LITERATURE
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to Italy, and that she will remain independent of the heathen (the Turks), and that neither the Eagle nor the Cock (the Empire and France) will do her any harm, and he wishes her freedom and unity. Vetranic is also the author of a translation of the Hecuba of Euripides. Andrija Cubranovic (died about 1550), unlike the other poets mentioned, was a man of the people. His best known poem is the Jegjupka, or the Gipsy.1 It seems to have been a carnival song, and recalls some of the Italian Canti Carnascialeschi. It is said to have been publicly recited at Ragusa in 1527, and is considered remarkable for the purity of the language.
   A form of literature much in vogue at Ragusa was the pastoral play or idyll, based on Italian models. The Slavonic pastoral play is of two types, that of Ragusa, which is comic, and that of Lesina, which is more purely idyllic. The mathematician and astronomer Nikola Naljeskovic (1510-1587) achieved some poetic fame as a writer of these plays, in which the shepherd falls in love not with the classical nymph, but with the vila of South-Slavonic popular legend. Another writer of plays was Marino Drzic, praised by his Italian contemporaries for “il puro vago e dolce canto.” His principal works are Tirena,2 Dundo Maroje,3 and Novela od Stanca (the tale from Stanac). He also wrote sacred poems.
   Dinko Ranjina or Domenico Ragnina (1536-1607.) was the most famous Ragusan poet of the sixteenth century. Born of one of the noblest families in the town, he spent some years in Italy attending to his father’s
1	Published at Venice in 1599.	2 Venice, 1547, 1550.
3 Ibid., 1550.