Chapter III: The Theme of the Ukrainian Folk Songs and Their Kinds

Quite many among the songs treat about the Ukrainian Cossack life, their love affairs, heroic deeds, courage and raids on Russians, Poles, Tartars and Turks. There are songs about general heroic deeds--the epopees--which are much older than the Cossack period. There are ritual and religious songs, the Kolyady or Christmas and New Year carols, the Eastern songs; the occasional holiday and festive songs; the spring, Kupalo and Obzhynkovi; political and patriotic songs; soldier, Cossack and recruit songs; the songs of the Cossack Sitch and Sokol (Falcon), hymns and marches which are stately and martial in character; historic and traditional songs; the Chumak songs composed by waggoners or drivers who traded in salt and fish; professional songs and ballads; Kolomeyky[1] or the brisk, lively tunes and love words, originated in the vicinity of the city of Kolomya, Ukrainian East Galicia; wedding songs; burial songs; baptismal songs. But most numerous and diverse are the love songs; their multitude of airs, difference of shades and depth of sentiment is as varied and beautiful as the fragrant flowers of Ukraine. We must certainly distinguish the religious from the secular songs, for there are many of the former ones used exclusively in the church and home by the faithful. Their purpose is the glory of God and of his faithful servants--the saints--whose good works or miracles are being celebrated.

It is only in the rarest cases that the author of a celebrated popular song may be traced; as a rule the authors of Ukrainian folk songs are unknown, but the beauty, strength and popularity of their words and airs demonstrate that they were real masters of human souls who either lived themselves through what they afterwards sang or else their intelligent, susceptible minds keenly felt the heart’s emotions of others; they were the nation’s long forgotten philosophers, although the simplicity of their verse and contents show that these authors were simple, kind-hearted, themselves. It may be that some of them were accomplished scholars, but through many centuries their productions underwent such a metamorphosis through oral transmission by the people that they no longer show signs of erudition.

It quite often happens that because these songs reflect so much individual and national suffering, the singers, particularly women and girls, sob while they sing; they cry while singing about a dramatic love affair which usually ends with death of the lover Cossack or with the captivity of his fiancee.

There are some ancient songs antedating Christianity officially introduced in Ukraine by St. Vladimir in 988, and these songs are sung with as great an interest as if they were recent compositions. They have to do chiefly with the pagan worship of the natural forces and celestial bodies, by the ancient Ukrainians; some of them are sung side by side with the Christian productions of later date, on various religious occasions. Ukrainian philologists and ethnologists such as Maxime Drahomaniv, Pantaleymon Kulish, P. Chubinsky, Michael Maximovitch, A. Metlinsky, I. Holovatsky have recorded many hundreds of these songs, most of which have been published; but it is said that at least another half of these popular songs have not been as yet collected and written down.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Kolomeyka, a short form of song, composed of two verses, fourteen syllables; it makes up a complete thought; it is being produced continually by the common people. Sometimes a few of these stanzas are linked together. Most of the truths of life are expressed in this form of people’s poetry.