Kângë Kreshnikësh

Settling a Frontier Dispute by Richard Caton Woodville, 1880.

The epic songs evolved incorporating legendary Balkan motifs form times predating the arrival of the Slavs to about the 17th and 18th centuries, when the songs crystallized to the current form. The names of the Albanian heroes date mainly from the Ottoman period, but the matrix of the epic songs is likely much older.[11][12][13]

The main theme of the cycle is the warfare between the Albanian heroes (Albanian: kreshnikë or trima, and aga) who have supernatural strength and an extremely large body, holding ordinary family lives, but at the same time fighting bravely with opposing Slavic warriors (Albanian: shkje and krajla), who are also powerful and brave, but without besë.[14][15] The songs are the product of a mountain tribal society in which blood kinship (Albanian: fis) is the foundation, and the Kanun, a code of Albanian oral customary laws, direct all the aspects of the social organization.[16][15][17] In the songs emerges a truly heroic concept of life. The hero is admired, and heroism transcends enmity, so the characters are ready to recognise the valor of their opponents. The disputes between heroes are generally solved by duels, in which characters take part sometimes in order to show who is the greater warrior, but mainly in order to defend their honor or that of their kins (Albanian culture considers honor as the highest ideal of the society, thus heroes uphold honor disdaining life without it).[15] The duels are sometimes engaged on horseback, other times hand-to-hand (Albanian: fytafyt, fytas), and the weapons often used are medieval, like swords (shpata), clubs (topuza), spears (shtiza).[16][15]

Nature has a strong hold in the songs, so much that it receive life, so the moon, sun, stars, clouds, earth and mountains partecipate in the world of humans influencing their events. People also address oaths or long curses to the animated elements of nature.[18][19][20] In battles, the heroes can be assisted by the zana and ora, supernatural female mythological figures. The zana and ora symbolize the vital energy and existential time of human beings respectively. The zana idealizes feminine energy, wild beauty, eternal youth and the joy of nature. They appear as three warlike nymphs capable of offering simple mortals a part of their own psychophysical and divine power, giving humans strength comparable to that of the drangue. The ora represent the "moment of the day" (Albanian: koha e ditës) and the flowing of human destiny. As masters of time and place, they take care of humans (also of the zana and of some particular animals) watching over their life, their house and their hidden treasures before sealing their destiny.[21][22]

Franciscan priest Shtjefën Gjeçovi, who was the first one to collect the Albanian Kanun in writing, also began to collect the Frontier Warrior Songs and write them down.[23] From 1919 onward, Gjeçovi's work was continued by Franciscans Bernandin Palaj and Donat Kurti. They would travel on foot to meet with the bards and write down their songs.[23] Kângë Kreshnikësh dhe Legenda (Songs of Heroes and Legends) appeared thus as a first publication in 1937 including 34 epic songs with 8,199 verses in Albanian language after Gjeçovi's death and were included within the Visaret e Kombit (English: Treasures of the Nation) book.[24][25] Other important research was carried out by foreign scholars like Maximilian Lambertz and Fulvio Cordignano.[26]

At this time, parallel to the interest shown in Albania in the collection of the songs, scholars of epic poetry became interested in the illiterate bards of the Sanjak and Bosnia. This had aroused the interest of Milman Parry, a Homeric scholar from Harvard University, and his then assistant, Albert Lord. Parry and Lord stayed in Bosnia for a year (1934–1935) and recorded over 100 Albanian epic songs containing about 25,000 verses.[27][28] Out of the five bards they recorded, four were Albanians: Salih Ugljanin, Djemal Zogic, Sulejman Makic, and Alija Fjuljanin. These singers were from Novi Pazar and the Sanjak, and were able to reproduce the same songs in both Albanian and Serbo-Croatian.[27] In 1937, shortly after the death of Parry, Lord went to Albania, began learning Albanian, and travelled throughout Albania collecting Albanian heroic verses, which are now preserved in the Milman Parry Collection at Harvard University.[27][note 1]

Research in the field of Albanian literature resumed in Albania during the 1950s with the founding of the Albanian Institute of Science, forerunner of the Academy of Sciences of Albania.[30] The establishment of the Folklore Institute of Tirana in 1961 was of particular importance to the continued research and publication of folklore at a particularly satisfactory scholarly level.[30] In addition, the foundation of the Albanological Institute (Albanian: Instituti Albanologjik) in Pristina added a considerable number of works on the Albanian epic.[31] A considerable amount of work has been done in the last decades. Led for many years by Anton Çeta and Qemal Haxhihasani, Albanologists published multiple volumes on epic, with research carried out by scholars like Rrustem Berisha, Anton Nikë Berisha, and Zymer Ujkan Neziri.[26] Until the beginning of the 21st century, there have been collected about half a million verses of the cycle (a number that also includes variations of the songs).[32] 23 songs containing 6,165 verses from the collection of Palaj and Kurti were translated into English by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck, who in 2004 published them in the book Songs of the Frontier Warriors (Këngë Kreshnikësh).[33][34]

The songs, linked together, form a long epic poem, similar to the Finnish Kalevala, compiled and published in 1835 by Elias Lönnrot as gathered from Finnish and Karelian folklore.[35]

• Mother of Muji and Halili
• Muji and Halili
• Omer
• Ajkuna
• Gjergj Elez Alia

• Songs of the Frontier Warriors (English translation by Elsie)
• Milman Parry Collection
• International Society for Epic Studies
• Mirash Ndou, Albanian singer of tales
• "Marriage of Halili" by the lahutar Isë Elezi-Lekëgjekaj