literary construction on the basis of the folksong whose variants appearing elsewhere are not corruptions, still less corruptions of a pseudo-ballad of later date.
There are various evidences that the second part is no mere literary construction, as it contains elements strongly resembling certain folksongs from the Bohemian and Polish ethnographic district, though the former are in German (from Silesia). There is no evidence as to the author of the contamination. It was certainly not Erben, but may have been Doucha or some informant of his.
Note on Pp. 345, 346.
The stanzas quoted read:
"This is short—this is long,
This the chopping bench (or block).
These are fiddles—these are bass-viols.
This comes from the blind man," etc.
The last line is translated on the basis of slepica as=gen. of slepic blind man (slepice in Polish). Slepice in Bohemia means hen, and slepota is the nominative of the word for blindness, and so makes nonsense.
"Bass-viols, fiddles, long, short,
Here is the capital city Reczyca,
Hook, bird, pagan.
Pear trees, dung forks," etc.
The word przytohak, for which pahaniák is substituted, is pritahák in Slovak, where it means rope or grappling-iron.
The German variant reads:
"This is short and this is long.
And this is a joiner's bench.
Short and long, joiner's bench," etc.
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