The Marko Legends
Marko was, as we have already seen, the son of King Voukashin; and his mother was Queen Helen, whom the Serbian troubadours called by the pleasing and poetic name Yevrossima (Euphrosyne) in their songs and poems.
According to the popular tradition, the Prince was born in the castle of Skadar (Scutari), and his mother, being the sister of that most glorious and adventurous knight Momchilo, fortunately transmitted much of the heroism, and many of the other virtues, characteristic of her own family, to her son.
But there is also another tradition, equally popular, which maintains that Marko was the child of a veela (fairy-queen) and a zmay (dragon). The fact that his father was a dragon is believed, by those who accept this tradition, to explain and in every way to account for, Marko’s tremendous strength and his astonishing powers of endurance.
Truly Prince Marko possessed a striking and extraordinarily attractive personality: he so vividly impressed the minds of the Serbian people, people of all ranks and localities, that he has always been, remains to this day, and promises ever to remain, our most beloved hero. Indeed there is no Serbian to be found, even in the most remote districts, who has not a great love for Kralyevitch Marko, and who cannot tell his story.
This Prince’s brave deeds and all his exploits have luckily been immortalized by the national bards, who are never weary of describing him in their ballads and legends as a lover of justice, the hater of all oppression, and the avenger of every wrong. He is always represented as the possessor of great physical strength: his principal weapon was his heavy war-club (it weighed one hundred pounds—sixty pounds of steel, thirty pounds of silver, and the remainder was pure gold) and it must be borne in mind that the swords and clubs wielded by the merely human hands of his antagonists can never kill him; they never injure him, for they scarcely ever even touch this hero. Marko is always thought to have had much of the supernatural in him.
Marko, who was often rough and ready in his behaviour, and more especially so to the Turks, whose very Sultan, indeed, he mightily terrified with the tales he told of his many bloodthirsty and warlike deeds, was invariably a most dutiful, loving and tender-hearted son to his mother: and there were occasions when he willingly consulted her, and followed the advice she gave him.
Prince Marko was fearless: It was said that “he feared no one but God”; and it was his rule to be courteous to all women. In Serbia it was the usual custom to drink a great deal of wine, the red wine of which we so often hear, and this custom was one which Marko upheld: but it is always said, and universally believed, that he was never drunk.
The ballads also sing of King Voukashin. Voukashin had been the Councillor of State during the reign of Doushan the Powerful. The capital of the Empire was Prizrend, and Marko was brought up then at the Court, by his father Voukashin. According to the generally accepted belief it was Marko who, a little later on, attended the Emperor as secretary and councillor of State, and was entrusted by Doushan, on the approach of death, with his young son Ourosh.