Page:The Ballads of Marko Kraljević.djvu/233

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printed the names of the families which celebrate their Slava on that particular day. Thirty-eight different saints are enumerated and inspection of the list shows that:

On St John's Day (Свети Јован, Jan. 7 O.S.), 361 families celebrate.

On St George's Day (Ђурђевдан, April 23), 252 families celebrate.

On St Michael's Day (Св. Архангел Михаило, Nov. 8), 414 families celebrate.

On St Nicholas' Day (Св. Никола, Dec. 6), 699 families celebrate.

The above are the most popular dates. On St Barbara's Day, on the other hand (Dec. 4), only one family, that of Живко Петровић, is given as celebrating its Slava. "Slava" literally means "glory" and is the word used in the Bible as a rendering of "hosanna." There is also the verbal form "slaviti" to celebrate or glorify, the use of which is illustrated in the lines:

Већ ме пусти, царе поочиме,
Да прославим моје крсно име.

("Marko Kraljević and Mina of Kostura," ll. 103-104.)

Krsno ime = the baptismal name—an expression used as an alternative to Slava.

The commonly accepted account of the origin of the custom is as follows. Before the missionaries from Byzantium and Rome had converted the Serbs to Christianity, the latter had a native cult of the household deity corresponding to the Latin cult of the Penates. As each family or clan was baptized into the new faith, the baptismal day was associated by the priest with the name of some convenient saint whose ikon, displayed in the house, took the place of the old pagan Hausgeist in the religious life of the family^[1]. But the matter is, in reality, not quite so simple. The Serbs were converted in the ninth century and there appears to be no mention of the Krsno ime prior to the fourteenth century. Another difficulty is that the Slava is not observed either by the Croats or the Bulgars, and, although we may guess at possible explanations, the fact remains that materials are lacking on which a reliable account of the development of this interesting custom might be based^[2].

The Slava has been repeatedly described in English, and there is no need to go over the ground in detail here^[3]. The priest blesses the house and sprinkles each room with holy water. He then holds a service with the family before the ikon and its lighted candle. The kolač—a flat

 

1. Krauss, Sitte und Branch der Südslaven, pp. 51-57.
2. Jireček, Geschichte der Serben, pp. 180-181.
3. E.g., Mijatovich, Servia and the Servians; Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich, The Servian People, vol. I. pp. 56-62; W. M. Petrovitch, Hero-tales and Legends of the Serbians, p. 40 ff.