Popular English language folk songs from yesteryear typically go like this: I love that handsome lad/ but mother, he won't wed me or I love that handsome lad/but father doesn't approve or I love that handsome lad/ah shit I'm pregnant/time to go to hell. There are endless variations on the themes of courtship, betrayal and allusion to sex in the high tradition of English understatement. But those are the tunes respectable enough to be printed and bound and sent to libraries abroad. The risqué stuff tends to stay in the pub, or become a cautionary tale before it's considered fit to print.
Historically, much of the world has agreed with promoting careful curation of their popular oral tradition for public consumption. So much so, that the work of Stefanović Karadžić, a Serbian linguist from the 1800s who helped standardize his people's language, wasn't published till 1974. His controversial approach to philology? Documenting Serbian oral tradition as it was really spoken by common people, away from the standards of the church. Even in the 70s, his work, Crven Ban only ran 500 copies and was heavily curated. Why?
Well, ah, pub talk, as you may know, can be a little, uh, cheeky.
Topics from Crven Ban include- extramarital relations with a priest, taking on a lover solely because he's pathetic, cuckoldry, really really explicit sibling infatuation, etc.
Unless you speak Serbian like I don't, you'll have to take my word for it, or read these rough Google translations below
The Monk and the Mara
A monk makes a cart
In a stream,
the beautiful Mara comes to him
In a veil:
"Teach me, monk, to make a cart!"
"From here, beautiful Maro,
Let me teach you:
Lift one leg, Maro,
Here are two wheels;
Lift, Maro, the other leg,
Here are four;
To hit the heart
– The car is ready!"
Recognition by eye
It's easy for you to know
what your pussy is thinking;
Just look at which eye
is looking at you more widely.
There are plenty more on this Wiki available for your perusal with Google Translate accompaniment. Enjoy!
