The Parry Collection Texts Used for Comparison
For phraseological analysis I have chosen a unified group of five Moslem epic songs from the singers of Stolac, as summarized in table 1.[71] These selections, made from a total of twenty-one songs I have edited from the singers of this region, reflect a mixture of media (three dictated and two sung texts) but a near unanimity of subgenre (four Return Songs and one Wedding Song). The sample thus includes both sung and dictated material from two singers and represents a unified local tradition. Taken together, the five songs total 7,287 decasyllabic lines, an extensive textual basis on which to found an analysis of oral traditional phraseology first within the local Stolac tradition and, by example, elsewhere within the Serbo-Croatian epic tradition.
For the major part of the thematic analysis, I have selected a group of eight Stolac songs in the Return subgenre that were sung or dictated by Basic[*]
[71] The titles given here were assigned by Parry and Lord or, if they provided none, by me. Strictly speaking, titles are quite irrelevant to the guslar , who remembers a song in relation to its major figures and central action. The code numbers assigned reflect the protocol of the concordance and will be used in chapter 5 on traditional phraseology in Serbo-Croatian. See further chapter 5, note 23.
TABLE 1. | |||||
Singer | Parry no. | Type | Length | Code no. | Subgenre |
Kukuruzovic[*] | 1287aa | dictated | 1288 | 1 | Return |
Kukuruzovic[*] | 1868b | dictated | 2152 | 2 | Return |
Kukuruzovic[*] | 6617c | sung | 2180 | 6 | Return |
Bajgoric[*] | 6699d | sung | 1030 | 3 | Wedding |
Bajgoric[*] | 6703e | dictated | 637 | 4 | Return |
a Ropstvo Ograscic[*] Alije | |||||
b Ropstvo Alagic[*] Alije | |||||
c Ropstvo Ograscic[*] Alije | |||||
d Zenidba Becirbega[*] Mustajbegova | |||||
e Halil izbavlja Bojicic[*] Aliju | |||||
TABLE 2. | ||||
Singer | Parry no. | Type | Length | Subgenre |
Basic[*] | 6597a | sung | 1558 | Return |
Basic[*] | 291ba | sung | 1360 | Return |
Basic[*] | 1283a | dictated | 1403 | Return |
Kukuruzovic[*] | 6618b | sung | 1422 | Return |
Kukuruzovic[*] | 1868b | dictated | 2152 | Return |
Kukuruzovic[*] | 6617b | sung | 2180 | Return |
Kukuruzovic[*] | 1287ab | dictated | 1288 | Return |
Ugljanin | 674c | sung | 1811 | Return |
a Alagic[*] Alija i Velagic[*] Selim | ||||
b Ropstvo Alagic[*] Alije/Ograscic[*] Alije | ||||
c Ropstvo Djulic[*] Ibrahima | ||||
or Kukuruzovic[*] (table 2). Near the end of chapter 8 comparisons are also drawn to a single song by Salih Ugljanin of Novi Pazar (SGHS 2 , no. 4). Once again we have both sung and dictated texts by each of two guslari from the same local tradition, all of them in the same subgenre, with the total sample amounting to 11,363 lines.[72] This large and multi-layered inventory of songs and versions will allow exploration of individual, local, and pantraditional features of the narrative theme.
Before these analyses can begin, however, we must turn to an examination of the prosodies that exist in symbiosis with the ancient Greek, Old English, and Serbo-Croatian epic phraseologies, and which thus ultimately figure in the verbal expression of narrative patterns.
[72] Line-count per se is of course not as important a consideration in thematic as in phraseological analysis, but it does afford some idea of the extent of the sample used for thematic investigation. See further chapter 8.