Florence Randal Livesay

“ Italian songs are glorious, but the singing of the Ukrainian is also a precious pearl in the common treasury of mankind. It was born out of the beauty of the Ukraine, and it is beautiful; it was born on the steppes, and as the steppes it is wide; it was born in battles, and it is free; it was born of the tear of a lonesome girl, and it rends the heart; it was born of the thoughts of the Kobzars and its harmonies are pregnant with thoughts—
This is Ukrainian Song. ”

“ There is Ukraina. Where on the summits of the Carpathians old oaks and pines murmur, and the native Hutzul in white embroidered shirt and red breeches plays on his trimbeeta amid his grazing flocks in the mountain meadow; where on a dark night thunder roars and the lightning plays on the white breasts of beech-trees; where Dobush 12sleeps with his robber Oprishki, in a rocky cave under the Chorna-Hora, waiting for the summons to arise once more against the enemies of the Ukraine—
There is the Highland of the Ukrainian. ”

“ SONG—THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT
Between the two dark clouds
The moon comes out with light.
A little higher than the moon
There is a bird in flight.
O weary, weary are the wings the sky enshrouds!
Wings that have tired too soon.
100Ah, woe is for the heart
That loved, nor ever changed.
That ever loved so true
What skies soe’er it ranged.
But weary, weary are the wings that must depart—
Wings that have tired of you! THE DISTANT SWEETHEART
High is the mountain-top—
But there’s a lower peak.
Far away lives my love ”

“ And we lay down our lives, caring nothing for fame.
For the time long has passed when the yoke pressed us sore:
If a hundred shall fall there are yet thousands more.
Out of misery’s chains the trampled slaves rise,
And to Freedom’s bright flag they will lift dazzled eyes.
Truth and courage for oath, and our Vengeance for breath—
Haidamaky they call us, men who fear not their death. SONG OF KARMELŪK ”

“ Still, the Mongolian waves rolling over the Ukrainian rock were unable to devastate Europe. The Khan turned back, civilisation was saved, but the Ukraine was covered with corpses, on whose bones Cossacks arose who again checked the Tartars. There in the Ukraine was Freedom personified by the Zaporogian Cossack, in blue zhupan and red breeches, mounted on his grey horse.
Seven feet deep is the black soil of Ukraina, bringing forth from one seed one hundred and twenty fold. ”

“ SONG OF THE ORPHAN I will go into the field and talk to the dew; and together with the dew I will bemoan our unlucky fate.
I will climb a hill and fall into thought: I was left an orphan; I have no friends.
In my tiny garden grows a lovely lily.... And what is that to me, if I am still young, if I am still an orphan?
As the soaking hemp rots in the water, so lives an orphan in this world. ”

“ She has left the village houses far behind.
With drawn sabres two grim soldiers follow fast
Through the market-place ... poor pigeon! caught at last.
Pan Kanovsky’s silver musket pointed straight
At her heart.... And she chose then her fate.
“Bonderivna, tall and lovely, live with me,
Or as dung upon the earth you shall be!”
“Rather would I, Pan Kanovsky, fall and die,
Than in arms I loathe, like yours, ever lie!”
As she answered, so he fired—so she fell.
And her father, watching, moaned: “It is well,
“I die with thee, fairest maid of them all!” ”

“ Of all your army fighting young Cossacks
Not one has escaped from our hands.
See, Pole! A Cossack is dancing, is dancing
Upon a grey horse after thee!
When he stands with his musket thy heart sinks in anguish
In great fear of death thou dost flee.
We own the whole land e’en as far as Sluch river,
Kostiana! As far as thy Hill—
O rude and uncourteous! Poles caused our revolting
So mourn they their lost Ukraine still.
65As a thunder-cloud brooding on Vistula’s river
The Poles lie, expelled from Ukraine.
As long as we live they shall no more leave Poland,
They shall not come nigh us again. ”

“ Lo, from beyond the Dnieper, as from far away
148The words flow in and spread the paper o’er;
Laughing and crying as the children do
They gladden my poor soul, uncomforted,
Raw, inconsolable—I joy in them,
With them would always stay. They are my own.
As a rich father loves his little ones,
So am I glad and merry with my own.
Yea, I rejoice; and the good God I praise,
That He lets not my children fall asleep
In this so far-off land, but says, “Run home,
And tell the others in the dear Ukraine
How bitter ’twas to live in such a world!” ”

“ The Ukrainian is a race purely Slav, gay, chivalrous, made thoughtful by its own steppes—a race of poets, musicians, artists who have fixed for all time their national history in the songs of the people which no centuries of oppression could silence. The singers—the Kobzars—accompany themselves on the kobza while they sing the glories of the Ukraine. ”

“ You creep, creep low on the face of the earth,
So, O Barwēnok, may my lover ever stay—as close, as near to me.” On the 24th of June when the passing of Kupalo, God of Frost, was celebrated, the girls of Southern Russia made wreaths of Barwēnok and mallow and threw them into the streams. If a garland were sucked down beneath the waters death was the omen, while if it floated the maiden to whom it belonged would be wed within the year. ”

“ In the troublous days that followed, when the Cossacks ringed Ukraina with the terrible circle of their sabres, they sang of Freedom; and even now those songs will stir a man’s blood and make him long to leap on a horse and gallop over the broad steppes, “swift to the fields of Freedom.” ”

“ In the nineteenth century this oppressed people revealed to the world the puissance of 18its artistic gifts. The Ukrainians became the first singers of Europe; the celebrated Russian music is the music of the Ukraine, and it is an Ukrainian, Gogol, who has opened the way to the Russian romancers of genius.”—Charles Seignobos, Professor at the Sorbonne. ”

“ In the Russian Ukraine the nobles, descendants of the line of the Cossacks, and the clergy had closely guarded the remembrance of the grandeur, the glory, and the independence of the Ukraine. Living in contact with a people which had preserved its language, songs, and customs, they turned to it to know it better.... ”

“ This is Ukraina. Where in Winter Witch-Marina with snow white as swansdown covers the fields, making of them an endless white sea; where Frost-Moroze with its magic power changes fog into rime and sleet, transforms the forests into silver coral jungles of the undersea kingdom; where in gayety the people know how to spend the whole winter season, entertained by folk-drama; where hymns to the pagan goddess Lada are heard at Christmas ”

“ The Ukrainians sing their Kolady, Vesnianky, Kupalni—and the ancient gods of the 14Sun and Thunder are again alive, adversaries of Christianity.
The bride-maidens sing the wedding songs, and ancient days come back when a wild youth gathered a band of the boys of his tribe and raided another village to kidnap a maiden. All her relatives rose to defend her, and sometimes only after a bloody fight did the bridegroom carry his bride safely home. A thousand years passed, and only song was left to show that such barbarous days had ever been. ”

“ And I am in his power. A GIRL’S SONG
What is the use of my black eyebrow,
What is the use of my black eyes?
My youth is nothing, my happiness flies.
For every day my youth is going:
Lustreless eyes have come through tears,
Faded my eyebrow’s curve appears.
O maidens all, I am sick at heart now—
Like a bird that dies for lack of air
Why should I for my beauty care?
95 OLD FOLK SONG
O wild horses—where are ye running over the steppes? ”

“ No more shall be heard our glad song.
For Austrian soldiers, when first snow is falling,
In uniforms white will appear....
Kolomea! [43] Thy bells as of old may be calling—
Their chiming we never shall hear. THE HAIDAMAKY—“KNIGHTS OF VENGEANCE”
“Haidamaky” they call us, unrelenting and stern,
With the wrongs of our nation for vengeance we burn.
Our forebears were tortured; our grandsons shall be
Unless we will show them how men may be free. ”

“ In the Ukraine at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century the Oprishki, or outlaws of the Carpathians, and the robbers of the Ukraine, were so famed that in several instances they have become legendary heroes. ”

“ With which she embroidered her kerchief.
And while she stitched she sang:
“My kerchief, embroidered, stitched, and scalloped!
I shall present thee and my lover shall kiss me.
O Khustina, bright with my painting.
I am unplaiting my hair, [45] I walk with my lover—
(O my Fate! My Mother!)
The people will wonder in the morning
That an orphan should give this kerchief—
Fine-broidered and painted kerchief.” ”

“ To-morrow, to-morrow the Cossack is gone....”
“Sprinkle the roads that the dust may not fly:
Cheer father and mother, friends, lest they may sigh.”
They have sprinkled the roads, but the dust hangs in clouds,
They comfort the sad, but still Sadness enshrouds. ”

“ Towards 1840 the great poet Shevchenko (1814–1861) combined by his genius all that was most profound in universal poetry with the genre of the popular poetry of the Ukraine. A great poet and a great citizen, his name is sacred to all Ukrainians. ”

“ In the hut there dwells a maiden—
Little maiden, wild she-pigeon.
There, O Wind, Hush and be silent!
Rest above her face in quiet;
Bow above her rosy face, thou;
Look: is she, my sweetheart, sleeping?
Or is she awake, my pigeon?
If she sleeps not, set her dreaming
Of the one she loved, her dearest,
Whom she swore she would forget not.
But, O Wind, if she forget me,
If she have another wooer....
Die away in Ukraina—
Come not back to me in exile!
· · · · ·
And the wind blows on through Ukraine ... ”

“ The nightingale does not sing
In the wood over the water:
The black-browed girl sang of old
Under a willow tree—
Now she does not sing.
As an orphan, she hates the white world.
Without her sweetheart,
Like an alien, her mother,
152Like a stranger, her father.
Without her sweetheart
The sun shines
As an enemy loves.
Without her lover
All is—a grave.
And her heart beats on.
One year passed, and another,
The Cossack did not return.
· · · · ·
“I will not marry him, Mother! ”

“ Moscow, Tartary, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey—what neighbours!—the Hetmans, wars and revolutions—at length the fall of Seech, the last stand of Ukrainian freedom—the whole Ukrainian history was put into song by the Kobzars, the rhapsodists, and if the Ukraine has lost her written history it is still preserved in her historical songs.
The period of bondage and feudalism began in 1771. The Cossacks had disappeared, but 15their place was taken by the avengers of the people’s sorrows—Robbers, Haidomaki, Oprishki—the Ukrainian Robin Hoods—and their deeds also are recorded in their songs. ”

“ MCMXVI
5 CONTENTS
9 SONGS OF UKRAINA Ukrainian Song.... But do you know what the Ukraine is?
Where in Spring the warm wind breathes, bearing on its wings from “Earey” (Egypt) the myriads of grouse and other birds, and into the hearts of the people the paean of love; where the woods are carpeted with blue “prolisoks” and red “riast”; where Vesnianka, the “Lada” of Spring, with the assistance of vovkoolaks and spirits of the woods, is running through the forest scattering bloom, her song echoing over the whole country; where the sun is so bright and gay ”

“ The Hetman Mazeppa, who was himself a Kobzar, composed this song among others. The story goes that when he was an old man he visited an Ukrainian official, set in high places, named Kotchubei. When he played on the kobza and sang of the ancient glories of the Ukraine, Kotchubei’s young daughter, like Desdemona, listened entranced, and finally asked him to marry her. He refused, saying that he was too old, but nevertheless she fled to him, bringing tragedy on her house. Ultimately she went insane, when Mazeppa took refuge with the Turks after the battle of Poltava. ”

“ In Bukowina it used to be too often the fate of the girl of sixteen or thereabouts to be “thrown to a lover” of her mother’s choice regardless of her own passion for another. “Mothers in Austria are like step-mothers,” said a Ruthenian girl to the writer in explanation of this poem. Many a young girl has drowned herself when she found that her dreams of happiness might not come true. ”

“ Immigrants, self-exiled, still sing, putting trivial incidents or dreadful affrays, happenings in their old villages, into legend and song. From several of these 19living in Winnipeg I obtained old ballads and folk-songs set to minor airs. Russalka on ironing days was a concert in herself! I remember how she told me the song made by a local poet in her old home when a faithless bride was murdered by her conscript lover. Anastasia could not wait three years—but the soldier came to her wedding. ”

“ All art with them is national, from the building of their tiny huts to the embroideries which adorn their clothes and which are distinguished for their originality all over the East.”
“Here is a people, one of the most numerous of Europe and nevertheless one of the least known. They have not even an assured name. They are called Little Russians to distinguish them from the mass of the Russian people—they are called Ukrainian because they inhabit the frontier between Poland and Russia; one of the branches (in Austrian Galicia) bears the name of Ruthenian.... ”

“ There are the Zaporogian Steppes. And the ages passed over the Ukraine.... “In the beginning” black-haired Scythians came from Ariastan to the Ukraine with their herds—later, the race was crossed with blue-eyed, white-haired Finns; both disappeared and the tall, dark brown-eyed, fair-haired Ukrainian arose, the beneficent gods Yoor and Lada nursing him in his cradle.
Mongolians came from Asia, and Ghingiz-Khan built his pyramids of men’s skulls.... 13And on the Steppes, on the Kalka river the brave Russichi barred the way to the Polovets, with scarlet shields, and all fell for the motherland. ”