Epic
Songs of the Frontier Warriors
Këngë kreshnikësh
Anonymous · 1937
Synopsis
The great heroic cycle of the Albanians. The brothers Muji and Halili, of Jutbina, surrounded by the thirty agas, hold a disputed frontier against Slavic warriors, brave but without keeping their word. They organise hunts and raids, fight in duels on horseback or hand to hand, and carry off or win back brides. Muji, a simple cowherd, owes his superhuman strength to the mountain fairies, whose young he once tended; horses, cuckoos and snakes speak in it, and the whole of nature takes part in the tale.
Context
A Franciscan, Shtjefën Gjeçovi, began to note down these songs; from 1919, two other friars of the order, Bernardin Palaj and Donat Kurti, went on foot to meet the singers in order to continue his work. Their collection appeared in Tirana in 1937, as the second volume of the series Visaret e Kombit: thirty-four songs and more than eight thousand lines. The same heroes also live in the Bosnian epic, under the names Mujo and Halil Hrnjica, and bilingual singers from Novi Pazar were recorded in the mid-thirties by two Harvard researchers. Palaj, arrested in 1946, died in prison before being tried.
Who it is for
Epic songs in short verses, rhymed and repetitive by construction, each from eighty to nearly seven hundred lines; a bilingual English edition exists, no French translation.
Prizes and reception
The recordings made in 1934 and 1935 by Milman Parry and Albert Lord are held at Harvard; twenty-three songs appeared in English in 2004.