible, at others visibly strong, between man and nature? Why does the emigrated mountaineer, settled in comfort, ease, and prosperity in some great metropolis, wake up one day with the knowledge that he must begone to the wooden chalet with the threat of the avalanche above and the menace of the flood below—or he must die? Is it force of early association, habit, or fancy? Why is the wearied town-tied brain-worker sensible of a nostalgia hardly less poignant when he calls to mind how the fires of day kindled across some scene of snow or sea with which his eyes were once familiar? Is it nothing more than the return of a long ago experienced admiration? I think that neither physicist nor psychologist—and both have a right to be heard in the matter—would answer that the cause of these sensations was to be thus shortly defined. Again ask the artist what the Athenian owed to the purity and proportion of the lines of Grecian landscape, what the Italian stole from the glow and glory of meridional light and colour—what the Teuton learnt from the ascending spires of Alpine ice? Was it that they saw and copied? Or rather, that Nature's spirit, vibrating through the pulses of their being, moulded into form the half-divine visions of master-sculptor, painter, architect?

It does not, however, require to go deeper than the surface of things in order to understand that a peoples' songs must be largely influenced by the accidents of natural phenomena, and especially where climate and physical conformation are such as must perforce stir and stimulate the imaginative faculties of the masses. We have an instance to the point in the ballads of the "mountainous island" bounded by seas and plains, which the natives call Hayasdan and we Armenia. The wondering emotion aroused by a first descent from the Alps into Italy is well known; to not a few of the mightiest of northern poets this journey has acted like a charm, a revelation, an awakening to fuller consciousness. In Armenia, the incantation of a like natural antithesis is worked by the advent of its every returning spring: a sluggard of a season that sleeps on soundly till near midsummer, but comes forth at last fully clothed in the gorgeous raiment of a king. In days gone by the Armenian spring was dedicated to the goddess Anahid, and as it broke over the land the whole people joined in joyful celebration of the feast of Varthavar or "Rose-blossoms," which since Christian times has been transformed into the three days' festival of the Transfiguration. Beautiful is the face of the country when the tardy sun begins to make up for lost time, as though his very life depended on it; shooting down his beams with fiery force through the rarefied ether, melting away the snows, and ripening all at once the grain and grapes, the wild fig, apricot and olive, mulberry and pomegranate. What wonder that the Armenian loves the revivifying lamp of day, that he turns the dying man towards it, and will not willingly commit his dead to the earth if some bright rays do not fall into the open grave! At the sun's reveille there is a general resurrection of all the buried winter population—women and children, cows and sheep, pink-eyed lemmings, black-eyed caraguz, and little kangaroo-shaped jerboas. Out, too, from their winter lairs come wolf and bear, hyena and tiger, leopard and wild boar. The stork returns to his nest on the broad chimney-pot, and this is what the peasant tells him of all that has happened in his absence:

Welcome, Stork!

Thou Stork, welcome;

Thou hast brought us the sign of spring,

Thou hast made our heart gay.

Descend, O Stork!

Descend, O Stork, upon our roof,

Make thy nest upon our ash-tree.

I will tell thee my thousand sorrows,

The sorrows of my heart, the thousand sorrows,

Stork, when thou didst go away,

When thou didst go away from our tree,

Withering winds did blow,

They dried up our smiling flowers.

The brilliant sky was obscured,

That brilliant sky was cloudy:

From above they were breaking the snow in pieces:

Winter approached, the destroyer of flowers.

Beginning from the rock of Varac,

Beginning from that rock of Varac,

The snow descended and covered all;

In our green meadow it was cold.

Stork, our little garden,

Our little garden was surrounded with snow;

Our green rose trees

Withered with the snow and the cold.

But now the rose trees in the garden are green again, and out abroad wild flowers enamel the earth. Down pour the torrents of melted snow off Mount Ararat, down crash the avalanches of ice and stones let loose by the sun's might; wherever an inch of soil or rock is uncovered it becomes a carpet of blossom. High up, even to 13,000 feet above the sea-level, the deep violet aster, the saxifrage, and crocus, and ranunculus, and all our old Alpine acquaintances, form a dainty morsel for the teeth, or a carpet for the foot, of swift capricorn or not less agile wild sheep. A little lower, amidst patches of yet frozen snow, hyacinths scent the air, yellow squills and blue anemones peep out, clumps of golden iris cluster between the rocks. There, too, is the "Fountain's Blood," or "Blood of the Seven Brothers," as the Turk would say, with its crimson, leafless stalk and lily-like bloom, the reddest of all red flowers. Upon the trees comes the sweet white kasbÉ, a kind of manna much relished by the inhabitants. Amongst the grass grow the Stars of Bethlehem, to remind us, as tradition has it, that hard by on Ararat—beyond question the great centre of Chaldean Star-worship—the wise men were appointed to watch for the appearance of a sign in the heavens, and that thence they started in quest of the place "where the young child lay." Tulips also abound; if we may credit the legend, they had their origin in the Armenian town of Erzeroom, springing from the life-blood of Ferdad when he threw himself from the rocks in despair at a false alarm of the death of his beloved Shireen.

Erzeroom is by common consent in these parts the very site of the Garden of Eden. For many centuries, affirms the Moslem, the flowers of Paradise might yet be seen blossoming round the source of the Euphrates not far from the town. But, alas! when the great Persian King Khosref Purveez, the rival of the above-mentioned Ferdad, was encamped in that neighbourhood, he was rash enough to spurn a message from the young Prophet Mohammed, offering him protection if he would embrace the faith of IslÂm. What booted the protection of an insignificant sectary to him? thought the Shah-in-Shah, and tossed the letter into the Euphrates. But Nature, horrified at the sacrilegious deed, dried up her flowers and fruits, and even parched the sources of the river itself; the last relic of Eden became a waste. There is a plaintive Armenian elegy composed in the person of Adam sitting at the gate of Paradise, and beholding Cherubim and Seraphim entering the Garden of which he once was king, "yea, like unto a powerful king!" The poet puts into Adam's mouth a new line of defence; he did not eat of the fruit, he says, until after he had witnessed its fatal effects upon Eve, when, seeing her despoiled of all her glory, he was touched with pity, and tasted the immortal fruit in the hope that the Creator contemplating them both in the same wretched plight might with paternal love take compassion on both. But vain was the hope; "the Lord cursed the serpent and Eve, and I was enslaved between them." "O Seraphim!" cries the exiled father of mankind:

High above the hardiest saxifrage tower the three thousand feet of everlasting snows that crown Mount Ararat. The Armenians call it Massis or "Mother of the World," and old geographers held that it was the centre of the earth, an hypothesis supported by various ingenious calculations. The Persians have their own set of legends about it; they say that Ararat was the cradle of the human race, and that at one time it afforded pasture up to the apex of its dome; but upon man's expulsion from Eden, Ahriman the serpent doomed the whole country to a ten months' winter. As to the semi-scriptural traditions gathered round the mountain, there is no end to them. "And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat," so says the Bible, and it is an article of faith with the Armenian peasant that it is still somewhere up at the top, only not visible. He is extremely loth to believe that anybody has actually attained the summit. Parrot's famous ascent was long regarded as the merest fable. At the foot of Ararat was a village named Argoory, or "he planted the vine," where Noah's vineyard is pointed out to this day, though the village itself was destroyed in 1840, when the mountain woke up from its long slumbers and rolled down its side a stream of boiling lava; but we are told that, owing to the sins of the world, the vines no longer bear fruit. Close at hand is Manard, "the mother lies here," alluding to the burial-place of Noah's wife, and yonder is Eravan or "Visible," the first dry land which Noah perceived as the waters receded. Armenian choniclers relate that when after leaving the ark the descendants of Noah dispersed to different quarters, one amongst them, by name Haig, the great-grandson of Japhet, settled with his family in Mesopotamia, where he probably took part in the building of the Tower of Babel. Later, however, upon Belus acquiring dominion over the land, Haig found his rule so irksome to himself and his clan that they migrated back in a body of 300 persons to Armenia, much to the displeasure of Belus, who summoned them to return, and when they refused, despatched a large army to coerce them into obedience. Haig collected his men on the shores of Van, and thus sagaciously addressed them:

When we meet with the army of Belus, let us attempt to draw near where he lies surrounded by his warriors; either we shall be killed, and our camp equipments and baggage will fall into his hands, or, making a show of the strength of our arm, we shall defeat his army, and victory will be ours.

These tactics proved completely successful, and Belus fell mortally wounded by an arrow from Haig's bow. Having in this way disposed of his enemies, the patriarch was able before he died to consolidate Hayasdan into a goodly kingdom, which he left to the authority of his son Armenag.

After the reign of Haig the thread of Armenian annals continues without break or hitch; it must be admitted that no people, not even the Jews, boast a history which "begins with the beginning" in a more thorough way, nor does the work of any chronicler proceed in a more methodical and circumstantial manner than that of Moses of Khoren, the Herodotus of Armenia. As is well known, Moses, writing in the fifth century, founded his chronicle upon a work undertaken about five hundred years before by one Marabas Cattina, a Syrian, at the request of the great Armenian monarch Vagshaishag. Marabas stated that his record was based upon a manuscript he had discovered in the archives of Nineveh which bore the indorsement, "This book, containing the annals of ancient history, was translated from the Chaldean into Greek, by order of Alexander the Great." Whatever may be the precise amount of credence to which the Chronicle of Moses is entitled, all will agree that it narrates the story of a high-spirited and intelligent people whom the alternating domination of Greek and Persian could not cower into relinquishing the substance of their liberties, and whose efforts, in the main successful, on behalf of their cherished independence, were never more vigorous than at times when their triumph seemed farthest off. For nearly a thousand years after the date of Moses of Khoren, his people maintained their autonomy, and whether we look before or after the flight of the last Armenian king before the soldiers of the Crescent, we must acknowledge that few nations have fought more valiantly for their political rights, whilst yet fewer have suffered more severely for their fidelity to their faith. It is the pride of the Armenians that theirs was the first country which adopted the Christian religion; it may well be their pride also, that they kept their Christianity in the teeth of persecutions which can only find a parallel in those undergone by the Hebrew race.

Armenia is naturally rich in early Christian legends, of which the most curious is perhaps that of the correspondence alleged to have occurred between Our Lord and Abgar, king of Hayasdan. The latter, it is said, having sent messengers to transact some business with the Roman generals quartered in Palestine, received on their return such accounts of the miracles performed by Jesus of Nazareth as convinced him either that Christ was God come down upon the earth, or that he was the son of God. Suffering from a grave malady, and hearing, moreover, that the Jews had set their hearts on doing despite to the Prophet who had risen in their midst, Abgar wrote a letter beseeching Christ to come to his capital and cure him of his sickness. "My city is indeed small," this letter naÏvely concludes, "but it is sufficient to contain us both." The king also sent a painter to Jerusalem, so that if Our Lord could not come to Edessa he might at least possess his portrait. The painter was one day endeavouring to fulfil his mission when he was observed by Christ, who passing a handkerchief over his face, gave it to the Armenian impressed with the likeness of his features. The response to Abgar's letter was written by St Thomas, who said, on behalf of his Divine Master, that his work lay elsewhere than in Armenia, but that after his Ascension he would send an Apostle to enlighten the people of that country. This correspondence, though now not accepted as authentic out of Armenia, was mentioned by some of the earliest Church historians, and it is asserted that one of the letters has been found written on papyrus in an Egyptian tomb.

Christianity seems to have made some way in Armenia in the second century, but to what extent is unknown. What is certain is, that in the third century, St Gregory the Illuminator, after having been tortured in twelve different ways by King Tiridates for refusing to worship the goddess Anahid, and kept at the bottom of a well for fourteen years, was taken out of it in consequence of a vision of the king's sister, and converted that monarch and all his subjects along with him. St Gregory is held in boundless reverence by the Armenians; he is almost looked upon as a divine viceroy, as will be seen from the following canzonette which Armenian children are taught to sing:

The poet of the people nowhere occupies himself with casting about for a fine subject; he writes of what he feels and of what he sees. The Armenian peasant sees the snow in winter; in summer he sees the flowers and the birds—only birds and flowers are to him the pleasanter sight, so he sings more about them. He rarely composes any verse without a flower or a bird being mentioned in it; all his similes are ornithological or botanical, and by them he expresses the tenderest emotions of his heart. There is a pathos, a simplicity really exquisite in the conception of some of these little bird-and-flower pieces, as, for example, in the subjoined "Lament of a Mother" over her dead babe:

The birds of Armenia are countless in their number and variety, from vulture to wren; there are so many of them that a man (it is said poetically) may ride for miles and miles and never see the ground, which they entirely cover, except over the small space from which they fly up with a deafening whizz to make a passage for his horse. At times the plains have the appearance of being dyed rose-colour through the swarms of the gorgeous red goose which congregate upon them, whilst here and there a whitish spot is formed by a troop of his grey-coated relatives. It seems that the Armenian has found out why it was the wild goose and the tame one separated from each other. Once upon a time, when all were wild and free, one goose said to another on the eve of a journey, "Mind you are ready, my friend, for, Inshallah (please God), I set out to-morrow morning." "And so will I," he profanely replied, "whether it pleases God or not." Sure enough next morning both geese were up betimes, and the religious one spread out his wings and sailed off lightly towards the distant land. But, lo! when the impious goose tried to do likewise, he flapped and flapped and could not stir from the ground. So a countryman caught him, and he and his children for ever fell into slavery.

The partridge is a great favourite of the Armenian, who does not tire of inventing lyrics in its honour. Here is a specimen:

Another song gives the piteous plaint of an unhappy partridge who was snared and eaten. "Like St Gregory, they let me down into a deep well; then they took me up and sat round a table, and they cut me into little pieces, like St James the Intercised." The crane, who, with the stork, brings the promise of summer on his wing, receives a warm welcome, and when the Armenian sees a crane in some foreign country he will say to him:—

Crane, whence dost thou come? I am the servant of thy voice. Crane, hast thou not news from our country? Hasten not to thy flock; thou wilt arrive soon enough! Crane, hast thou not news from our country?

I have left my possessions and vineyard and come hither. How often do I sigh; it seems that my soul is taken from me. Crane, stay a little, thy voice is in my soul. Crane, hast thou not news from our country? My God, I ask of thee grace and favour, the heart of the pilgrim is wounded, his lungs are consumed; the bread he eats is bitter, the water he drinks is tasteless. Crane, hast thou not news from our country?

Thou comest from Bagdad, and goest to the frontiers. I will write a little letter and give it to thee. God will be the witness over thee; thou wilt carry it and give it to my dear ones.

I have put in my letter that I am here, that I have never even for a single day been happy. O, my dear ones, I am always anxious for you! Crane, hast thou not news from our country?

The autumn is near, and thou art ready to go: thou hast joined a large flock: thou hast not answered me, and thou art flown! Crane, go from our country and fly far away!

The nameless author of these lines has had Dante's thought:

It is strange that the Armenians should be at once one of the most scattered peoples on the face of the earth, and one of the most passionately devoted to their fatherland.

It should not be forgotten, when reading these Armenian bird-lays, that an old belief yet survives in that country that the souls of the blessed dead fly down from heaven, in the shape of beautiful birds, and perching in the branches of the trees, look fondly at their dear ones on earth as they pass beneath. When the peasant sees the birds fluttering above overhead in the wood he will on no account molest them, but says to his boy, "That is your dear mother, your little brother, your sister—be a good child, or it will fly away and never look at you again with its sweet little eyes."

The clear cool streams and vast treacherous salt lakes of Armenia are not without their laureates. Thus sings the bard of a mountain rivulet:

The dwellers on the shores of Van—the largest lake in Armenia, which is situated between 5000 and 6000 feet above the sea, and covers more than 400 square miles—are celebrated for possessing the poetic gift in a pre-eminent degree. Their district is fertile and picturesque, so picturesque that when Semiramis passed that way she employed 12,000 workmen and 600 architects to build her a city on the banks of the lake, which was named Aghthamar, and which she thereafter made her summer residence. The business that brought Semiramis into Armenia was a strange romance. Ara, eighth patriarch of Hayasdan, was famed through all the East for his surpassing beauty, and the Assyrian queen hearing that he was the fairest to look upon of all mortal men, sent him a proposal of marriage; but he, staunch to the faith in the one true God, which he believed had been transmitted to him from Noah, would have nothing to say to the offer of the idolatrous ruler. Semiramis, greatly incensed, advanced with her army into the heart of Armenia, and defeated the forces of the Patriarch; but bitter were the fruits of the victory, for Ara, instead of being taken alive, as she had commanded, was struck down at the head of his men, and his beautiful form, stiffened by death, was laid at the queen's feet. Semiramis was plunged in the wildest despair; she endeavoured to bring him to life by magic; that failing, she had his body embalmed and placed in a golden coffin, which was set in her chamber; no one was allowed to call him dead, and she spoke of him as her beloved consort. A spot is pointed out to the traveller bearing the name of Ara Seni, "Ara is sacrificed."

The favourite theme of the men of Van is, of course, the treacherous element on which the lot of most of them is cast. One of their songs gives the legend of the "Old Man and the Ship." Our Lord, as an old man with a white beard, cried sweetly to the sailors to take him into the ship. The sailors answer that the ship is freighted by a merchant, and the passage-money is great. "Go away, white-bearded old man," they say. But our Lord pays the money and comes into the ship. Presently a gale blows up and the sailors are exceeding wroth, for they imagine the strange passenger has brought them ill-luck. They ask, "Whence didst them come, O sinful man? Thou art lost, and thou hast lost us!" "I a sinner!" replies the Lord, "give me the ship, and go you to sweet sleep." He made the sign of the cross with his right hand, with his left he steered the helm. It was not yet mid-day when the ship safely reached the shore.

Brothers, arise from your sweet sleep, from your sweet sleep
and your sad dreams. Fall at the feet of Jesus; here is our
Lord, here is our ship.

"Sweet sleep and sad dreams"—he must have been a true poet who thus crystallised the sense of poor humanity's unrest, even in its profoundest repose. The whole little story strikes one as full of delicate suggestiveness.

One more sample of the style of the Armenian "Lake-school."

On One Who Was Shipwrecked on the Lake of Van.

Summer, with its flowers, and warmth, and wealth, never stays long enough in Armenia for it to become a common ordinary thing. It is a beautiful wonder-time, a brief, splendid nature-fair, which vanishes like a dream before the first astonishment and delight are worn into indifference. The season when "the nightingale sings to the rose at dewy dawn" departs swiftly, and envious winter strangles autumn in its birth.

What a winter, too! a winter which despotically governs the complete economy of the people's system of life. Let us take a peep into an Armenian interior on a December evening. Three months the snow has been in possession of mountain and valley; for more than four months more it will remain. Abroad it is light enough, though night has fallen; for the moon shines down in wonderful brightness upon the ice-bound earth. On the hill-slope various little unevennesses are discernible, jutting out from the snow like mushrooms. In one part the ground is cut away perpendicularly for a few feet; this is the front of the homestead, the body of which lies burrowed in the slope of the hill. When the house was made the floor was dug out some five feet underground, while the ceiling beams rose three or four feet above it; but all the dug-out soil was thrown about the roof and back and side walls, and thus the whole is now embedded in the hillock. The roof was neatly turfed over when the house was finished, so that in summer the lambs and children play upon it, and not unfrequently, in the great heats, the family sleep there—"at the moon's inn." What look like mushrooms are in reality the broad-topped chimneys, on which the summer storks build their nests. The homestead has but one entrance; a large front door which leads through a long dark passage to a second door that swings-to after you, and is hung with a rough red-dyed sheepskin. This door opens upon the entrance-hall, whence you mount half-a-dozen steps to a raised platform, under which the house dogs are located. On two sides the platform is bounded by solid stone walls, from which are suspended saddles, guns, pistols, and one or two pictures representing the deeds of some Persian hero, and bought of Persian hawkers. On the other two sides an open woodwork fence divides it from a vast stable. Nearest the grating are fastened the horses of the clan-chief; next are the donkeys, then the cows; sheep and chickens find places where they can. The breath of these animals materially contributes to the warmth of the house, which is at times almost like an oven, even in the coldest weather. A clear hot fire burns on the hearth; the fuel used is tezek, a preparation of cow-dung pressed into a substance resembling peat turf. By day the habitation is obscurely lighted through a small aperture in the roof glazed with oiled silk, and supplemented by a sort of funnel, the wide opening downwards. Now, in the evening, the oil burning in a simple iron lamp over the hearth, affords a dim illumination.

The platform above described is the salemlik, or hall of reception. It contains no chairs, but divans richly draped with Koordish stuffs; the floor is carpeted with tekeke, a kind of grey felt. To the right of the hearth sits the head of the family, a venerable old man, whose word is incontrovertible law to every member of his house. He is also Al Sakal, or "white beard" of the village, a dignity conferred on him by the unanimous voice of his neighbours, and constituting him intermediary in all transactions with government. When important matters are at stake, he meets the elders of the surrounding hamlets, who, resolved into committee, form the Commune. This ancient usage bears witness to the essentially patriarchal and democratic basis of Armenian society.

Our family party consists of three dozen persons, the representatives of four generations. The young married women come in and out from directing the preparations of the supper. Nothing is to be seen of their faces except their lustrous eyes (Armenian eyes are famous for their brilliancy), a tightly-fitting veil enclosing the rest of their features. Without this covering they do not by any chance appear even in the house; it is said they wear it also at night. One of them is a bride; her dress is rich and striking—a close-fitting bodice, fastening at the neck with silver clasps, full trousers of rose-coloured silk gathered in at the ankles by a fillet of silver, the feet bare, a silver girdle of curious workmanship loosely encircling the waist, and a long padded garment open down the front which hangs from the shoulders. Poor little bride! She has not uttered a single word save when alone with her husband since she pronounced the marriage vow. She may not hope to do so till after the birth of her first-born child; then she will talk to her nursling, after a while to her mother-in-law, sometime later she may converse with her own mother, and by-and-by, in a subdued whisper, with the young girls of the house. During the first year of her married life she may not go out of the house except twice to church. Her disciplinary education will not be complete for six years, after which she will enjoy comparative liberty, but never in her life must she open her lips to a person of the stronger sex not related to her. Turn from the silent little bride to that bevy of young girls, merry and playful as the kittens they are fondling—silky-haired snowballs, of a breed peculiar to the neighbourhood of Van, their tails dyed pink with henna like the tail of the Shah's steed. The girls are laughing and chatting together without restraint—most probably about their love affairs, for they are free to dispose of their hands as they choose. And they may walk about unveiled, and show off their pretty faces and long raven plaits to the fullest advantage.

Suddenly a knocking is heard outside; the dogs yell from under the platform; the Whitebeard says whoever be the wanderer he shall have bed and board, and he orders fresh tezek to be thrown on the fire; for to-night it is bitter cold out abroad—were a man to stand still five minutes, he would freeze in his shoes. One of the sons descends the steps, pushes aside the sheep-skin, and leads the traveller in. This one says he is the minstrel. What joy in the family! The blind minstrel, who will sing the most exciting ballads and tell the most marvellous tales. He is welcomed by all; only the young bride steals out of the room—she may not remain in a stranger's presence. The lively girls want to hear a story at once; but the Whitebeard says the guest must first have rest and refreshment. But while they are waiting for the meal to be laid out, the blind minstrel relates something of his recent travels, which in itself is almost as good as a fairy tale. He has just arrived from Persia, whither he will soon return; for he has only come back to the snows of Armenia to breathe the air of home for a little. Did he go to Teheran? No; to say the truth, he deemed it wiser to keep at a discreet distance from that capital. Such a thing had been heard of ere now as the Shah putting under requisition any skilful musicians who came in his way to teach their art to the fair ones of the harem; so that occasionally it was unpleasantly difficult to get out of Teheran when once you were in it. Still he was by no means without interesting news. In a certain part of Persia he had met another blind master-singer, with whom he strove for the prize of minstrelsy. Both were entertained by a great Persian prince. When the day came they were led out upon an open grass-plot and seated one facing the other. The prince took up his position, and five thousand people made a circle round the competitors. Then the grand brain-fight began; the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Now one starts an acrostic on the prince's name, in which each side takes alternate letters; then the other versifies some sacred passage, which his opponent must catch up when he breaks off. The ball is kept flying to and fro with unflagging zeal; the crowd is rapturous in its plaudits. But at length our minstrel's adversary pauses, hesitates, fails to seize the drift of his rival's latest sally, and answers at random. A shout proclaims him beaten. The triumphant bard is led to where he stands, and taking his lyre from him breaks it into atoms. The vanquished retires discomfited to the obscurity of his native village, where haply his humble talents will not be despised. The victor is robed in the prince's mantle, and taken to the highest seat in the banqueting-hall.

This is what the minstrel has to tell as he warms his hands over the fire while the young married women serve the supper. A rush-mat is placed upon the low round board, over that the table-cloth; then a large tray is set in the middle, with the viands arranged on it in metal dishes: onion soup, salted salmon-trout from the blue Gokschai, hard-boiled eggs shelled and sliced, oil made from Kunjut seeds, which does instead of butter; pilau, a dish resembling porridge; mutton stewed with quinces, leeks, and various raw and preserved roots, cream cheese, sour milk, dried apricots, and stoned raisins, form the bill of fair. A can of golden wine is set out: there is plenty more in the goatskins should it be wanted. The provisions are completed by an item more important in Armenia than with us—bread. The flour-cake or losh, a yard long and thin as paper, which is placed before each guest, answers for plate, knives, forks, napkin, all of which are absent. The Whitebeard says grace and the Lord's Prayer, everyone crossing himself. The company wipe their mouths with a losh, and proceed to help themselves with it to anything that tempts their fancy on the middle tray. Some make a promiscuous sandwich of fish, mutton, and leeks wrapped up in a piece of losh; others twist the losh into the shape of a spoon and ladle out the sour milk, swallowing both together. The members of the family watch the minstrel's least gesture, so as to anticipate his wishes; one after the other they claim the privilege of waiting on him. When the meal is done, a young housewife gently washes the guest's head and feet, and the whole party adjourn to the chimney-corner. The evening flies mirthfully away, listening to the minstrel's tales and ballads, these latter being mostly in Tartar, the ProvenÇal of the eastern troubadour. Finally, the honoured visitor is conducted to his room, the "minstrel's chamber," which, in every well-ordered Armenian household, is always kept ready.

Our little picture may be taken as the faithful reproduction of no very extraordinary scene. Of ballad-singers such as the one here introduced there are numbers in Armenia, where that "sixth sense," music, is the recognised vocation of the blind. Those who are proficient travel within a very wide area, and are everywhere received with the highest consideration.

In the East, the ballad-singer and the story-teller are just where they were centuries ago. At Constantinople, the story-teller sits down on his mat in the public place or at the cafÉ; listeners gather round; he begins his story in a conversational tone, varying his voice according to the characters; and soon both himself and his hearers are as far away in the wondrous mazes of the "Arabian Nights" as if Europe were still trembling before the sword of the Caliph.

With regard to the unique marriage customs of Armenia, I ought to say that they are asserted to result in the happiest unions. The general idea upon which they rest seems to be derived from a series of conclusions logical enough if you grant the premisses—indeed, curiously more like some pen and paper scheme evolved out of the inner consciousness of a German professor than a working system of actual life. The prevailing custom in the East, as in some European countries, is for the young girl to know nothing whatever of her intended husband; only in the one case this is followed by total seclusion after marriage, and in the other by complete emancipation. In Armenia, on the contrary, the young girl makes her own choice, and love-matches are not uncommon; but the choice once made and ratified by the priest, the order of things is so arranged as to cause her husband to become the woman's absorbing thought, his society her sole solace, his pleasure the whole business of her life. For the rest she is treated with much solicitude; even the peasant will not let his wife do out-door work.

Moses of Khoren gives the history of a wedding that took place about one hundred years after Christ. In those days the tribes of the Alans, in league with the mountaineers of the Caucasus and a part of the people of Georgia, descended upon Armenia in considerable numbers. Ardashes, the Armenian king, assembled his troops and advanced against them. In a battle fought upon the confines of the two nations, the Alans gave way, and having crossed the Cyrus, encamped on the northern bank, the river dividing the contending forces. The son of the King of the Alans had been taken prisoner and was conducted to Ardashes. His father offered to conclude a peace on such conditions as Ardashes might exact and under promise, guaranteed by a solemn oath, that the Alans would attempt no further incursions on Armenian territory. As Ardashes refused to surrender the young prince, the sister of the youth ran to the edge of the river and climbing upon a lofty hillock, caused these words to be addressed to the enemy's camp by the mouth of interpreters: "Hear me, valorous Ardashes, conqueror of the brave Alans; grant unto me the surrender of this young man—unto me, the maiden with beautiful eyes. It is not worthy of a hero in order to satisfy a desire for vengeance, to take the life of the sons of heroes or to hold them in bondage and keep up an endless feud between two nations." Ardashes, having heard these words, approached the river. He saw the beautiful Sathinig, listened to her wise counsels, and fell in love with her. Then, having called Sumpad, an aged warrior who had watched over his childhood, he laid bare the wish of his heart to marry the princess, make a treaty of amity with her nation and send back the prince in peace. Sumpad, having approved of these projects, sent to ask the King of the Alans for the hand of Sathinig. "What!" replied her father, "will the valorous King Ardashes have ever treasure enough to offer me in return for the noble damsel of the Alans?"

A popular song, carefully preserved by Moses, celebrates the marriage of Ardashes and Sathinig:—

Once again Ardashes appears in the people's poetry. He is no longer the triumphant victor in love and war; the hour of his death draws near. "Oh!" says the dying king, "who will give me back the smoke of my hearth, and the joyous New Year's morning, and the spring of the deer, and the lightness of the roe?" Then his mind wanders away to the ruling passion: "We sounded the trumpets; after the manner of kings we beat the drums."

The Armenian princes were in the habit, when they married, of throwing pieces of money from the threshold of their palace, whilst the royal brides scattered pearls about the nuptial chamber. To this custom allusion is made in two lines which used to be sung as a sort of marriage chaunt:—

Armenian nuptial songs, like all other folk-epithalamiums, so far as I am aware, seem to point to an early state of society when the girl was simply carried off by her marauding lover by fraud or force. Exulting in what relates to the bridegroom, the favourite song on this subject is profoundly melancholy as concerns the bride. The mother was cajoled with a pack of linen, the father with a cup of wine, the brother with a pair of boots, the little sister with a finger of antimony—so complains the dismal ditty of a new bride. There is great pathos in the words in which she begs her mother not to sweep the sand off the little plank, so that the slight trace of her girl's footsteps may not be effaced.

Marriage is called in Armenian, "The Imposition of the Crown," from the practice of crowning bride and bridegroom with fresh, white flowers. I remember how, in one of the last marriages celebrated in the little Armenian church in the Rue Monsieur (which was closed a few years ago, when the Mekhitarist property in Paris was sold), this ceremony was omitted by particular request of the bridegroom, a rising French Diplomatist, who did not wish to wear a wreath of roses. The Armenian marriage formulÆ are extremely explicit. The priest, taking the right hand of the bride, and placing it in that of the bridegroom, says: "According to the Divine order God gave to our ancestors, I give thee now this wife in subjection. Wilt thou be her master?" To which the answer is, "Through the help of God, I will." The priest then asks the woman: "Wilt thou be obedient to him?" She answers: "I am obedient according to the order of God." The interrogations are repeated three times, and three times responded to.

An Armenian author, M. Ermine, published at Moscow in 1850 a treatise on the historical and popular songs of ancient Armenia.

Of popular songs current in more recent times there was not, till lately, a single specimen within reach of the public, though it was confidently surmised that such must exist. The Mekhitarist monks have taken the lead in this as in every other branch of Armenian research, and my examples are quoted from a small collection issued by their press at Venice. I am not sure that I have chosen those that are intrinsically the best, but think that those which figure in these pages are amongst the most characteristic of their authors and origin. The larger portion of these songs are printed from manuscripts in the library of San Lazzaro; the date of their composition is thought to vary from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. The language in which they are written is the vulgar tongue of Armenia, but in several instances it attains a very close approximation to the classical Armenian.

It may not be amiss if I conclude this sketch with a brief account of the remarkable order of the Mekhitarists, which is so intimately related with all that bears on the subject of Armenian literature. Those who are well acquainted with it will not object to hear the history of this order recapitulated; while I believe that many who have visited the Convent of San Lazzaro have yet but vague notions regarding the work and aims of its inmates. It is to be conjectured that, as a matter of fact, the majority of Englishmen go to San Lazzaro rather in the spirit of a Byron-pilgrimage than from any definite interest in the convent; and without doubt were its only attraction its association with the English poet it would still be worth a visit. Byron's connection with San Lazzaro was not one of the least interesting episodes of his life; and it is pleasant to remember the tranquil hours he spent in the society of the learned monks, and the fascination exercised over him by their sterling and unpretentious merit. "The neatness, the comfort, the gentleness, the unaffected devotion of the brethren of the order," he wrote, "are well fitted to strike the man of the world with the conviction that there is 'Another and a better even in this life.'" The desire to present himself with an excuse for frequent intercourse with the brothers was probably at the bottom of Byron's sudden discovery that his mind "wanted something craggy to break upon, and that Armenian was just the thing to torture it into attention." He says it was the most difficult thing to be found in Venice by way of an amusement, and describes the Armenian character as a very "Waterloo of an alphabet." The origin of this character is exceedingly curious, it being the only alphabet known to have been the work of a single man, with the exception of the Georgian, and now obsolete Caucasian Albanian. St Mesrop, an Armenian, invented all the three about A.D. 406. Byron informs Moore, with some elation, of the fate that befell a French professorship of Armenian, which had then been recently instituted: "Twenty pupils presented themselves on Monday morning, full of noble ardour, ingenuous youth, and impregnable industry. They persevered with a courage worthy of the nation, and of universal conquest till Thursday, then fifteen out of the twenty succumbed to the six-and-twentieth letter of the alphabet." The poet himself mastered all thirty-three letters, and a good deal more besides, under the superintendence of the librarian, Padre Paschal Aucher, a man who combined great learning with much knowledge of the world. As the result of these studies we have a translation into Scriptural English of two apocryphal epistles of St Paul, and an Anglo-Armenian grammar, of which, with characteristic liberality, Byron defrayed the cost of publication.

The order was founded by Varthabed Mekhitar, who was born at Sebaste, in Asia Minor, in 1676. Mekhitar was one of those men to whom it comes quite naturally to go forth with David's sling and stone against the Philistine and his host. He could have been scarcely more than twenty years of age when fearlessly and steadfastly he set himself to the gigantic task of raising his country out of the stagnant slough of ignorance in which he saw it sunk. He was then a candidate for holy orders, studying in an Armenian convent.

The monks he found no less ignorant than the rest of the population; those to whom he broached his ideas greeted them with derision, and this did not fail to turn to cruel persecution when he began to preach against certain prejudices which appeared to him to keep the Armenians from conforming with the Latin Church—a union he earnestly desired. Mekhitar now went to Constantinople, where he set on foot a small monastic society; presently he moved to Modon, in the Morea, then under the rule of Venice, but before he had been there long, the place was seized by the Turks. A few of the monks, with their head, managed to escape to Venice; the others were taken prisoners, and sold into a temporary slavery. At Venice, in 1717, the Signory made over to the fugitives in perpetuity a small barren island in the Lagune, once tenanted by the Benedictines, who had there established a hospital for lepers, but which, since the disappearance of that disease, had been entirely uninhabited. Mekhitar immediately organised a printing press, and began making translations of standard works, which were disseminated wherever Armenians were to be found, that is to say, all over the East. When he died in 1747, the work of the society was already placed on a solid foundation; but it received considerable development and extension from the hands of the third abbot-general, Count Stephen Aconzkover, Archbishop of Sinnia, by birth a member of an Armenian colony in Hungary, who sought admittance into the order, and lived in the retirement of San Lazzaro for sixty-seven years. He was a poet, a scholar of no mean attainments, and the author of a universal geography in twelve volumes. The Society is now self-supporting, large numbers of its publications being sold in Persia, and India, and at Constantinople. These publications consist of numerous translations and of reproductions of the great part of Armenian literature. Many works have been printed from MSS. which are collected by emissaries sent out from San Lazzaro to travel over the plains and valleys of Armenia for the purpose of rescuing the literary relics which are widely scattered, and are in constant danger of loss or destruction, and at the same time to distribute Armenian versions of the Bible. Another of the undertakings of the convent is a school exclusively for the education of Armenian boys. About one hundred boys receive free instruction in the two colleges at Venice. What this order have effected, both towards the enlightenment of their country and in keeping alive the sentiment of Armenian nationality, is simply incalculable. In their self-imposed exile they have nobly carried out the precept of an Armenian folk-poet:

Forget not our Armenian nation,

And always assist and protect it.

Always keep in thy mind

To be useful to thy fatherland.