In this respect, the Parry texts may be divided into three unequal categories. There are some texts (Category A) that seem to be independent of the Karadžić tradition. Category A, provided that we could show that the songs in it are not influenced by other printed collections, could be assumed to be “pure” in their traditional orality. Into Category B, a much larger one than A, we have placed those texts that show a clearly discernible influence of the Karadžić printed text. Category C contains texts that are clearly cases of direct copying or of word-for-word memorization from the songbook. I wish to examine at least one text in each category to see exactly what the differences are between the later and earlier texts, and for this purpose I shall begin with Category C, and with a text from Parry’s early days of collecting.

Adam Parry published some of the notes that his father dictated in Dubrovnik as commentary to the first six songs that he collected in 1933. In those notes he included digressions on various subjects that were in his mind as he worked in the field and gained experience in [171] understanding the songs and the processes of traditional composition and transmission. In a portion of “Ćor Huso” (the name that he gave to these writings) that Adam Parry published, Milman Parry, wrote (December 3, 1934) some observations on the subject of the influence of a fixed text. Among the comments that still remain unpublished he made the following remarks about the singer Milovan Vojičić of Nevesinje, Hercegovina: “Milovan from his school days, he told me, had read every word of all the pjesmarice [song books] on which he could lay his hands. At one time, he said, he had a very large collection of his own which later on in days of poverty he sold for ten dinars a kilo. His repertory of the classical Serbian songs, as far as I could judge by his questioning, was very large, and the Ženidba Kralja Vukašina [The Wedding of King Vukašin] (autograph text 29) which I picked at random and asked him to write out for me shows that he had learned those texts with an exactness that varies from the original only in the omission or rearrangement of a few lines and in the reordering or changing of words in the phrase. ” What follows illustrates in detail the kinds of differences that exist in another experiment with a song sent by Milovan Vojičić to Parry at Kirkland House, Harvard University.

In the category of lines that are very close to those of the Karadžić text some reflect only slight differences of pronunciation; for example, “uranijo” for “uranio,” “namastir” instead of “manastir,” “jevanđelje” for “evanđelje,” “zavati” for “zafati,” “dvanajes’” for “dvanaest,” and so on.

Milovan preferred the normal forms “tebi” and “meni” for the dative of the pronouns “ti” (you, sing.) and “ja” (I) to the dialect forms “tebe” and “mene,” and he used the form “đogin” rather than “đogat,” meaning “white horse. ” [172]

In several lines one preposition is used instead of another: for example, “na obalu,” “on the shore,” rather than Karadžić’s “pod obalu“; and “niz bijelo lice,” “down his white face,” instead of Karadžić’s “od bijela lica,” “from his white face.”

Other cases of change of a single word are (1) change of verbal aspect, as “posjede đogina” for “usjede đogata,” “mounted his white horse” (line 131); (2) avoidance of an obsolete form, as “misli” for “mlidijaše,” “thought” (line 8), and “čita” for “čati,” “reads” (lines 48 and 141); (3) one epithet for another, as “divno odijelo,” “wondrous clothes,” for Podrugović’s “svjetlo odijelo,” “bright clothes” (line 69), and “na noge junačke,” “to his heroic feet,” instead of “na noge lagane,” “to his light feet” (line 126); (4.) in one instance Vojičić has been influenced in his change by the rhetoric of the line; in preferring “namjera je starca namjerila,” “the old man intended” (line 5), to “namjera je starca nanijela,” “intention came over the old man. ” In this latter case, he seems to have liked the combination of cognate verb with cognate noun subject.

Of the changes that effect more than one word the following are typical: (1) in line 53 “šta ti fali,” “what is lacking to you,” takes the place of “šta je malo,” “what is little”; (2) in line 107 Vojičić prefers “zdravlje prifatila,” “she accepted his greeting,” to “božju pomoć prima,” “she received his ‘God’s help!'” In both cases the alternates are natural replacements.

The most concentrated degree of change (underlined in Vojičić’s version in the Parry Collection) is found in lines 23-27:

It is useful to see exactly in what way Vojičić’s text varies from that in Karadžić, but, in spite of a few details like those just cited, the differences are minimal, and Vojičić’s text is very close to that of Podrugović. There are only two lines in the Vojičić text that seem to correspond in general sense with the Karadžić text but to differ from it almost completely in wording. These are lines 37 and 163.

In these pairs of lines, Podrugović has repeated the sense of line 36 in the first half of line 37, and in that same line (37) he has also added a new thought. Thus, “Nahod Simeun jumped farther than the rest, / He jumped farther, and hurled the stone.” Vojičić has used an equally typical, but not the same, construction. He has made the second idea, that of hurling stones, equal in length to the first idea. “Nahod Simeun jumped farther than the rest, / And he hurled stones from the shoulder, farther than the rest.” The difference is one of line economy rather than of sense. In line 163 Podrugović says “Simeune spade od đogata,” “Simeon dismounted from the white horse”; Vojičić has it “Skoči Simo sa konja đogina,” “Simo jumped from the white horse.” They both mean that Simeon dismounted from his white horse. The line construction is different, but the meaning is the same.

In whatever changes there are between these two texts no change in sense takes place, but the copier on occasion exhibits a preference of his own for one phrase or formula rather than another. When we know that he is a singer in his own right, we can see that his slight changes are in the natural direction of the words and phrases that he usually employs in his own singing.

This sample shows us patterns similar to those we have seen in Category C, namely, identical lines (though not so numerous) and very close lines. The novelty here is the number of lines in the Parry text that are not in Karadžić and vice versa. One should notice, however, that the new lines in the Parry text consist of (1) the exclamatory line “Mili Bože, na svem tebi fala,” “Dear God, thanks be to Thee for all things!” (twice); (2) a common traditional couplet that is an elaboration of the oath of Musa “I tako me ne rodila majka, Već kobila neka bedevija!,” “And may a mother not have borne me, but some Bedouin mare!”; (3) three lines concerning the stealing of imperial treasure, lines that have no counterpart in the Karadžić text at that particular place, but are actually found later in Podrugović’s text (i.e., Parry lines 17-19 correspond to Karadžić lines 21-23); and (4) Parry lines which concern the fate of those who went out against Musa, namely, that they never returned to Stambol, [179] do not have a counterpart in the same place in the Karadžić text, although once again they are in part to be found later in Podrugović’s text (i.e., Parry line 36 equals Karadžić line 36, Parry lines 37-38 equal Karadžić lines 39-40). One should also direct attention to the metathesis of lines 49-50 of Karadžić and Parry lines 56-57. In short, in our sample fifty lines there are no significant additions to the song. What slight novelties there are are exclamatory or elaborative. Elements are found in one place in one text and in a different place in the other. Although the singer is clearly aware of the fixed text and has presumably partly memorized, it is not inviolable and can be departed from.

The remainder of the poem follows in the same pattern of identical, close, and corresponding lines; of omissions and additions; of differences in order. Mandano changes nothing of significance in the story. He does omit the νila’s scolding of Marko for fighting on Sunday (a vila is a winged female mountain spirit), but both the voice of the vila and the hidden knife are there, as well as the heart with three serpents. Mandarić closes his song proper with the comment of the serpent that Marko would have had much more trouble had he, the serpent, been awake. Thus he omits Podrugović’s ending in which Marko brings Musa’s head to the sultan, who is terrified by it. Instead Mandarić finishes with an address to his audience:

The dependence of the literate Ilija Mandarić on the Karadžić text is clear, yet his song shows a tendency toward expressing the song in the singer’s own words and formulas, a tendency more marked than in [180] Category C, but still not strong enough to free the song from the fixed published text. Category B contains many gradations in relationship to the version of Karadžić. From the example just given, one can range to texts in which there are comparatively few identical lines, less than 10 percent, for instance, and where there is a greater number of corresponding lines with quite different wording, and not only more frequent transference of lines, but the addition of genuinely new material. In other words, Category B is a large and much varied group, covering a full spectrum of variation, leading at last to the independent texts in Category A.

 

There are no lines completely identical with the version in Karadžić. It is true that in one passage they are somewhat similar. This is the naming scene and the account of the precocious childhood of the hero (variations are underlined in the Parry text).

This passage is the closest in Pižurica’s text to that in Karadžić, as we saw to be true earlier in Vojičić’s text of the same song. Yet Pižurica’s text is not nearly so close to Karadžić’s as was Vojičić’s; there are ten lines without equivalents in the Karadžić text, and two of that text’s lines are unmatched in the Parry text. Where there are parallels, the wording is quite divergent for the most part, as can be seen from the underlining. The core of this passage, telling of the phenomenal growth of the foundling is a commonplace theme, a well-known run. In fact the correspondences in the entire section quoted do not necessarily indicate a direct relationship between the Karadžić and Parry texts. They simply point to a set of variants of a common theme.

The poem itself, although dealing with “Nahod Simeun,” tells an entirely different, though related, story. The Karadžić text, Podrugović’s song, concerns a child found in a chest on the shore of the Danube by a monk who brings him up in his monastery. There is nothing remarkable about the child. Pižurica‘s song concerns a child found in a vineyard by the Serbian emperor Šćepan and his vizier, Todor. In his version the child, when found, has certain marks that set him apart, a star on his forehead, wolf’s hair on his shoulder, a sword depicted on his thigh, fire from his teeth. When Šćepan sees these markings, he decides to keep the child, since he has only a daughter, the beautiful Cvijeta.

In both songs the hero has a precocious childhood as evidenced in the [183] passages quoted. In the Karadžić story other children taunt the foundling for his ignorance of his parenthood, after he has bested them in various sports. As a result Simeon asks permission to set out to find his parents. He wanders in vain for nine years, and on the way back is seen by the Queen of Budim. She summons him to her castle and, when he is drunk, sleeps with him. When Simeon leaves next morning he forgets his Gospel book and returns to the castle for it. There he finds the queen reading the book and weeping. She realizes that she is Simeon’s mother, Simeon goes back to the monastery and confesses his sin to the iguman (abbot), who throws him into prison and hurls the key into the Danube. After nine years the iguman remembers Simeon the Foundling. Fishermen catch a fish that contains the key, and when the prison is opened, the sun is shining in it and Simeon is sitting at a golden table with the Gospel book in his hands.

Pižurica’s tale has some points of resemblance to Podrugović’s. The place of the taunting friends is taken by Todor the vizier and the twelve dukes. They are jealous of the favors shown Simeon by Emperor Šćepan and plot his downfall. Simeon’s wine is drugged and, when he is unconscious, the dukes put him in bed with the emperor’s daughter, Cvijeta. Note the basic similarity of the drink and the bed. In one case, however, the pair are guilty of mother-son incest.

The emperor condemns Simeon and Cvijeta to be hanged on a leafless orange tree in the garden. The following morning the tree has blossomed, under it is a church, and in the church are the two young people with crosses in their hands. This is a multiform, of course, of the ending of the Karadžić text. In Pižurica the story continues with the execution of Todor and the twelve dukes. On the day following their execution the orange tree is again withered and beneath it is a lake of blood in which are the twelve dukes and Todor as well as the cup from which Simeon had been drugged.

In view of the considerable divergence in the stories of the two texts and of the common traditional character of their resemblances it is clear that Pižurica’s song has not been influenced directly by the Karadžić text in question.

When an oral narrative song has been written down and in one way or another a fixed text of it is made available to traditional singers, it may affect literate bards directly and others indirectly. Yet even when a singer who can write copies it, he makes changes, tending to express some lines in the formulas to which he is most accustomed in his own singing. Even as copyist he remains to some extent a traditional singer. When a singer attempts to memorize the published text, his basic training shines through and enables him to reconstruct lines according to his own creative habits, to rearrange them in the manner he had learned when he was young.

There are many degrees of relationship to the fixed text. At one end of the scale, at its highest point, comes the song that is independent of the published text. At its best this song represents a pure oral tradition. Its value is great and is becoming ever greater because it is rare. At the other end are the songs memorized from the published fixed text. We have observed a few of the degrees in between those extremes. The memorized texts cannot tell us much more about the pure tradition than the published text of which it is a “copy.” From the singers and songs that have been influenced by the printed texts, although not to the point of memorizing them, the scholar can learn much about the life of a tradition as it is affected by cultural changes in the traditional society.

We have been investigating what happens in the last degenerative stages of a tradition, when texts have been fixed by being written down, and when those written texts have been disseminated in a literate, or partially literate, community. I have demonstrated the results of true memorization; they are contrasted with the songs that are “composed in performance” in a living and thriving tradition. The evidence I have presented points up the more remarkable aspects of the tradition in its truly creative period.