Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. A Song of Rossia.

List. Text. Original. Back. Forward.

Commentary to “A Ballad of the Past”.

Here is stanza 16:

I abandoned the diapers and got on Being never forgotten or defenseless. And they counted not me an odd one, For I was an endowed with reason fellow.

The words “forgotten or defenseless” are an allusion to the song of street children “There the Nightingale’s Warbling...” (used in the film “Road to Life”, 1931).

Another title of this ballad is “A Ballad of Childhood”.

The ballad was written in 1975 for the film “Victor Krokhin’s Second Attempt” (1977).

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