Notes


Note f-1. In the following volumes papers of different colors have been used as an easy means of distinguishing between my own notes (which are on white paper), the prose or poetry collected by means of dictation or written by the authors themselves (which is on blue paper), and the prose or poetry collected on a phonographic recording apparatus (which is on buff paper). The Serbo-Croatian texts are partly typed in Latin script and partly in Cyrillic script as follows: the texts from Catholics are typed in Latin script, those of Orthodox singers or story-tellers in Cyrillic script, those of Moslems in one or the other. Each piece of [Serbo-Croatian] material [that is incorporated in this study] was numbered as it was collected, as nearly as possible in chronological order. In certain cases where texts have been omitted from their proper place in the order of numbering they have been inserted with the addition of a letter. Thus, text number 297a does not necessarily mean it is an appendage of text 297, but merely that it was collected after text 297 and before 298. Not only has the material been carefully dated as it was collected, but the notes of the author are also dated. --MP

Note 1-9. I.e., an epic singer who accompanies himself with the gusle.

Note 1-10. I.e., a formal public competition in epic singing staged by the civil or cultural authorities in city or town.

Note 1-11. For further information about this theme, see under `Seven Kings' in the Index of David E. Bynum, Serbo-Croatian Heroic Poems, New York & London, 1993, page 831, and the locations cited there.

Note 1-12. For a detailed treatment of this poem and its tradition, see David E. Bynum, Serbo-Croatian Heroic Poems, New York & London, 1993.

Note 1-13. Parry had not yet sufficient experience in Yugoslavia to have learned that the Yugoslavs' idea of themselves (no matter what their ethnic or religious affiliation) as surrounded by sevenfold enmity was very traditional. According to a proverb at least as old as the Yugoslav state, it is `surrounded by worries' (okružena brigama), the instrumental plural of the word `worry' (briga) being taken as an ackronym: Bulgaria, Rumunija (Romania), Italia, Grčka (Greece), Austria, Madžarska (Hungary), and Albania. The specific identities of the traditional enemies have varied, but the concept of their sevenfold multiplicity is old.

Note 1-14. This was the statement he made when I dictated this page. Later, in Stolac, when Vlaho dictated the song differently than he himself had sung it, he said he had learned it from Uncle Đuro. --MP, 19.xii.1934

Note 1-15. Nikola's Text No. 74 is in the Appendices, as is also Vlaho's text of the song. The Parry Collection does not have a text of the song from Đuro. --ABL

Note 1-16. I.e., teamsters, or drivers of pack-animals; freight-movers.

Note 1-17. Radical corrections on this point in the Pričanje of Vlaho (Text no. 843). --MP

Parry was much concerned at this time with understanding the species of social gatherings where the epic tradition might have flourished. In December of 1934, coffeehouses and the assemblies of male persons in them, easy of access as they were to foreigners and strangers such as Parry, still seemed to him the most obviously important hotbeds of singing, and he of course still knew little about domestic life in households where epic was sung; but his own further collecting in the spring and summer of 1935 produced overwhelming evidence that singers' own homes (and those of their kin) were the primary loci of the epos. --DEB

Note 1-18. At least, so he said. --MP, 19.xii.1934

None of the songs collected from Nikola is listed among the songs collected from his uncle Đuro! --ABL

Note 1-19. See, however, the notes to Text 2. --MP

Note 1-20. The hero Kraljević Marko's famous piebald horse and knowing equine companion in a multitude of different adventures. --DEB

Note 1-21. Parry Texts nos. 7, 18, 274a, 470, and 517 are in the Appendices.