Google Books: Armenian Popular Songs by Ghevond M. Alishan (Published in 1852) (PDF)
Чем дальше углубляюсь в ставшие доступными старые книги, тем больше удивляюсь...

To THE BRITISH PUBLIC
To your enterprising spirit of inquiry, which more than any other nation has extended its researches into the regions of the East this little collection of ARMENIAN POPULAR SONGS is presented. It is not be denied that from a nation like the Armenian, which boasts, and justly, of being one of the most ancient of the East and which has possessed for so long a period the advantages of a cultivated and flourishing literature something more copious and elegant might have been expected; but considering the frequent revolutions of that unhappy nation, and the incursions of so many barbarous tribes, which., during the oppressive slavery to which they reduced its inhabitants, not only destroyed its arts and literature, but even extinguished the last gleam of the poetic fire of the Sons of Ararat: it is hoped that even this humble collection offered as a specimen only, and for the first time translated into an European language, may find favour with a People, so enlightened, and one that so greatly encourages every work calculated to illustrate any portion of the vast field of Ancient East.