Marko is the knight without fear, without reproach—the lover of justice, the hater of all oppression. He is kind and dutiful, the protector of the poor and abused. His pity extends even to animals, who in turn often helped him. "He feared no one but God." Courteous to all women, tender and dutiful to his mother, Marko could be savage and cruel beyond belief toward the Turks.
Human weapons never harmed him, and he wielded a war club weighing one hundred pounds, composed of sixty pounds of steel, thirty pounds of silver, and ten pounds of gold. One touch of this mace beheaded a foe, as one stroke of his saber ripped him open.
Marko's horse, Sharaz, his constant companion and helper, was the strongest and swiftest horse ever known. He knew just when to kneel down and save his master from the adversary's lance. He knew how to rear and strike the enemy's charger with his forefeet. When roused he would spring up three lance lengths forward. Glittering sparks flashed from beneath his hoof, blue flame from his nostrils. He has been known to bite off the ears of the enemy's horse; sometimes he trampled Turkish soldiers to death. Marko fed him bread and wine from his own dishes. Sharaz kept guard over Marko while he slept. He always shared the glory of victory.
Yet, whether or not Marko personifies Serbia, in the life of Marko the current of Serbian medieval life is reflected as in a mirror.
In these poems Turks are always unreliable and cruel; Venetians are crafty; the faithless wife is usually lured away by a Turk. In one vivid tale, Marko's own bride, as he is taking her home from Bulgaria, is stolen by a Doge of Venice, who, with three hundred attendants, had been invited by her father to be part of her bridal procession. His designs do not succeed, and when Marko comprehends this treachery he does not hesitate. "He cleft the Doge's head in twain," and he struck another traitor with his saber "so neatly" that he fell to earth in two pieces.
The touch of exaggeration in all the stories is not one merely of incident but of detail—the kind of exaggeration a child loves. For example, when Marko was brought from the cell where the Sultan had imprisoned him for three years, his nails were so long that he could plow with them. The Serbs of those days, having few splendid things in their own surroundings, loved to endow Marko with grandeur. On his tent, for instance, was fixed a golden apple. "In the apple are fixed two large diamonds which shed a light so far and wide that the neighboring tents need no candle at night." In another instance a magnificent ring is described, "so richly studded with precious stones that the whole room was lighted up."
The ransom demanded by Marko and his friend Milosh from the Magyar General Voutchka was more than magnificent. He was to give three tovars of gold for each (a tovar was as much as a horse could carry on his back), and, among other things, a gilded coach harnessed with twelve Arabian coursers used by General Voutchka when visiting the Empress at Vienna. Voutchka's wife not only agrees to this, but adds one thousand ducats for each of the two. Even in a poem, it delighted the Serbs to have a Magyar in their power.
Sometimes Marko's adversary is a Moor—for example, the Moor who wishes to marry the Sultan's daughter and the other Moor who demanded a wedding tax from the maidens of Kossovo. He cut off the head of this Moor with one touch of his mace. At another time he is imprisoned by a Sultan whose daughter releases him. He has promised to marry her. But when they have started on their elopement, and she lifts her veil, he is horrified to see how black she is. There seemed nothing for him to do but to run away. Yet he knows that he has committed a sin in breaking his promise—and he confesses this sin to his mother:
"Then I sprang upon the back of Sharaz,
And I heard the maiden's lips address me—
'Thou in God my brother—thou—oh, Marko!
Leave me not! thus wretched do not leave me!'
Therefore, mother! wretched do I lowly penance:
Thus, my mother! have I gold o'erflowing,
Therefore seek I righteous deeds unceasing."