The Mnemopoetics of Czech Traditional Ballads
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The Mnemopoetics of Czech Traditional Ballads1 Ondřej Skovajsa ABSTRACT This study aims to introduce the Czech traditional ballad to the international reader from the perspective of mnemopoetics, i.e., inherent textual patterns of orally transmitted compositions that support the singers’ memory. It discussesCzech traditional balladry’s distinctive features and important mnemopoetic textual patterns— such as first line, genre, repetition and incremental repetition, assonance/rhyme scheme, law of three, strophe patterning, and parallelism— which are illustrated in these ballads. Special focus is paid to the supra-narrative function of formulas, especially connected to green and black epithet formulas, using the analytical framework of Flemming J.Andersen’s Commonplace and Creativity: The Role of Formulaic Diction in Anglo-Scottish Traditional Balladry (Odense: Odense University Press, 1985). The study forms aconclusion that mnemopoetics of Czech ballads exist but are less prominent than in Czech traditional lyric songs, and discusses the role of Czech traditional ballads in the formation of Czech cultural memory. KEYWORDS: Czech ballads, mnemopoetics, Czech Lands, Bohemia, Moravia, small epics To my knowledge, there is no existing study in English about Czech balladry. The task of the following article is thus to introduce specific features of Czech ballads,2 and to do so from the perspective of (performative) mnemopoetics. By this word, Imean the very features of textual poetics within orally transmitted compositions— here ballads— that support the singers’ memory. By putting into brackets the word ‘performative’, Istress the need to imaginatively step into the singer’s (or singers’) shoes when involved in the armchair analysis of song texts. Icoined the term mnemopoetics, as Irealized that the extant word mnemotechnique is not very precise, as it implies the conscious decision of applying strategies to learn songs, and my field research so far invalidates this: my informer-singers stress that all they did to memorize anew song was to ‘sing it again and again.’3 The application of mnemopoetics in Czech ballads should thus serve adouble-function: both to test the validity of the concept of mnemopoetics, and to briefly introduce 1 This study was supported by the grant GA UK No.300218, entitled ‘Memory and Formulas in Folk Songs’, realized at Charles University, Faculty of Arts. 2 Iuse Czech here as an inclusive term for both Bohemian and Moravian part of the Czech Lands. 3 Alžbeta Baštěková, pensioner (b. 1927, Papradno, Slovakia). Similar accounts Ireceived from other informers, Anna Patáčiková, Cecília Patáčiková, Karolína Balušíková, Marie Jedličková. Only Radovan Beťák (b. 1978) from Prague who is interested in folklore from Horňácko in Moravian Slovakia region, would upon request think of the schemata that he would apply when learning new songs. OPEN ACCESS
210 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 Czech traditional ballads to the international reader. As far as the latter, this study is much indebted to seminal synthesis by Oldřich Sirovátka and Marta Šrámková (Sirovátka, Šrámková, 1983, pp.223–249). I. Well into the 1830s, Czech romantics thought no songs like Czech ballads existed, and being left only with lyric songs, they stressed the ‘soft’ feature of Czech songs, and hereby initializing the concept of a‘dove-like’ Czech nation.4 They viewed Czech songs in opposition to Russian and Serbian— according to their knowledge— ‘essentially epic’ songs (Sirovátka, Šrámková, 1983, p.247). Soon, however, the founding fathers of romantic Czech song collecting, who collected both texts and melodies, František Sušil in Moravia (Sušil, 1835/1998) and Karel Jaromír Erben in Bohemia (Erben, 1840/1937), had provided extensive examples of balladry. Sušil refers to ballads as ‘story-telling songs’ (‘písně dějepravné’), and being aCatholic priest, he thought them so significant, that he placed them right after ‘religious epic songs’ (‘legendy’) in level of importance.5 Erben grouped ballads under the heading of ‘narrative songs’ (‘písně rozpravné’) which he subdivided into religious ‘legends’ (‘legendy’) and secular ‘ballads’ (‘balady’). Czech traditional folk ballad then— the term balada being borrowed from English via German— is defined, implicitly, by these two seminal folk song collections. An explicit definition, based on the nature of the songs included in the two anthologies under their given headings, may be the following: Ballad— in Czech folkloristic tradition— is ashort secular epic song passed through oral tradition with lyric undertones, strophe structure, athematic showing of intimate human dramas, and based almost entirely in avillage setting. It is narrated in the 3rd person using past tense, and its style is detached. Unlike in lyric songs focusing mostly on one moment, the action spreads over alonger period of time. Culprits are punished or punish themselves. The concept includes humorous short epics, though most ballads are tragic. The concept of balada, then, roughly corresponds to its English counterpart— traditional ballad— and we can further refer to these with only the English word. The percentage of ballads within the Sušil and Erben corpora are, respectively, relatively small, yet the amount of unique ballad types is three times larger in Moravia than in Bohemia, 4 In this endeavour Czech romantics were influenced by the much-quoted chapter ‘On Slavian Nations’ from J.G.Herder’s (1800, pp.482–484). They however narrowed this quote to refer to Czech nation, and not the whole Slavic world. For discourse analysis of the Czech early 19th century debate on Czech ‘softness’ and German ‘hardness’ see: Macura, 1995. 5 Here is alist of František Sušil’s groupings in his Moravské národní písně (1998) followed by the total of songs in the given section: 1.Sacred epic songs and lyric songs 182; 2.Epic songs, i.e. Ballads 246; 3.Songs about Love 708; 4.Marriage Songs (songs before marriage, after marriage and general) 235; 5.Songs about Family 76; 6.Occupational Songs (During different occupations, during Harvest) 131+54=185; 7.Army songs 117; 8.Tavern songs 199; 9.Jocular, allegorical and naive songs 306; 10.Ceremonial songs 107. OPEN ACCESS
ONDřEJ SKOVAJSA 211 and all major ballad types found in Erben’s can also be found in Sušil’s.6 In order to introduce the richness of Czech balladry, this study will focus on the Sušil collection.7 What are specific features of Czech Ballads, i.e., what do Czech ballads share with their Slavic and European counterparts and how do they differ? Czech ballads belong to the ‘small epic’. As no heroic epic survived, Czechs are left only with Romantic forgeries of manuscripts by Zelená Hora and Dvůr Králové,8 and the maverick works of the historian and musicologist, Vladimír Karbusický, who found traces of agreat epic back in medieval Bohemia (Karbusický, 1995). Among the Western Slavic regions there are no byliny, which can commonly to be found in Ukraine, Russian, and South Slavic epics which— unlike the intimate conflicts of ballads— depict fights of great ethnic importance.9 What distinguishes Czech ballads thematically, are their almost exclusively non-heroic, rural setting, offering images of village life from that period. Maidens cutting grass and going for water, and farmers ploughing the field, while shepherds, millers, and servants are its protagonists. The conflict often starts when afigure arrives from outside the village and disturbs the community’s quiet way of life, such as when afeudal lord targets abeautiful girl cutting grass and forces her to go to his castle; or aconflict erupts between the young village hero and gamekeeper, the latter anegative or even devilish figure due to his commitment to the feudal lord and his inclinations to seduce or even rape girls from the village, etc (Sirovátka, Šrámková, p.233). In Moravian ballads, aTurk drags ayoung mother away, forcing her to leave her children behind. One obvious reason for the lack of aristocracy within Czech people’s projection of themselves, is the loss of Czech nobility after the Czech cultural genocide, which followed the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. It was precisely during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that Czech traditional songs gained their current form,10 they shared many of their plots with other European ballads— such as the return of the beloved from war or from the 6 In Sušil’s collection of Moravian songs, the ballads count for 246 of the whole corpus of 2361 songs, that is, more than 10 percent, together with 182 religious epic songs, it is more than 18 percent. In Erben’s collection, we find 47 ballads out of 2200 songs, that is less than 3 percent, even if we add to it the total of further 14 religious epic songs Erben collected. The formative push of the singing voice on music in Moravia resulting in less regular music— and stanza schemes than in Bohemia. In Bohemia, western part of Czech lands closer to Germany, Erben and other collectors recorded melodies probably already at alater stage, melodies already much influenced by folk brass music (Markl, Karbusický, 1963, pp.25–29). 7 Songs from Sušil collection will later be quoted by the tune numbers in the 1998 edition, which is afacsimile of the 1941 edition, which respects the numbering of 1860 edition. 8 In the light of late 19th century modern scholarship, these forgeries were stripped them of ‘authenticity’ by the initiative lead by the first Czechoslovak president T.G. Masaryk. This would not have happened if their originators conceived them— instead of ancient texts— as edited recordings of what village people sang, see Burke, 1978, pp.3–23. 9 The Balkan epic, thought, does not limit itself merely to heroic poetry an in the Balkans we find instance of ballads as well. 10 One can even refer to the plebeian roots of Czech national narratives, such as the one about Přemysl Ploughman. OPEN ACCESS
212 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 grave, the Joan of Arc figure, recognition of one’s beloved because of ring, the ‘King Lear story’, etc.,11— yet ‘ruralized’ them. As far as good and evil is concerned, there is opposition between good and bad behaviours, but there is not acomplete polarity between terrible and good characters, as in Czech broadside ballads.12 In Czech traditional oral balladry, the universal Christian moral order is upheld. The moral order is trespassed by the cruel deeds performed, but it is never cancelled (Sirovátka, Šrámková, p.230). The characters regret their evil actions, repent, and ask for punishment. The message of Czech traditional ballads is clear: learn to discern between good and evil decisions. According to Šrámková and Sirovátka, ballads would be listened to during monotonous work (spinning, plucking feathers; heavy work in the forest or in the field). Ballads would also be sung during weddings (especially ballads connected to happy and unhappy love and marital life, especially popular in the Strání region was asong about the bride being harassed by her mother-in-law13), and religious legends would be sung during Christian festivities. During collective singing and dancing, ballads would often be shortened and turn to lyric songs (!), as there was never enough time or space for awhole ballad during the dance in front of the musicians. Ballad singing requires agood memory, so there would often be singers who would focus strongly on ballads, i.e., ballads formed asubstantial part of their repertoire (Sirovátka, Šrámková, p.247).14 Unlike the current song tradition of the Czech Roma, traditional Czech ballads are arare find today, out of all of my informers, only one of them could sing aballad.15 The current variation process of Czech and Moravian songs seems to be very meagre today, compared to its heyday in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Idare say that the singer may have forgotten astrophe or changed aword due to (creative) forgetfulness, but not much variation occurs in lyric songs, and even less in ballads. Sadly, there are virtually no Czech ballad singers anymore and if there is atraditional ballad in singer’s repertoire, asubstantial change in wording does not seem to occur if the singer is asked to sing the same ballad or song repeatedly. My research of the Czech and Slovak situation indicates that the versions of the songs include only minor changes/omissions.16 The Parry-Lord theory 11 Family narratives of Czech traditional ballads were catalogued in aCzech-German edition by Šrámková, 1970. Demonological and legendary narratives were analyzed and catalogued by Šrámková, & Sirovátka, 1990. 12 Terminologically, in Czech broadside ballads are commonly referred to as ‘kramářské písně’ (hucster songs), the word balada is not used, and the scholarly study of the two is lead separately. 13 Popelka 1995, p.15. 14 Popelka mentions asinger from Strání, Alžběta Končitíková, who sang to him 80 ballads in the 1970s and 1980s (Popelka, p.16). 15 Marie Jedličková from Slavkov uBrna listed among the songs in her repertoir the ballad ‘Orphaned Child’ (‘Osiřelo dítě’), Sušil 341 (p.151). 16 Ican draw this conclusion only from my recording sessions with five Czech and Slovak informants in their late eighties and early nineties. Current cimbalom groups (‘cimbálové muziky’) also do not much encourage variation process, texts are written down, and the words of the regional variants are piously kept. In apersonal interview in Brno in October OPEN ACCESS
ONDřEJ SKOVAJSA 213 can thus only be imagined having held currency in the past, but not in today’s current state.This, however, does not apply to the still rich singing tradition of the Czech Roma (see the project www.gilora.cz). The Czech and Moravian traditions have been fixed within collections, and current singers piously stick to the versions they had learned and do not re-create them, as they feel they cannot take the liberty (unless in jest and children’s folklore!).The following lines may only help us imagine/(re)construct the singers’ situation during the time when variation processes were still alive, before 1900, by using lyrics as astarting point and accompanied by commentaries of current and recorded singers. II. Our task is framed by the application of the term mnemopoetics to Czech traditional ballads. The term is my coinage, but the poetics of traditional oral literature have been amply described. As far as the epic, Axel Olrik created the first set list of organizational patterns for an epic singer’s memory by describing the ’laws‘ that ‘limit the freedom of [oral] composition’ (Olrik, 1999, pp.83–97). Olrik’s idea of ‘limiting freedom of composition’ was more recently adopted by David Rubin (Rubin, 1995) and Daniel Levitin (Levitin, 2008). Our task here, is to list the most important mnemopoetic features, as they are relevant to Czech traditional ballads, while imagining— following Parry and Lord— the singer during the moment of performance. As traditional ballads are songs, of course, we need to keep in mind that while doing this, we are dealing with an amphibian creature who dwells both in music and text. However, we need to start even before the singing. In order to sing, i.e., before the first line is sung, often arhythmic bodily movement is needed.17 Ludvík Kuba, Czech song collector and painter, has recorded such aconnection in the Slavic world: Aseventy-year-old woman, awonderful singer and very helpful otherwise, would not sing askakucha to me. And when she wanted to start, she could not. Only as she succumbed to herself, that is, when she started swinging with her whole body as if when dancing, she managed (Kuba, 1953 p.265).18 Ludvík Kuba refers here to adifferent region (Belarus) and different song-genre (‘skakucha’), yet this passage is quoted by another well-known Czech song-folklorist, Vladimír Úlehla, who extends the validity of Kuba’s observation on the mnemonic role of bodily rhythm to the inhabitants of the South-Moravian town, Strážnice. Úlehla describes the performance of the ‘long song’ (‘táhlá píseň’) by his contributor, 2016, the ballad scholar Marta Šrámková was also sceptical of current variation process. There often seems to be extensive pressure to keep the preserved version. 17 Scholars, such as French Jesuit Marcel Jousse, have contributed to establishing mnemonic ‘laws’ by focusing on oral cultures and linking parallelism to human breath and body, and to song recall (Jousse, 1990). 18 Translation mine. OPEN ACCESS
214 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 auntie Žalmánková. Úlehla admits that the movement may be less conspicuous, but stresses the singer moves ‘like awalking youngster’ (‘jako kráčející šuhaj’) even while sitting, and links this movement to ashort gap between the initial movement and the first words of the song.19 Such bodily movement— no matter how pronounced it may be— obviously helps mnemonic recall not only at the very beginning of the song, but also in the midst of singing.20 After afew rocking movements— or ashort moment of concentration— the first line sung sets the music and metre of the whole (balladic) song. During my field-research in Slovakia and Moravia, singers either regretted not having written down the beginnings of songs,21 or they really did write the list beforehand and then used it as astarting point for singing.22 (The biblical book of Ezekiel famously bears witness to this principle as the prophet first needs to eat apiece of paper to start his prophesy!) The general semantic contour of the song is often provided by the very first lines, the initial sentence structure determining the topic of the song. No wonder first lines— incipits— have been largely collected and analysed by Czech folklorists (Šrámková, Hrabalová, 1968, pp.207–222; Šrámková, 1968, pp.333—339). The first lines determine the (balladic) genre that ‘provides general cues for recall and limits the available recalls to those that fit its pattern’ (Rubin, p.304). Czech ballads— like their English counterparts— are mostly in past tense and 3rd person, with prominent dialogue and the narrator’s cool distance from the story, unlike in love songs. The singers know this, and such rules of the genre productively limit their choices. In Moravia, the first line is often repeated— just like in the blues. The second line is often repeated in Bohemian ballads. 23 Repetition is an important mnemopoetic feature which gives time for the singer to recall the song, but the repeated words also have agreater semantic significance and often hint at the underlying theme of the song. Incremental repetition— the repetition of the previous line followed by anew piece of information— occurs both in Czech ballads and lyric songs. Its most simple form is shown in the following example: ‘[…|] that he was my sweetheart. || The sweetheart | they carry over the graveyard’.24 Yet the repeated word does not necessarily need to come from the last position in the line: ‘Do not hang me on the oaks , | where Iwould be eaten by pigeons, | hang me rather on the fir tree, | where my love goes for water.’25 Another, similar instance of syntactic incremental structure, is the repetition of the pre19 Úlehla, 1949, p.313. 20 current neuroscientific research on kinesthetic memory. 21 Alžbeta Baštěková from Papradno during my field research in 2018 in Western Slovakia. 22 Marie Jedličková from Slavkov uBrna, Czechia. 23 ‘Strophes are mostly two-lined, (consisting of eight, six or seven syllables); or four-lined (consisting mostly of 6—syllables). […] Repetition of whole verses is common, in Moravia more often the first verse repeats, whereas in Bohemia it is more common that the second line repeats which gives rise to three-line strophes. But common is also the repetition of of both lines, so that afour-line form appears. […] Refrain, too, appears but mostly as amarginal phenomenon’ (Sirovátka, Šrámková, pp.235–236). 24 ‘[…|] že bel můj mládenec.|| Jož toho mládenca | po krchově nesó,’ Sušil 174 (p.79). 25 ‘Nevešajte mne na duby, |objedli by mě holubi. | Povešte mě radš na jedlu, | kam chodí milá pro vodu. ’ Sušil 196 (p.91). OPEN ACCESS
ONDřEJ SKOVAJSA 215 ceding line, now expressed as an apostrophe: ‘[…|] how come his black horse | moves so heavily under him? | How come, my horsey, | how come you move so heavily?’26 Even aquestion prompting an answer, such as in the following example, may be placed under the rubric of incremental repetition: ‘What has happened over the mountains? | Awife has killed ahusband.’27 Incremental repetition may also combine with the antithesis, another common principle of mnemopoetic patterning of folksongs: ‘amother walks to you, | so does your sister and your brothers. || It is not my mother, | nor my sisters and brothers. || It is the executioner | who is to chop off my head’.28 When illustrating incremental repetition, Marcel Jousse (1886–1961), French renegade anthropologist, modernist experimenter and biblical studies scholar, gives an example of aschoolmate who was unable to recite apoem in front of the class, but when someone whispered to him the beginning of the verse, he would finish the verse or even strophe on his own. Jousse then interprets incremental repetition as way in which the reciter can self-cue himself (Jousse, 1990, p.22). One of my informers, Radovan Beťák, succinctly expressed this as asong’s cumulative iteration: ‘So when you breathe in at the end of the strophe, you always know what you’re going to sing next…’29 Šrámková and Sirovátka (1983), according to their statistics, point out the two-line and four-line forms of the Czech ballad strophe, with— as mentioned above— first or second line repeated, and the merely marginal occurrence of refrain. The verses are stapled by rhymes or assonances, forming mostly the AA BB CC… pattern. The assonance is more prominent than the rhyme. As rhyme is amore recent phenomenon, this fact probably points out the greater age and stability of ballads, as well as their less frequent singing occurrence, in contrast to lyric songs which are more fully rhymed. However, no matter if we deal with rhyme or assonance, apair is always involved, and there is atendency for many of these pairs to be quite stable and thus ease into memory. The rhyme pair květ— svět (flower— world) links the loss of the flower (i.e. lover), to the loss of the world, like in the following Moravian ballad ending: ‘Afragrant rose flower is dead, | the whole world aches,’ 30 an assonance pair ryba— libá links the fish (‘ryba’) which refers to the drowned corpse of the beloved which is being delightful (‘libá’) to the singer’s heart: ‘this is the fish, | delightful to my heart’s wish.’31 Similarly to the situation in Polish songs, as described by Bartmiński, one may discern two major types of mnemopoetic patterning of the strophe(s): the themes either develop the ‘immediately preceding theme’— which again is an instance of the above discussed incremental repetition—, or they one by one develop one superordinate theme (Bartmiński, 2016, p.48). The latter appears in the ‘rural King Lear’ ballad. After two 26 ‘[…] což jeho vraný kůň, | pod ním tak těžce jde? || Což pak, můj koníčku,| což mi tak těžce jdeš?’ K.J. Erben, Prostonárodní písně aříkadla, p.404. 27 ‘Co se stalo za horama? Zabila tam paní pána’ Sušil 205 (p.94). 28 ‘Jde pro ťa máti, | jdú sestra ibrati. || Nejde pro ma máti, | ani sestra brati. || Než to idú kati, | co mia majú sťati’ Sušil 319 (p.142). See discussion of parallelism below. 29 Radovan Beťák, b. 1978, Prague. 30 ‘Umřel mně zvonné růže květ, | mrzí mě cely šírý svět’ Sušil 394 (p.172). This translation mine, as well as all following translations from Sušil and Erben. 31 Sušil 396 (p.173), See also Sušil 187 (p.85), 395 (p.172), 399 (p.174). OPEN ACCESS
216 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 cruel daughters offer the old man anoose and beggar’s basket respectively, in comes the youngest daughter with apie.32 Here the pattern combines with other patterns of mnemopoetics, such as Olrik’s law of three and the law of initial and final position. Are there opening and closing strophes in Czech ballads? (Olrik, 1999, p.88). As far as the beginnings, stock ‘openings’ are very brief, i.e., ‘There was once a…’ (‘Byl jest jeden…’), and ‘What news?’ (‘Co se stalo vnově?’). Although there exist ballads with closing paragraphs following tragic events,33 most Czech ballads end abruptly: ‘And they caught the woman, | manacled her | and put her on the gallows.’34 During fieldwork, it often happens that the singer starts commenting on the song right after they have finished singing the last line,35 often to the detriment of the recording. Ring structure— also sometimes called ‘annular structure’— is, to my knowledge, not present in Czech ballads.36 III. An analogy with repetition is parallelism, which Czech ballads share with their oral counterparts elsewhere. This structure bridges the semantic and syntactic levels. The phenomenon was discovered, and the term parallelism was coined by Anglican bishop Robert Lowth, when he searched for poetics in the Hebrew Bible. In his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of Hebrews, first published in Latin in 1753, Lowth distinguishes three types of parallelism: synonymous, antithetic and synthetic (Lowth, 1835, p.200).37 For purposes of ballad mnemopoetics, we can collapse Lowth’s categories to merely one which we will simply call ‘parallelism’ and by it mean asemantic correspondence— asynonymy— between lines. Lowth hints in the book that parallelism also exists in the (oral) poetry of other nations (Lowth, pp.200–216, 37–50, pp.205, 41–46).38 Lowth’s claim is verified by Czech 32 Sušil 255 (p.113). 33 Sušil 181 (p.82). 34 ‘Atu paničku chytili, | do želez ju zakovali, | na šibenice ju dali.’ Sušil 206 (p.95). 35 Which Ioften experienced with my informers, the Patáčik sisters of Horná Mariková, Slovakia in Summer 2018, for example. 36 Rubin describes this organization pattern in following terms: ‘Progress through apiece can be viewed as askewer traveling in astraight line through an onion, piercing the skin, each layer, and the centre before continuing through the same layers in reverse order until the skin is reached again at the opposite side. Each layer entered provides the expectation of alayer to be encountered again’ (Rubin, 1995, p.274). 37 Lowth’s distinction in Lectures in has been Hebrew poetry problematized by Kugel, J. 1981 in Idea of Biblical Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, who entirely however rejects the mnemonic role of parallelism. The formalist philologist Roman Jakobson has devoted much attention to parallelism, however, his studies on parallelism combine literary and folkloric material, and are unfortunately often exceedingly confusing. 38 The implications of Lowth’s linking oral poetry ‘among nations’ with biblical poetry via parallelism, are enormous, Herder’s influential romantic idea of ‘Holy Spirit’ talking individually to each nation. OPEN ACCESS
ONDřEJ SKOVAJSA 217 balladry and lyric songs. In the following example, where parallelism combines with antithesis, asynonymy between ‘townspeople’ and ‘bees’ is suggested. The bees were swarming, The bees were swarming, It was not bees, it was good people good people— townspeople.39 The townspeople-bees take the girl against her wishes. She does not want to leave the village where her mother cruelly sent her. It is suggested, by the big dowry the mother bequeathed the girl before her untimely death, that the mother regretted this decision. The following example from aSušil ballad is more enigmatic: here we encounter asynonymy between (white village) ‘church’ and ‘white rose’, and between a‘beautiful green meadow’ and the ‘dear girl’: You church of Bobrov, you stand on abeautiful meadow. Awhite rose blooms there, my dear girl has died.40 Parallelism is an important part of mnemopoetics as it structures the song for recall, suggesting vertical synonymous’ pairs.41 Bartmiński rightly stresses that the philosophical underpinning of parallelism is animism, ‘the faith in unity and interconnection between human beings and nature’ (Bartmiński, 2016, p.48) and claims that symbols are a‘reduced parallelism’. This claim is very useful from the standpoint of mnemopoetics and song hermeneutics. In the song above, the initial two-line parallel structure foreshadows the tragic situation. The church stands as agrave on the meadow, the latter symbolizing the young girl. IV. Living and co-creating the singing tradition and having the song-repertoire of the region on their tongues, the bearers of tradition are aware of the symbolic meanings in songs where eroticism often plays the main part (Freud, 1999, pp.177–196). My informers42 in western Slovakia thus claimed that the song starting with the line ‘Little 39 ‘Rojily se včeličky,|rojily se včeličky, |nebyly to včeličky||To byli dobří ludé, | dobří ludé měščané.’ Sušil 214 (p.99). 40 ‘Ty bobrovsky kosteličku, | stojiš na pěknym travničku. || Kvecě zněho růža bila, | umřela mňe moja mila.’ Sušil 1030 (p.345). 41 Vertical pairing links this pattern to assonance/rhyme scheme, see above. 42 Alžbeta Baštěková and Karolína Balušíková, June 2018. OPEN ACCESS
224 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 Dvořák, K. 1946. ‘Studie apoznámky vydavatelovy’, in Čelakovský, F.L.Slovanské národní písně, ed. by Karel Dvořák. Praha: Ladislav Kuncíř, 537–722 Erben, K.J. 1937. Prostonárodní písně aříkadla, ed.by Jiří Horák. Praha: ELK. Erben, K.J. 2016. Kytice: Czech & English Edition. London: Jantar Publishing. Flemming, G.A. 1985. Commonplace and Creativity: The Role of Formulaic Diction in Anglo-Scottish Traditional Balladry. Odense: Odense University Press. Freud, S.1999. ‘Symbolism in Dreams’, International Folkloristics, ed. by Alan Dundes. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 177–196 Havránek, B. & Hrabák, J. (eds.). 1957. Výbor zčeské literatury. Praha: Czech Academy of Sciences. Herder, J.G. 1800. ‘On Slavian Nations’ in Outlines of aPhilosophy of the History of Man . London: St.Paul, 482–484 Horák, J, 1946. Naše lidová píseň. Praha: Josef Vilímek. Jaluška, M. 2010. ‘Zelení muži, jarní slova’, in Cestami zelených mužů. Praha: Malvern, 107–118 Jousse, M. 1990. The Oral Style. New York: Garlan Publishing. Karbusický, V. 1968. Mezi lidovou písní ašlágrem. Praha: Supraphon. —— 1995. Báje, mýty, dějiny. Praha: MF. Koláček, J.Skovajsa, O. (eds.). 2019. ‘Katalog lidové písně’, www.folksong.eu [accessed March 2019] Kugel, J. 1981. Idea of Biblical Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kuba, L. 1953. Cesty za slovanskou písní. Praha: SNKHLU. Levitin, D. 2008. The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. New York: Penguin. Lowth, R.1835. Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, translated by G.Gregory, third edition. London: Tegg, p.200. Markl, J. & Karbusický, V. 1963. ‘Bohemian Folk Music: Traditional and Contemporary Aspects’, Journal of the International Folk Music Council 15, 25–29 Macura, V. 1995. Znamení zrodu. Jinočany: H&H. Olrik, A. 1999. ‘Epic Laws of Folk Narrative’, in International Folkloristics, ed. by Alan Dundes. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 83–97 Popelka, P.1995. Příběhy vpísních vyzpívané. Uherský Brod: Moraviapress. Rubin, D.C.1995. Memory in Oral Traditions: Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads and Counting-Out Rhymes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sušil, F. 1995. Moravské národní písně, 5th edition, rev. by Robert Smetana and Bedřich Václavek. Praha: MF/Argo. Sirovátka, O. & Šrámková, M. 1983. ‘Nad českými lidovými baladami’, in České lidové balady. Praha: Melantrich, 223–249 Šrámková, M. & Hrabalová, O. 1968. ‘Zásady incipitové katalogizace textových písňových variant’. Český lid 55. Praha, Czech Academy of Sciences, 207—222 Šrámková, M. & Hrabalová, O. ‘Zásady incipitové katalogizace textových písňových variant’. Český lid 55. Praha: Czech Academy of Sciences, 207–222, Šrámková, M. 1968. ‘Ktextové výstavbě lyrických písní ajejich katalogizaci’, Český lid 56, 333–339. Šrámková, M. 1970. Katalog českých lidových balad. Praha: Czech Academy of Sciences. Šrámková, M. & Sirovátka, O. 1990. Katalog českých lidových balad. Brno: Czech Academy of Sciences. Votruba, A. 2010. Pravda uzbojníka: Zbojnictví aloupežnictví ve střední Evropě. Praha: Skriptorium. Ondřej Skovajsa, PhD, did his graduate and post-graduate work in American, Czech, and Comparative Literature at Charles University in Prague and UC Santa Cruz (Fulbright Scholarship 2011–2012), interpreting Walt Whitman and Henry Miller from the vantage point of oral-formulaic theory in his first book Written Voice (Psaný hlas, Malvern, 2015). Since 2008 he has taught at Charles UniversiOPEN ACCESS
ONDřEJ SKOVAJSA 225 ty’s Faculty of Arts East and Central European Studies program, and newly works also as audiovisual fund curator and researcher at the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno. In 2021 Skovajsa launched The Giľora Project (www.gilora.cz) which makes available Romani traditional songs as sung today by Czech and Slovak Romani singers, In 2022, he also founded non-governmental organization Giľora (www.spolekgilora.cz). Contact: [email protected] OPEN ACCESS