But the musical entertainment, in spite of the magnum of wine,
and the jovial challenges of our fellow traveller from the Drina,
threw me into a species of melancholy. The voice of the minstrel, and
the tone of the instrument, were soft and melodious, but so
profoundly plaintive as to be painful. The song described the
struggle of Osman Bairactar with Michael, a Servian chief, and, as it
was explained to me, called up successive images of a war of
extermination, with its pyramids of ghastly trunkless heads, and
fields of charcoal, to mark the site of some peaceful village, amid
the blaze of which its inhabitants had wandered to an eternal home in
the snows and trackless woods of the Balkan. When I looked out of the
tavern window the dense vapours and torrents of rain did not elevate
my spirits; and when I cast my eyes on the minstrel I saw a peasant,
whose robust frame might have supported a large family, reduced by the
privation of sight, to waste his best years in strumming on a
monotonous viol for a few piastres.
I flung him a gratuity, and begged him to desist.
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