Several peculiarities of the 19th and 20th centuries Catholic religious song lyrics

Straipsnyje nagrinėjami keli XIX-XX amžiaus katalikiškų giesmių kalbos, redagavimo ir publikavimo ypatumai: nemažos giesmių dalies anonimiškumas, jo priežastys, tekstų nestabilumas dėl daugkartinio redagavimo (kinta net lietuvių literatūros klasikų sukurti tekstai), giesmių trumpinimas. Svarstoma, ką laikyti giesmės autoriumi, kai pirminis tekstas po kelių leidimų pakinta beveik neatpažįstamai. Trumpai aptariamos archajinės ir tarminės giesmių kalbos ypatybės.Lyrics chanted in Lithuanian Catholic churches and at home are characterised by a vast diversity of genres: songs, psalms, litanies, hymns, lamentations, prayers, even lullabies, etc. can be encountered. The main prayers are also chanted: The Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, Credo, etc. A typical feature characteristic of the majority of songs is their anonymity. Since as early as in the Middle Ages, authors, translators and composers of religious song have not been indicated in Western Europe. This tradition was taken over by Lithuanian publishers - starting with the first Catholic chant book compiled in 1646 by S. M. Slavočinskis (Slawoczynsky) and finishing with the current period. Even now almost all religious songbooks have no indications of author, translator and composer names. The book "Liturginis giesmynas" (TheLiturgical Songbook) published in 1993 includes attempts to point out the names of song authors and composers. Anyway, as this is not typical of almost any songbooks, most Lithuanian Catholics are unaware of who even wrote some very popular religious songs. Religious songs also have another specific feature - their lyrics change constantly, as they undergo several editions due to the adaptation to the language of different time periods. A comparison of several publications containing the same song results in discovery of several different versions of the song. Big changes have occurred even in songs created by A. Strazdas, A. Baranauskas, Maironis and other Lithuanian classical poets. Religious song lyrics sometimes change beyond recognition in comparison with the primary lyrics written by poets. In such cases, a problem of who is to be considered the author of the song occurs. The author of this article proposes writing "After A. Baranauskas; After A. Strazdas", etc. in case such questions occur. It happens quite often when editors carry their jobs too far - new lyrics become inferior to the versions created by classical poets. Meanwhile, secular, non-sacred poetry by the same authors (A. Strazdas, A. Baranauskas, etc.) remains authentic or is edited only slightly in different issues. One more feature of religious songs is that they are constantly abbreviated. E.g., the Easter song "Linksma diena mums nušvito" (A Joyous Day for Us Has Dawned) was shortened down to 8 verses from the original 17 verses in translations by S. M. Slavočinskis and A. Baranauskas, and down to 4 verses in the 1943 schoolbook of the Catholic religion, "Sveika Marija" (Hail Mary). Abbreviation of religious songs is also typical in other countries. However, very long sacred songs still used to be performed quite recently. In a 1930 songbook, a song about the Passion of the Christ had 86 verses; another song had 51 verses, etc. Religious texts are characterised by certain language archaicity and mystery. Up to now, people of different places from all over the world have been praying and chanting in dead languages: Latin, Sanskrit, Old Slavonic, Coptic, etc. Latin was the cult language in Lithuania for many ages. Nowadays, this tradition is being partially restored. In some churches, some songs are sung and some prayers are said in Latin. In Lithuanian sacred songs, lexical archaisms are almost not encountered any longer - they have been substituted with modern words. Yet morphological archaisms have been retained for quite long - some of them as long as up to nowadays. E.g., the dat. sg. forms vienamui, tikramui have not been influenced by morphological shortening (cf. the modern forms vienam (dat. sg. of one), tikram (dat. sg. of the real). Cf. also the allative form savęsp (towards himself) vs. the modern prepositional form prie savęs; esmi (I am) vs. the modern form esu, etc. Such forms have become obsolete and totally extinct in the standard language. Dialectal forms, despite being scarce, are also used. [...