same
ecclesiastical critics. These fragments suggest a popular poesy,
stirring and full of powerful imagery, employed mostly in celebrating
royal marriages, religious feasts, and containing dirges for the dead,
and ballads of customs--not a wide field, but one invaluable to the
philologist and to ethnological students.

The Christian chroniclers and critics, however, while preserving but
little of the verse of early Armenia, have handed down to us many
legends and traditions, though they relate them, unfortunately, with
much carelessness and with a contempt for detail that is often
exasperating to one seeking for instructive parallelisms between the
heroic legends of different nations. Evidently the only object of the
ecclesiastical chroniclers in preserving these legends was to invest
their descriptions of the times with a local color. Even Moses of
Chorene, who by royal command collected many of these legends, and in
his sympathetic treatment of them evinces poetic genius and keen
literary appreciation, fails to realize the importance of his task.
After speaking of the old Armenian kings with enthusiasm, and even
condoning their paganism for the sake of their virility, he leaves his
collection in the utmost disorder and positively without a note or
comment. In the face of such difficulties, therefore, it has been hard
to present specimens of early Armenian folk-lore and legends that shall
give the reader a rightful idea of the race and the time.

As Armenia was the highroad between Asia and Europe, these old stories
and folk-plays show the influence of migrating and invading people. The
mythology of the Chaldeans and Persians mingles oddly with traditions
purely Armenian. This is well shown in the story of David of Sassun,
given in this volume. David was the local hero of the place where Moses
of Chorene was born and probably spent his declining years, after years
of literary labor and study in Athens and Alexandria. The name of the
district was Mush, and close by the monastery in which Moses was buried
lies the village of Sassun.

David's history is rich in personal incident, and recalls to the reader
the tales related of the Persian Izdubar, the Chaldeo-Babylonian Nimrod,
and the Greek Heracles. He is as much the hero of the tale as is Joseph
Andrews in Fielding's classic of that name. His marvellous strength is
used as handily for a jest as for some prodigious victory over man or
monster. He is drawn for us as