Sometimes fighting against the Tartars, sometimes in alliance with them, they became known by the name ‘Kazak,’ a word of uncertain origin.
Fierce banditti they were, many of them serfs who had run away from their Polish masters. But they often developed great military power. At times the Poles succeeded in securing numbers of them as fighters in their army, but when the tyranny of the Polish landlords became intolerable the so-called “Registered Cossacks” would sometimes join with the “Free Cossacks” of the “border land”—which is the meaning of the word “Ukraine,” and exact terrible vengeance on the Poles.
The story of these warlike deeds of the Cossacks has the same significance to the Ukrainian people that the tales of Wallace and Bruce have for Scotchmen. [[20]]
Cossacks Dictating a Saucy Letter to the Turkish Sultan.
[[21]]
Hamaleia
Hamaleia is an historical romance. The poet represents one of the excursions of the Zaparoggian Cossacks under the leadership of Hamaleia on Skutari, the Turkish city on the Bosphorus. The Cossacks saved western Europe from the Tartar and Turkish invasions, by fighting the invaders in the land of the barbarian. The poem describes one of these excursions where the Cossacks animated by the desire of revenging themselves on the Turks and freeing their brothers who were lying as captives in Turkish prisons, undertake a perilous trip in small wooden boats over the stormy Black Sea to Skutari, open the prisons, burn the city, and return home with rich spoils and their freed brethren.
