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SONGS OF UKRAINA

All rights reserved

SONGS
of
UKRAINA
WITH RUTHENIAN POEMS

TRANSLATED BY

FLORENCE RANDAL LIVESAY

LONDON, PARIS & TORONTO

J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED

NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

MCMXVI

CONTENTS

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; where the willow tree in full blossom looks like a great yellow stack, orchards are white with cherry; where millions of nightingales sing all the night long—where Petrus so truly loves Natalka—

There is the Ukraine.

Where in the Summer the Dnieper is carrying down its broad yellow waters to empty them into the bluish waves of the Black Sea; and upon the steeps of its mountainous right bank, like pyramids, the ancestral grave-hills stand, looking over the endless plains golden with ripening rye; where the little white huts of the villagers hide themselves in the green orchards of scarlet apples, yellow pears, purple prunes, musical with the humming of bees; where, beside a broad road, under a willow tree, a blind lirnik-beggar sits, singing a song of the vanished freedom; where the “grandsons” of that freedom mow the lush grass, with their scythes glistening in the hot sun, just as the sabres of their grandfathers flashed on the same field—

There is the Ukraine.

Where in Autumn in the wood on the peaceful bank of a Dunai the hopvine with its gold and bronze covers the bared branches of ash trees; where on cranberry bushes the red bunches burn in the rays of the Autumn sun like a circlet of rubies; where Marusina walks in the wood picking the berries and calling upon her fated one in her songs; where in the fields, now umber-coloured, the herds of cattle graze; where the poplar rustles sadly with her leaves yet green over a lonesome grave—as a maiden deserted by her lover; where, when the leaves fall, the night-heaven is so darkly blue and the stars so bright—

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;

Where the red foxes, seeking refuge in tall “ocherets,” or bulrushes, and hares lying in utter stillness on the hillocks, shall hear the stamping of horses’ hoofs, the baying of hounds and the sudden clamour of the horn—

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 sleeps 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.

Where the southern prairies meet the waves of the Black Sea, and grey eagles circle in the heavens watching the numberless herds of sheep; where the Dnieper’s cataracts roar, dashing down to the Khortitsa Island, asking it: “Where are the banners of the hetmans and the cannons of old?” There, where a black cloud covers heaven from Lyman, the Mount of the Dnieper, in the semblance of the dragon of the fairy tales—

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.... And 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. 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. Poles, Turks, and Muscovites began to press forward, eager to grasp the land flowing with milk and honey and bind her as a captive. Long centuries the sabre of the Cossack flashed beheading invaders from all parts of the world. At last it was shivered and broken!

Now naught is left of Ukraina save her songs—but in that song she still lives, engraved in the heart of the people. Let it be sung, and before your eyes you shall resurrect the dead centuries.

The Ukrainians sing their Kolady, Vesnianky, Kupalni—and the ancient gods of the Sun 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.

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.”

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 their 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. The bitter fate of the feudal slave sighs in the song of the Ukrainian woman—before, a free Cossachka, now the slave of her husband, with no rights of her own. Full of self-pity and sorrow are the “Songs of Unhappy Women.” The sons of Cossacks became Tchumaks and tramps; they wrote their songs on their broken hearts.... But eternal song, that of love, of the nightingale’s voice, and the cherry blossom, is the same everywhere—unchangeable—young, charming, immortal!

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.

PAUL CRATH.

NOTE BY TRANSLATOR

The Songs, alas! must lack their native music; of the land which evoked them Mr. Paul Crath has written with a poet’s pen. It remains for me just to say a few words about the people who sing the songs and (with one digression) I will quote a few extracts from French and Ukrainian essayists:—

“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. 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.... In the nineteenth century this oppressed people revealed to the world the puissance of its 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.... Collections of popular songs by Maximovich, Dragomanov, Shesnevsky, Zerteleff, etc., began to be made around 1820 and in the second half of the nineteenth century. Soon romantic poets found this field—Kvitka outstripped George Sand and Auerbach.... 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.”

Mrs. E. L. Voynich has published six lyrics from the mass of this poet’s work, all of which is practically unknown to English readers. Many of his writings, however, are to be included in the “Slavonic Classics” now under way.

Immigrants, self-exiled, still sing, putting trivial incidents or dreadful affrays, happenings in their old villages, into legend and song. From several of these living 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.

This is the song:—

“From the other side of the hill

A stormy wind is blowing.

Would that I knew what my sweetheart is doing!

O my love, dost thou wish now to be mine?”

“Come then—for we may marry some day. But first of all thou must bring me next Sunday some flowers of Trezilie” (poisonous herb).

“I have a saddle horse in my stable—surely I will mount and ride to get the flowers. Very hard are they to get, very long is the way to the forest where they grow—yet shall I ride swiftly and get them for my love.”

“I went to the forest and found the Zilie between two elm trees. I dismounted and began to dig. Zuzula flew near and sang: ‘Spare your pains, young soldier, dig no more. Your sweetheart is fooling you, she weds another to-day.’

“Then I rode in haste till I reached the courtyard of her home. Her friends came to meet me, put my horse in the stable, gave me to eat and drink, invited me to the wedding dance.

“I did not come down to dance and drink. I came down to say two words only to my sweetheart.... With my right hand I took the hand of the bride; with my left I took my revolver and shot her.”

So his sweetheart fell between her dorohynki (bridesmaids), as a star pales between two sunrise clouds.

Some of the poems included in this volume have appeared in Poet Lore (Boston); Poetry (Chicago); The Craftsman (New York); Everyman (Edinburgh); Canada Monthly (London, Ontario); University Magazine (Montreal). To the publishers of these magazines my thanks are due for permission to reproduce the poems in question. I would like to acknowledge gratefully the help given me in translation by MM. Paul Crath, Ivan Petrushevich, and A. Malofie.

FLORENCE RANDAL LIVESAY.

Winnipeg,

September 1916.

PAGAN SONGS[^[1]]

KUPALO[^[2]]

(Fragment)

I

On Ivan-Kupalo

Ivan was bathing.

And he fell into the water

On the Day of Kupalo.

II

Hai! On the Day of Ivan-Kupalo

A beautiful maid her fortune sought.

She plucked the flowers to make her garlands—

The Malva-flower and Lewbistok—

She strewed them on the river’s breast.

“Float, my wreath, with the wave’s swift flowing,

Straight to the window of my love—

Float to the heart of the one I love,

And bring good fortune with thee!”

The wreath is floating,

Carrying with it

The heart of the maid.

At the bend of the river,

’Tis swamped by the wave—

Kupalo, Kupalo,

No fortune gave!

That night the maiden

Trezilie[^[3]] sought.

In the midnight hour

She dug them up.

She made a brew

In the dead of night,

And ere the dawn

The poison drank.

SONG TO VESNIANKA (SPRING)

(Fragment)

O Lady Vesnianka,

Where didst thou spend the winter?

“In the forest, upon the oak,

I was spinning the thread for a shirt.”

· · · · ·

O Spring, the beauty! Vesnianka!

Fly to us with the sun.

VESNIANKA—CHILDREN’S SONG

Vesnianka came,

And brought Paradise.

All is blooming, everywhere.

Beauty in the meadows lies,

Joy is in the fields and air,

In the woods is Song.

Let us garlands make

On Vesnianka’s Day.

Join hands, and in a ring

Interweaving, let us play

Jumping high, the while we sing

In the woods our Song!

All of beauty, life,

Goes when winter’s here.

Bloom will perish, birds grow dumb,

All things lovely disappear.

But the time has not yet come

To leave off our song.

HYEEVKA—SONG OF THE WOODS

What did she bring us, the beautiful Spring?

Fair tresses, maiden’s beauty.

A maiden’s beauty is as dew in summer

Washed in a spring, dried in an oven,

Set on a table, wrapped in paper.

Springtime! And now what is it she brings us?

She brought us Strength, beauty of boys.

Beauty of boys is as dew in summer

Washed in a rain-pond, dried on a fence,

Set on a table, wrapped in rags.

WEDDING SONG CYCLE

THE WEDDING OF MARUSENKA

(From various districts. A selection of folk-songs made into a song cycle, some being fragmentary)

I
WOROTA—THE GATES

Marusenka with her father pleadeth:

“My beloved father, close the gates,

Close the gates!

Do not let the Duke[^[4]] come nigh—

Let not Wasylenko by.”

“Child beloved! Nay—he entreats

That I let him in, let him in.

Like the khmel, like the hop vines

Round the gates, see, he twines!

At the Table, like barwēnok.... Who allowed

Him to sit there? Proud—

Like a falcon,[^[5]] proud!”

II

The sun as a wheel now mounts the skies:

Marusenka’s ensphered by Paradise.

“This Eden, O maiden, who gave to thee?”

“God and my father!” sayeth she.

III

In the orchard, in the cherry orchard

We passed but now, young Wasyl stood.

He raised his cap in a lightsome mood.

He raised it and listened; he thought he heard

Song of a bird, song of a bird—

Sweet, sweet song of Zuzula[^[6]] winging.

But see! It was maids weaving wreaths and singing.

IV
THE COMING OF MEESCHANI ON SUNDAY TO THE WEDDING

(The Meeschani or Master Merchants of old held themselves in high esteem, looking down upon the peasants)

Let us drive—we will drive across the fields;

Drive uphill and down the dales,

Across the sands, across the stones.

They will hear us coming in the vales;

The sands shall murmur, the stones shall prattle,

As ’neath our horses’ feet they rattle;

We will be talked of everywhere.

Ah, how the villagers will stare:

“See now, Meeschani driving there!”

V
CEREMONY OF THE WREATH-WEAVING

The Kalina[^[7]] grows in a little valley;

It has blossomed with a white, white flower.

The bridesmaids went to pluck a bough

But empty-handed come they now.

Its plucking lay not in their power.

But there went Marusenka,

There the little Duchess went.

The Cranberry her blossoms lent.

Home came Marusenka to the bright Room of Welcome.

Home to the pretty maidens then came she.

Before her little face she set the flowers,

And she looked at them long and earnestly.

Then of her father asked Marusenka:

“Like this Kalinonka shall I be?”

“As long as thou stayest by my hearth-side,

Child, thou’lt be like that Cranberry.

“But when thou goest upon thy journey

Thy beauty, alas, will fall from thee.

O youthful one, from thy braids so golden

Thy beauty swiftly away shall flee!”

VI
THE WREATH

Wreath, my wreath

Of Barwēnok,[^[8]] Kryschati![^[9]]

I have woven you, just you alone.

I have not worn you out with wearing;

Saturday afternoon I wore you,

On Sunday all the dear day long,

On Monday just one little hour ...

I would have you painted, that I might keep you

To dance beneath but one night more;

I would have you gilded, that so enwreathèd

I might walk as in days of yore.

VII
BAKING THE KOROVAI[^[10]]

My Korovai, so heaven-sweet!

Moulded with water from seven wells;

Made out of seven stacks of wheat.

And now our oven with golden shoulders,

Our big oven with silver wings

The festal loaf shall bake for us,

The Korovai shall make for us.

VIII

To her little brother the Duchess cried:

“Brother, I pray thee, saddle thy horse!

Haste to the fields that stretch so wide,

Get for me the horses black,

Drive them before thee on the way back.

Then let them loose among my flowers.

Let them browse as around they course,

And what they eat not in my bowers

The while they do in my garden stay

On their clutching hoof they may carry away.

Let the stamping feet on my flowers fall

That none be left when I am gone;

No joy be there for my bridesmaids all—

So lonesome Mother won’t weep for me:

‘There are her flowers—but where is she!’”

IX
PUTTING ON THE PEREMITKA

(The enveloping hood or white scarf, the mark of the wife)

The white Pava[^[11]] is flying—

See all the waiting ring there,

The maids who laugh and sing there—

But all the girls it passes,

Passes by them all

To fall

On Marusenka only.

“Decide now if thou dost regret,

Young Marusenka,

What thou hast done! The maids that jest,

Of their long plaits are still possessed.

They will not take thee back now,

Marusenka!”

X
SONG OF THE BRIDEGROOM’S FRIENDS

“Open the gates—the little gates!”

“Who is it calls? Who is it waits?”

“Attendants of the bridegroom we—”

“Ah, well! Now what may your gift be?”

“We offer you our golden bees—”

“Think you so small a thing would please?

Have you naught else for offering?”

“Behold the great gift that we bring:

The maiden, wearing on her brow

The Ruta-wreath,[^[12]] comes with us now.”

XI
DEPARTURE

Clanged the keys on the table;

Outside the horses neighed.

“O my mother, my dear mother!”

Cried the little maid.

“’Tis all over, all over!

No more am I free.

So sad is it to be married!”

And she wept bitterly.

“Send you your dear daughter

Far away?” mournèd she.

“But I follow, my husband,

Lo, I follow thee!

“The man whom I wed now

A stranger is he.

Yet knoweth my father

To whom he gives me!”

XII
THE MOTHER

When the bridal party is going to the bridegroom’s house

As it came to the dawning I awoke:

Swift I looked in the Courtyard grey—

There but now her fine sleigh stayed,

While the prancing horses neighed

That bore my Marusenka away.

“Am I no more your child?” she said,

“That from your side you send me so

Just ere the coming of the night?

Give me a friend in this my plight—

My songster Solowi[^[13]] must go.

“For its sweet piping I would hear

At peep of day to waken me—

She, my new mother, will not call,

Instead, she slanders—cruel words all—

‘Useless this bride as rotten tree!’”

XIII

In the green garden is fresh-fallen snow;

Horses are galloping to and fro.

A mother follows the hoof-marks deep:

“My Marusenka, where dost thou sleep?

“Help me, O Lord, her steps to trace!

Home I would take her from this place.

“Come, Marusenka, come to me!