Note 15 — ITS EPICS, FOLK-SONGS, AND MEDIAEVAL POETRY

The adjectives used here do not qualify the nouns, but simply serve as epithets, or attributes, like the adjectives in the Homeric poems. The Armenian word dzirani,15 used in this poem, does not always mean “red”; applied to a robe it means “red,” applied to a belt it means “variegated”; it may originally have had the sense of “pleasing” (cf. Russian krasni, which originally meant “beautiful,” but now denotes only “red-coloured”).