# Ballads of Wandering and Captivity

The ballads of wandering (bujdosó ballada) and captivity (rabballada), which can be dated to the 17th and 18th centuries, represent a separate group. This delimitation of time cannot be taken rigidly; rather it indicates a period of development, the rise of characteristic features, since frequently a phrase, a strophe, or an entire connected section of such ballads of wandering and captivity went into the songs of the period that followed the defeat of the wars of liberation. Other parts have been integrated into the 19th century ballads of outlaws (betyár ballada). The fate of the Hungarians fighting for their national freedom during the devastating Turkish occupation appears in these balladic laments with the validity of true poetry. This is no longer the world of the ballads of romance conjuring up royal, lordly courts. Neither is the cocky good spirit present, the resolute firmness of the Kossuth songs and soldiers’ songs of 1848. The themes are of ravaged, smoking peasant {533.} villages, deserted manors, the desperation of lost battles, the entreaty of captives to the miserly families, the lover waiting in vain, the soldier wandering in the pathless winter forest. Songs of particular authors might be supposed among these songs, laments of students and wandering soldiers, epic songs striking the chord of older ballads. However, their unity has absolute validity and clearly shows what differentiates poetic inspiration from recreations by the people, from continual polishing, and the monumental power of oral tradition. These songs and fragments give us a lyric, poignant portrait of the period through the eyes of the serfs. Let us mention here also that these were the centuries in which a characteristic stratum of the so-called “Turkish” soldier songs developed, the Hajdú and wandering songs of Rumanian, Bulgarian, Albanian and South Slav folk poetry. Comparative examination of these songs (one part of the Ukrainian folk poetry can also be included here) is one of the many tasks Eastern European folklore studies have still ahead. While the epic character defines the method of performance of the ballads in the first group–even of those constructed through dramatic dialogues–this group of ballads is characterized by lyric presentation.

The next group of ballads is defined by their dramatic construction and mode of depiction. These are characteristically composed so as to condense the story into one or more powerful dramatic scenes, and if there are more scenes, each is an almost independent dramatic whole, filled, in spite of the small scope, with terrific tension, with the clashing of emotions and passions. The historical dimensions of these ballads may be placed at about the periphery of the 17th and 18th centuries, although there are some, stylistically not part of the old ballad style, such as the ballad of László Fehér, which uses motifs that go back at least to the 16th century, and at the same time several elements foreshadowing the outlaw ballads:

Fig. 210. One of the melodies of the ballad László Fehér

{534.} László Fehér
(The Convict’s Sister)
László Fehér roped some mounts in
Down below the black wood mountain.
Some he whipped off, some he snaffled;
Görc town was dismayed and baffled.
“Come on, come on, men of Görc town;
László Fehér we have run down.
Put the irons on the brigand,
Chain the left leg with the right hand.”
“Give yourself up, doggone betyár,
Say your name, you outlawed beggar!
Give yourself up, doggone betyár,
Else your name speak, outlawed beggar!”
“Stockings white my horse’s legs wear,
Sister mine’s called Anna Fehér.”
“What’s your horse like asked you not we,
Nor about your sister haughty.”
“Give yourself up, doggone betyár,
Say your name, you outlawed beggar!
Give yourself up, doggone betyár,
Else your name speak, outlawed beggar!”
“Stockings white my horse’s legs wear,
And my name is László Fehér.”
“Put the irons on the brigand,
Chain the left leg with the right hand.”
Off to take him they were risen,
For to take him to the prison.
Off to take him they were risen,
Rode him off to darkest prison.
Anna Fehér when they told her
That they caught and jailed her brother,
Gave her coachman orders, said she,
“Get the coach-and-six all ready.
Get the coach-and-six all ready,
Put some gold on, gold with pecks three,
Put some gold on, gold with pecks three,
I shall get my brother set free.”
Anna Fehér could not wait more,
Hied she to the iron-shod door:
{535.} “Brother, brother, László Fehér,
Are you sleeping, resting in there?”
“Neither resting nor a-sleeping,
On you, sister, I am thinking.
Neither resting nor a-sleeping,
On you, sister, I am thinking.”
Anna Fehér could not wait more,
Hied she to the iron-shod door:
“Brother, brother, László Fehér,
What’s he called, the magistrate here?”
“Justice Horvát is the villain,
He’s the rascal fit for swinging.
Justice Horvát is the villain,
He’s the rascal fit for swinging.”
Anna Fehér none could hinder,
She will to the judge’s winder:
“Justice Horvát, Lordship listen,
Get my brother out of prison.
Get my brother out of prison,
I shall give you gold in ransom.”
“Keep your gold, I don’t want any,
All I want is, lie down with me.”
Anna Fehér could not wait more,
Hied she to the iron-shod door:
“Brother, brother, László Fehér,
justice told me, this he did say:
“He’ll today be freed of fetter
If we were to sleep together;
He’ll today be freed of fetter
If we were to sleep together.”
“Sister, sister, Anna Fehér,
Do not go to spend the night there;
For he shall your maidenhead take
And he shall your brother’s head take.”
Anna Fehér could not wait there
She will to the judge’s chamber;
She did aye spend one night with him,
Gilded poster bed they lay in.
When it struck one midnight after,
From the courtyard came a clatter;
{536.} “Oh, Your Worship, Justice Horvát,
What’s that clatter down the courtyard?”
“That’s my coachman makes his horse drink,
It’s the curb-bit makes that clinking.
That’s my coachman makes his horse drink,
It’s the curb-bit makes that clinking.”
Anna Fehér could not wait more,
Hied she to the iron-shod door:
“Brother, brother, László Fehér,
Are you sleeping, resting in there?”
“Sister, sister, Anna Fehér,
Do not seek your brother in here;
O’er greenwood, o’er meadows,
There he hangs high from the gallows!”
Anna Fehér none could hinder,
She will to the judge’s winder:
“Judge, Your Lordship, Justice Horvát,
May the horse you’re riding stumble,
May the horse you’re riding stumble,
May you from the saddle tumble,
May the horse you’re riding stumble,
May you from the saddle tumble.
Thirteen cartloads’ straw for palliasse
Go a-rotting in your mattress;
Thirteen years you lie on straw-sacks
Till their bottom with your weight sags.
Thirteen doctors be all busy,
With your sores should grow a-weary.
Thirteen stores of chemists, druggists
Empty for you all their physics.
Hark you, judge, what I am saying:
Be it blood you wash your face in,
Fire set your towel blazing,
May you never God’s good grace win!”

This ballad is known throughout the entire Hungarian linguistic region, and new variations of it are still being discovered. Its archaic characteristics point to medieval origin; its main theme is widespread over Western Europe, so that it was even written up in literature, for example in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” or Sardou–Puccini’s “Tosca”. The subject, is probably Italian in origin, and passed on into French and English collections of tales through Latin transmission. This ballad {537.} probably came to Hungary from the Italians, perhaps through Dalmatian transmission, after the middle of the 16th century.

This group contains whole strings of beautiful ballads, among them the ballads about the great mountain robbers, Ilona Budai, Beautiful Anna Bíró, Boldizsár Bátori, Anna Bethlen, and also the ballad of the girl who was danced to death (cf. Plate XXVIII).

Sheriff’s wife of Sár Town
(The Girl who was Danced to Death)
“Good morrow, good morrow,
Sheriff’s wife of Sár town,
Sheriff’s wife of Sár town,
Kate, your daughter nutbrown!”
“Come in, daughter Kati,
Young men came to see you:
There’s to be in Sár a
Wedding and a ball too.”
“Nay, I go not, mother,
For it can’t but bad bring:
’Tis János Árvadi
Has today his wedding.”
“Come, my daughter Kati,
Put your skirt of silk on;
Put your feet and legs in
Boots of leather crimson.
Pull a pair of gold rings
On your every finger;
May they give your lover
Each of them a stinger.”
“Good evening to János,
Árvadi, good evening!
I have come along too
For to grace your wedding.”
“Come and hop it with me,
Merrily and briskly.”
“Nay, I won’t go with you
For your sleeves are filthy.”
“Come and hop it with me
Merrily and briskly.”
“Ay, I shall go with you:
Your sleeves are not filthy.”
“Gypsy, play till midday,
Then on till the evening,
All the night till morning,
Till the day is dawning.”
“Let me go, let me go,
Life is me a-leaving,
Silken skirt of mine is
To my body cleaving.”
“I don’t care a farthing
From this world your parting:
If you will not have me,
No one else should have ye.”
“Let me go, let me go,
I am near a-dying,
In my clotted blood are
Both my legs a-lying.”
“I don’t care a farthing
From this world your parting,
If you will not have me,
No one else should have ye.”
“Gypsy, play till midday,
Then on until evening,
All the night till sun-up
Till the girl is laid up.”
“Coachman, bring the horses,
Let us with her home ride!...”
“Open, mother, open,
Open quick the gates wide!
Make your bed, make your bed,
Hurry with its making,
Let me rest awhile my
Limbs and body aching.”
{538.} “Good morrow, good morrow,
Sheriff’s wife of Sár town,
Sheriff’s wife of Sár town,
Kate your daughter nutbrown!
Will you tell me, mother,
How’s your daughter Kati?
Will you tell me, mother,
How’s your daughter Kati?”
“Kati she is better,
As fit as a fiddle,
And she is all laid up
In her chamber’s middle.”
“Say if you will make a
Walnut coffin for her?”
“Sure I’ll make a coffin
Made of marble for her.”
“Say if you will have the
Triple bells a-ringing?”
“Mother, I shall have them
Singing all the sixteen.”
“Say if you will have her
Taken to some clay-pit?”
“Mother, I shall have her
To the graveyard carried.”
“Say if you will have her
By a beggar buried?”
“Mother, I shall have her
By the gendarmes carried.”
Cursed be the father,
Seven times the mother,
Who will let their daughter
Go a wedding ball to;
Let her go at even,
Miss her not next morning;
On the third day after,
She is brought home dying.

In these epic songs of dramatic force, the merciless, closed system of feudalism is manifested much more than before; and, contrary to the conclusions of earlier researchers, it can be ascertained that the cause of these dramatic clashes is precisely the social and family order that suppressed individual feeling and proved how much the individual was at the mercy of the blind and wild forces of society. All conflicts arise from this. Passions, too, all run in the same closed electric circuit; hatred, jealousy, greed, violation and murder fill the stones. Not a word is mentioned about the tragedies of Christian freedom of choice; rather it keeps coming to light that it is impossible to break out of this predetermined closed system. The power of these ballads to describe human beings, their method of shaping human fates through certain passions, is unmatched in its kind. The story begins immediately with an explosive, tense scene, and one of the great marvels of these ballads is precisely that the very few scenes and characters provide the tragic tension of great drama. The apparent great difference between epic and ballad can be found, among other things, in this method of construction, in such a dramatic and concise method of composing the story of the ballad. It is also characteristic that, while in the dramatic ballads of the 16th and 18th centuries the peasants already appear with their own social clashes among the characters, and while in the folk tale and historic ballads they almost never appear, or infrequently as secondary characters, the situation is reversed in dance ballads, where, with the exception of the ballad about the prince, the characters come exclusively from peasant class society.