PHASES OF THE LIVING GREEK LANGUAGE. 47 



modern Greek might be called a corruption, or at least a deviation from the recognised 

 type of correct expression, just as the Milanese dialect of the Italian is a deviation from 

 the Florentine standard, and the low German of the common people, in the lower region 

 of the Rhine and the Weser, may be called a corruption of or a vulgar deviation from the 

 high German type made classical by Martin Luther ; but even in the lowest of these low 

 forms of the vulgar speech of the people, the inherent vitality of the continuous literary 

 tradition manifests itself so strongly, that of corruption in the strict sense, that is, 

 impurity from the infusion of foreign blood, the traces are remarkably few, and the 

 changes on the face of the type, though sufficiently marked, are very far from consti- 

 tuting what can with any philological propriety be called a new language. As a specimen 

 of what this uncultivated form of the vulgar street ballad mostly was, we cannot do better 

 than insert here one of the oldest of the historical ballads found in Passow* and other 

 collections, viz., a few lines on the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, a ballad con- 

 temporaneous, no doubt, with the achievement of that bloody inroad of oriental barbarism 

 into the intellectual civilisation of the west: — 



TLypav Tijv iroXiv, Trypav ty\v \ irypav t>jv SaXow'/c^v ! 



Hypav Kai rr\v kyiav Hotfyiav*, to p.eya povauT^pi, 



TV ei^e rpiaKOcria crr)p.avTpa k e^rjvra Sv6 Kapirdvais' 



KaOe Kap.ira.va Kai 7ra7T7ra?, KaOe 7ra7T7ra? /ecu SiaKog. 



Si/xa va 'fiyovv ra dyia, k 6 fiacriXeag rov Kocrpov, 



<&u)vr) tov$ t]pO' e£ ovpavov, dyyeXoov air' to crTopa' 



'A.<prjr avTrjv TY\v \Jsa\pwSiav ! va x a P- r i^ < ^ cr ovv t dyia ! 



Kai aTel\T€ \oyov '9 t*\v <&payKiav, va epOovv, va Ta -wiacrovv, 



Na -irapovv t6v xpverov crTavpov Kai t dyiov euayyeXiov, 



Kai Trjv aylav Tpaire^av, va prj Trjv apoXvvovv. 



" 2dj/ t a.KOVcrev i] Aecnroiva, SaKpv^ovv y eiKOves' 



2w7ra, Kvpla Aecnroiva ! prj K\aiy$, prj SaKpu^tlS ! 



LTaXe pe xpovovs, p:e icaipovs 7raXe Sued crov eivai." 



They have taken the city, they have taken, it, they have taken Thessalonica, 



They have taken the holy Sophia, the big cathedral, 



Which had three hundred hand bells, and sixty-two great bells, 



With a priest for every great bell, and for every priest a deacon. 



As soon as the holy host went out, and the king of the world, 



A voice came from Heaven, from the mouth of angels, 



Leave off your psalmody, and set down the host, 



And send word to the land of the Franks to come and take it, 



And to take the golden cross, and the holy gospel, 



And also the holy table that it may not be polluted. 



This, when our Lady heard, her images begin to weep ; 



Be still, revered lady, wail not, weep not, 



For again, with the years and the seasons, St Sophia will be thine. 



* TQxyovhct Pi>ftxix.x, edidit Arnoldus Passow, Leipzig, 1860, 



