OA, Section II: Story and Story-Pattern

After the W - to J _kb section is complete, Kukuruzovic^[*] moves OA and General Pero along to Janok, where the hero overhears the ban of Janok urging his chieftains to attack the Lika, the territory under the sway of Mustajbeg.^[37] Pero advises raising a force to attack the bey of Ribnik, specifically to steal the bey's daughter and marry her off to one of the captains. OA₁ varies somewhat from OA₂ in that OA overhears both the ban of Janok and Takulija

ban planning offensive action. In fact, that particular passage (OA₂ .562-66) comprises a common opening to what may be called an "Attack Song," wherein a hero and his army make war on a given city.^[38] This clue, along with the fact that Kukuruzovic^[*] lists a song he refers to as "The young ban of Janok was drinking wine / And next to him Takulija ban"^[39] as part of his repertoire in both the conversation with Nikola (no. 6619 ) and the listing of his songs (no. 1287), argues strongly for the possibility of a "compound song." When we add to these observations the unitary character of Section I, it seems safe to understand OA as an amalgam of songs , perhaps a relatively recent amalgam, since the transition between its parts is so unstable. Whatever its actual status, however, the evidence shows that what Kukuruzovic^[*] knows and sings as one tale was at some point two tales. In fact, in a manner of speaking, it seems still to exist as two songs, since Section II is individually a part of the singer's repertoire.

To continue the sketch of the OA narrative, the force which Pero recommends is raised and the ban of Janok enlists the aid of the Knezevic^[*] twins to spy on the city of Ribnik. These twinned figures have, as it were, a double identity; since their father remained in Ribnik when they joined the service of the enemy ban, they maintain a unique right of passage between Turkish and Christian dominions. Just as they depart Janok to begin their espionage in OA₁ , the hero also leaves, but with a different purpose. His original loyalty having re-emerged, OA goes to Ribnik to tell Zlatija, the bey's daughter, of the impending Christian attack.^[40] At the same time the Knezevic^[*] twins, having won their father over, secure important information from him: the bey has left Ribnik and the city is therefore vulnerable to attack. Ruza Knezevic^[*] , the boys' sister, who has also remained in Ribnik, overhears her father's treasonous disclosure and, after castigating all three of them, runs off to report the news of imminent danger to the same Zlatija lately in conversation with OA. This kind of structural redundancy is not a customary feature of Serbo-Croatian oral epic song, and it makes for a narrative "loop" which stalls the progression of the story. For each time that Zlatija reacts by approaching a Turkish stalwart, Gojenovic^[*] Ilija (GI), in order to pass on to him what is supposed to be new and startling information, she is accused of dreaming and

not taken seriously. Another sign that the loop is an unusual feature is the imposition of "boundary line" sequences to maneuver the story line from the Knezevic^[*] twins to OA and back again. This awkward shifting of narrative direction underlines the redundancy and contrasts sharply with the fluidity of the rest of the song.^[41]

The redundancy, loop, and boundary sequences indicate an in-progress adaptation, an interface between the two sections of Kukuruzovic's^[*] song created under the pressure of composition in performance. Two further signals point to the same conclusion. First, in OA₂ the receiver of Zlatija's news, GI, is in obvious confusion referred to as AA! Not only is the singer uncertain about whether the hero of Section I has exited Section II, but generic override prompts the insinuation of the "wrong" hero, OA's counterpart, AA. Second, after OA's supernumerary report to Zlatija in OA₁ , he simply vanishes from the song; he is last heard from, to be precise, at line 895 of a song 2,180 lines in length. We may recall that he leaves the scene even earlier in OA₂ . All of this evidence points unmistakably toward OA's actions in Section II of the song as a kind of overflow from the Return Song pattern of Section I. To summarize the pattern symbolically from W - on, then, we have

where P represents the plan hatched by the ban to attack Ribnik^[42] and Rp the report of that plan in the place to be attacked. As we have seen, while there is only incidental variation in the forms taken by P , the Rp element absorbs the narrative spillover from Section I of the story amalgam.

The Rp element gives way to the attack (At ) and GI's eventual heroic action. When it becomes apparent that Ribnik is indeed under siege, he bravely rides out through the hostile Christian ranks, intending to reach Jaboka, an intermediate locus in the epic geography where the unsuspecting bey of Ribnik is presently encamped. Though mortally wounded, he succeeds with his dying breath in relaying the news of the attack to the bey. At this juncture the enraged Turkish leader takes over, marshaling his force and calling upon the trickster-hero Tale to join him.^[43] Undertaking a reconnaissance mission structurally symmetrical to that of the Knezevic^[*] twins, the bey's ally Mujo rides out from Jaboka toward Ribnik to have a look at the ban's force. His mission may, in terms of narrative pattern, be both the logical counterpart of the earlier spying and a thematic preliminary to offensive

action. In any case, Mujo's report moves Tale to urge immediate attack. But before the attack can commence, Kukuruzovic^[*] inserts the theme of the brothers Mujo and Halil arguing over use of the horse left jointly to them by their grandfather. Halil wishes to use the animal to initiate the battle plan, but his request is denied. This refusal brings about his threat to destroy "his half" of the horse, and Mujo, seeing his brother's rage, finally accedes. As we will note in Section II of AA , this argument (hereafter symbolized M/H ) constitutes a theme associated for Kukuruzovic^[*] with that of Counter-attack (Ct ). Thus far the symbolic logic for Section II is

From here on the story moves rather fast, with the bey of Ribnik surveying the carnage and determining that the victory is his, with one qualification. He catches sight of General Pero absconding with his daughter Zlatija, and of his allies Halil and Velagic^[*] Selim in hot pursuit. Pero reaches Janok and casts his prize into the ban's tamnica ; when Halil and VS later follow him into an inn, he orders them seized and incarcerated along with the girl. Here the three are left, ostensibly helpless, while their captor rejoices over his coup .

We may detect a double structure in the imprisonment of the heroes and the bey's daughter, a rescue pattern which, as we saw above in AAVS , is a reflex of the Return Song sequence. For soon after the capture of the prisoners (A ) and their suffering in jail (D ), Mujo arrives at the inn and begins to plan their release—that is to say, their Return (R )—with Mara the innkeeper, whom we recall as the intermediary in AAVS .^[44] Mujo dons a Christian female disguise, just as in AAVS the female surrogate hero Fata put on Christian male dress, and gains admittance to the ban's kula . Here the narrative begins its double resonance: generally, it follows the rescue (really the Return) pattern and, specifically, it echoes the very opening of the song by closely adhering to not simply a generic pattern but also a series of more particularized events. Mujo bargains for release not with the ban of Janok, but with his wife, the banica. The condition for release is again pobratimstvo , blood-brotherhood; once the banica has put to rest her concerns about the safety of her land and people by securing the treaty, she agrees to let all three captives go. After stopping to pick up the same horse over which Mujo and Halil earlier argued,^[45] the heroes and the girl proceed to the Turkish border (R ) and the tale ends.

To emphasize the dual structure of this section of the story and to summarize the pattern of Section II as a whole, I symbolize below the entire narrative action in two ways: by continuing the progression of elements used so far in describing Section II (Code 1 ) and by juxtaposing to the last part of this progression the same elements in Lord's original notation (Code 2 ).

In Code 1 I have added the elements Capture (Cp ), Imprisonment (I ), Release (Rl ), and Homecoming (H ) to represent the end of the OA song. It is left understood that Cp and I apply to all three captives, although the bey of Ribnik's daughter is captured and imprisoned earlier than Halil and VS. These four designations adequately account for the action entailed, and they clearly follow the same narrative scheme as the A, D , and R elements immediately below them.

We may draw some interesting conclusions from this comparison. Not only is the rescue, like that of AAVS , structurally a reflex of the basic A-W scquence; the major differentiation between the two patterns in both Kukuruzovic's^[*] and Ibro Basic's^[*] songs is at the thematic level. To put it another way, "Return" and "Rescue" are equivalent at the level of story-pattern and differ only at the level of theme . This observation in turn argues the primacy of the A-W series both synchronically (in the generation of the song during performance) and diachronically (in the generation of song types over time). When we recall the various avatars of the Return Song pattern either studied at length or at least briefly mentioned in this chapter, we can begin to appreciate how fundamental this network of abstractions is to the history and "dialectology" of Serbo-Croatian oral narrative song.

The comparative analysis of Codes 1 and 2 also affords insight into the cyclic shape of the song as a whole. The opening A-D-R joins with the ending A-D-R to frame the narrative, to yield a ring similar to the Homeric paradigm in general and to the Iliad in particular.^[46] One problem plagues the near-symmetry of OA, however: Section II (and therefore the epic) ends with the Turks' return (R ) to their homeland. Nothing is said about their possible retribution (Rt ) for imprisonment or about a wedding (W ) involving any of them. We might well have expected these last two elements to occur here, largely because of the frustrated W - in Section I and the apparent progression toward such a coda throughout most of Section II. Does their absence suggest a flawed song, an imperfect performance which was perhaps cut short for whatever reason?

I would argue against such a conclusion. First, we must recall that there has

already been an instance of Turkish retribution against the Christian forces in what has been designated as the Counter-attack (Ct ). Zlatija was captured earlier in the story, sometime between her report to GI and Pero's ride to Janok, and so the Ct can be understood as consequent to her capture. Of course, Halil and VS are seized later still and the final release does not take place until some time afterward, but this splitting of elements is hardly unusual.^[47] So Rt does indeed appear—as Ct —but out of proper sequence.

The W element, however, takes no part in the epic's closure; no wedding forms the coda to the action of OA in Section II. In fact, what the ban of Janok plans to do, and succeeds in carrying out, is precisely the reverse of the true wedding ritual: he enters on the sacred rite of "bride-stealing,"^[48] (1) without proper arrangements, (2) without the appropriate Turkish retinue, (3) in time of war, and (4) as an enemy, a Christian ban intending to take as his prize a Turkish maiden. These are not simply qualifications; they amount to absolute abrogations of custom, actions diametrically opposed to conventional, socially sanctioned behavior. In effect, this bride-stealing, which would usually serve as the ceremonial preliminary to a wedding, constitutes a motif reversed. Order is restored only when Zlatija is rescued and returned to her homeland—when, that is, the insult done her and the Turkish people by the ban of Janok and his forces has been atoned for.

In reality, then, the story-pattern unity of Section II and of the epic overall depends not on a final wedding scene per se but rather on a symbolic equivalent, a reversal of the unlawful bride-stealing that began Section II. Just as the Return Song pattern reached a qualified conclusion with the death of OA's wife (W -₁ ), an event and dement paralleled by Pero's rupture of the marriage rite in stealing Zlatija (W -₂ ), so the return of the girl (W +) answers both actions and restores order to the story and its elemental structure. In this way Kukuruzovic^[*] , or the tradition, has solved the problem of ending the story in a deeply traditional manner: the coda completes both "songs within the song" and the larger, composite narrative. Once again story-pattern has both limited and generated the internal logic of the song.