Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/180

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146
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
[CANTO II.

1.

Tambourgi![1] Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar[2]N31
Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war;
All the Sons of the mountains arise at the note,
Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote!


2.

Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote,
In his snowy camese[3] and his shaggy capote?
To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock,
And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock.


3.

Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive[4]
The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live?
Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego?
What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe?[5]


  1. [Tambourgi, "drummer," a Turkish word, formed by affixing the termination -gi, which signifies "one who discharges any occupation," to the French tambour (H. F. Tozer, Childe Harold, p. 246).]
  2. —— thy tocsin afar.—[MS. D. erased.]
  3. [The camese is the fustanella or white kilt of the Toska, a branch of the Albanian, or Shkipetar, race. Spenser has the forms "camis," "camus." The Arabic quamīç occurs in the Koran, but is thought to be an adaptation of the Latin camisia, camisa.—Finlay's Hist. of Greece, vi. 39; N. Eng. Dict., art. "Camis." (For "capote," vide post, p. 181.)]
  4. Shall the sons of Chimæra ——.—[MS. D].
  5. [The Suliotes, after a protracted and often successful resistance, were finally reduced by Ali, in December, 1803.