Transcription of a song that Rogeri de Pacienza di Nardo heard in Giola del Colle, today a part of the Bari city area on June 1st, 1497 among the descendants of Serb refugees who settled in the areas of Abruzzo, Avellino, Apulia, Molise and Calabria after the penetration of the Ottomans further into the Balkans following the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. The transcription was included in de Pacienza’s book Lo Balzino, which as dedicated to the Queen of Naples, Isabella del Balzo
Orauias natgradum smereuo nit core
nichiasce snime gouorithOrauias natgradum smereuo nit core
nichiasce snime gouorithi nego Jamco
goiuoda gouorasce istmize molimtise
orle sidi maolonisce dastobogme
progouoru bigomte bratta zimaiu
pogi dosmederesche dasmole slauono
mo despostu damosposti istamice
smederesche Jacomi bopomoste
Jslaui dispot pusti Jsmederesche
tamice Jatechul napitati seruene
creucze turesche bellocatela vitescocha
The transcription was discovered in 1977 by academician Miroslav Pantić, who proceeded to reconstruct the fonetic transcription into the lyrics in Serbian:
Орао се вијаше над градом Смедерoвом.
Ниткоре не ћаше с њиме говорити,
него Јанко војвода говораше из тамнице:
“Молим ти се, орле, сиди мало ниже
да с тобоме проговору: Богом те брата јимају
пођи до смедеревске господе да с’ моле
славному деспоту да м’ отпусти из тамнице смедеревске;
и ако ми Бог поможе и славни деспот пусти
из смедеревске тамнице, ја те ћу напитати
чрвене крвце туречке, белога тела витешкога.
English translation:
An eagle soared above the town of Smederevo.
No one wished to speak with it,
except for Vojvoda Janko, who spoke from his dungeon:
“I beg you, eagle, come down a little lower
so I can speak with you: by God, my brother,
go to the lords of Smederevo and ask them
to beg the noble despot to release me from this Smederevo dungeon;
and if God helps me and the noble despot releases me
from the Smederevo dungeon, I will reward you
with the red blood of the Turks, and the fair bodies of knights.”
The content of the song implies that it is a fragment of a larger epic song, with the fragment dealing with the 1448 imprisonment of Janos Hunyadi in Smederevo after the 1448 Battle of Kosovo between Hunyadi and the Ottomans, which he lost. The song fragment is the oldest recorded bugarštica/bugaršćica, which have a longer verse of 15-16 syllables, as opposed to the 10-syllable epics that were present later in Serbian epic poetry.
Translated by Books of Jeremiah
