Traces of »Hasanaginica« in Folkpoetry on Pelješac from 18th and 19th Centuries

Pedesetak narodnih pjesama, što sam ih sakupio u orebićkoj općini na Pelješcu 1940. i 1941, kazivahu mi pet starica. One tada bijahu prošle osamdeset godina svog života — pa ih je rat, koji je tada nadirao sa svojim strahotama i u njihovu mirnu sredinu, iscrpljene zameo. Epske i ženske pjesme, balade i romance izgovarahu te žene u narječju orebićkog kraja, preplićući ponekad dubrovačko-her­ cegovačku ijekavicu s ikavicom u kojoj se pak, osobito u na­ glasku, odražavala i otočka čakavština.The author of this article gathered some not published folk-poems in Croatian before the Second World War in Orebić, the centre of Dalmatian peninsula Pelješac. Some of them have Moslem theme although the inhabitants of this region were catholics. Some epic and love poems could be dated from the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries. Among the poems from the Moslem life there is one about Hasanaginica, the wife of Hasanaga Osmanović. They are brought by the workers who come to dig up the land of Pelješac seamen or they settled in the villages of that formely Dubrovnik region. She likes her husband to wake her up by playing music. Among the other poems there is one called Slav poetical antithesis. In one dated from 1789 which deals with a local motif from Orebić, swans are mentioned in the Slav poetical antithesis. The swans are also in the famous ballad about the death of Hasanaginica, which was published by the abb ot Fortis in his famous itinerary in the 18th century. So the traces and reflections of the ballad, known owing to Fortis, are found in a poem in Orebić, as well as the phenomenon of the Slav antithesis in the poems. These traces show that the ballad was known in this region in the time of Fortis. They help to find the place from where they originated. It has been still discussed about in the study of our folk poetry