Chapter I: Foreword

The Ukrainians have sometimes been termed “the Irish of the Slavonic world,” and the epithet is not infelicitous. In both cases there is a tradition of ancient, almost legendary, glory, followed by long centuries of stifled independence, in which the stream of national life disappeared underground almost completely--only to emerge in turbid and eager flood in modern times.

The two nations’ literary traditions are likewise comparable. The _Cattle-raid of Cooley_ in the old Ulster-cycle has its counterpart in the _Raid of Igor_, a powerful epic-fragment whose provenance is clearly Kievan and not Muscovite. The abundant Irish legacy of folk-song (recorded by Douglas Hyde and others) is more than paralleled by the countless Ukrainian folk-songs, full of echoes of “old, unhappy, far-off things.” In both instances, there is a copious religious literature in medieval times. Most comparable of all are the literatures of the modern awakening, in which national authors, repudiating the dominant literary traditions of English (used by Goldsmith, Burke and Moore), Russian (used by Gogol) and Polish (used by Zaleski), have turned with intense political enthusiasm to the cultivation of their own ancestral speech.

Yet there are striking differences. While Irish Gaelic is today the official language of a small state of 3,000,000 people, many of whom are acquiring the language in school with reluctance and difficulty, Ukrainian is the cherished mother-tongue of nearly 50,000,000 Slavs in Eastern Europe. Regardless of all political considerations, the cultural dynamic of so large a group cannot be permanently disregarded by the scholar and the general reader. Professor Clarence A. Manning, of Columbia University, is rendering a service to international letters in making available, in English, a brief but comprehensive history of Ukrainian literature. It is a timely task, courageously carried out.

WATSON KIRKCONNELL

_Hamilton, Canada._