King Peter I
The Skoupshtina now elected the son of Alexander Karageorgevitch, the present King Peter I Karageorgevitch, whose glorious rule will be marked with golden letters in modern Serbian history, for it is to him that Christendom owes the formation of the league whereby the Turk was all but driven from Europe in 1913. But, alas! the Serbians have only about one-half of their lands free, the rest of their brethren being still under the foreign yoke.
Brief as is this retrospect it will suffice to show the circumstances and conditions from which sprung the Serbian national poetry with which we shall be largely concerned in the following pages. The legends have their roots in disasters due as much to the self-seeking of Serbian leaders as to foreign oppressors; but national calamities have not repressed the passionate striving of a high-souled people for freedom, and these dearly loved hero tales of the Balkans express the ideals which have inspired the Serbian race in its long agony, and which will continue to sustain the common people in whatever further disappointments they may be fated to suffer ere they gain the place among the great nations which their persistence and suffering must surely win in the end.
[1] The English language is the only one which, instead of the correct forms ‘Serbian,’ ‘Serbia,’ uses the solecism ‘Servia,’ etc. Suggesting a false derivation from the Latin root which furnished the English words ‘serf,’ ‘servant,’ ‘servitude,’ this corrupted form is, of course, extremely offensive to the people to whom it is applied and should be abandoned.
[2] Protestants of the Greek Orthodox Church who later settled in Bosnia.
[3] See the poem: “Tsar Ourosh and his Nobles, or, The Royal Prince Marko tells whose the Empire will be.”
[4] This title corresponds to ‘prince.’
[5] ‘Ban’ is the original title of the rulers of Bosnia.
[6] Voïvode originally meant ‘leader of an army’ or ‘General.’ As a title of nobility it corresponds with the English ‘Duke,’ which, derived from the Latin, dux, possesses the same root meaning.