Balada o Morićima
A BALLAD ABOUT MORIĆI

Summary/Abstract: The Ballad of Morići is at the top of balladesque topics in Bosniaks oral poetry. Death of Sarajevo’s Janissary champions, Hadji Mehmed (Pasha) and Ibrahim-aga, which happened in the middle of the 18th century, was very popular among the oral poets and lived in a lush and uninterrupted flow till the last heir of this direction oral singing, in the end of the 20th century. More pronounced than in any other similar examples of singing with local features in Bosniaks oral poetry, in case of topic Morići were preserved historical testimony of the singed event, as well as oral traditions of the heroes themselves within family frame of the tragic events, and - particularly important - a whole range of poetic embodiments, and several of them were on supreme poetic level. Thanks to the testimonies that were discussed in the example of ballads about Morići, it is possible to follow complicated flow - from event to song about it, from event in historical reality, that was reality of local poets, eyewitnesses to singed event, to the new reality of language art, which was far away from time of singed event, for series of decades, even more than a century according to the earliest recorded examples. The Ballad of Morići, through preserved version, is the achievement of superior poetic artistry of unknown oral poets, a unique model and example in many ways for establishing the legality of poetic embodiment of oral ballads in general.

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