Anonymous (The Lay of Igor's Campaign)

The Lay of Igor's Campaign (Slovo o polku Igoreve) is the great anonymous epic of medieval Rus'. Composed in Old East Slavic probably soon after 1185, it recounts the failed raid of Igor Svyatoslavic, Prince of Novgorod-Seversk, against the nomadic Polovtsy, his defeat and capture, and his escape. Its author is unknown, and he moves between the heroic narrative, the lament of Igor's wife Yaroslavna, and a plea to the quarrelling princes of Rus' to unite.

The poem survives through a single manuscript, discovered in the 1790s and first printed in 1800. That manuscript was burnt in the fire of Moscow in 1812, so the printed edition and a copy made for Catherine the Great are all that remain. Its authenticity was long debated but is now widely accepted. Leonard A. Magnus's 1915 English prose translation, given here, was the first English edition.