steps to gain redress, probably thinking himself happily rid of the money-loving lady. However, he found that everybody avoided him; his relations looked black at him, and even whispered audible reproaches. Then, one day, it was noised abroad, that the stranger had been found dead in his garden. Suspicion at once fell on the young man who had been wronged. He was apprehended and brought up for trial; but, no evidence being forthcoming, was speedily released. Abundant testimony existed; but it was kept back by the relations of the deceased, who were loth to have the luxury of retaliation snatched from them. It is in ways like these that feuds start up, and grow from generation to generation.
But the chief outlet for their ferocity, or rather, perhaps, the secret cause of their lawlessness at home, is to be found in their continual struggle with the Turks. Liable to an inroad at any moment, it is necessary that all the men should be skilled in arms. Out of a population of about 120,000, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 armed men might be collected in the course of a few hours, and that this number could be increased by the addition of old men and boys. In cases of emergency, even the cripples are borne on the backs of women and lodged behind bits of rock, whence they can load and discharge their guns. None of these, however, can be considered regular troops. At the moment of extreme peril they waive their jealousies and obey their officers, but at other times they have no law but their own will. Being inured to privations, they perform with ease and alacrity very long and forced marches. They do not scruple to use their long rifles as leaping-poles, and so are able to cross wide ditches and scramble up steep rocks, which would greatly impede more disciplined soldiers. On foot, they can pursue the enemy with almost as much rapidity as a body of cavalry. When he is marching towards them, they conceal themselves in ravines, and send out small parties, who advance a little and then feign a retreat, until he is enticed into the ambush. Here they surround him and fight, chiefly with their broad-swords, much more like the heroes of Homer’s time than modern Christians, each man relying solely on his own strength, and following pretty much his own way. Their favourite time of attack is the night, that suiting best for surprises. When they meet a foe in pitched battle, they rush furiously into the squares, and, if they do not succeed in destroying the ranks, they at any rate greatly discompose them by their rapid manœuvres.
No one can ever expect mercy at their hands: they take prisoners only those who yield before battle; all the rest have their heads cut off on the spot. A story is told of two Austrian riflemen whose corps was worsted in an engagement with the Montenegrins in 1840. Being detached from their comrades, and seeing no other chance of escape, they threw themselves on the ground and pretended to be dead. Some of the enemy at once approached them, and cut off the head of the nearest one of the two. The other, “finding it no use to be dead,” started up and rushed down the precipices, running as he never ran before. In the battle of Grahovo, fought three years ago, Mirko, the commander-in-chief, and brother of Prince Daniel, wrote to tell him that out of the Turkish army of 13,000, 7000 heads were felled. “It was a terrible spectacle,” says a Russian officer, an eye-witness of their mode of combat in former instances, “to see them rushing forward, with the heads of their slaughtered enemies suspended from their necks and shoulders, and uttering savage yells.” These heads serve as trophies of the prowess of their possessors.
Sometimes the women are as fierce as the men, as this popular song will show. It will serve, at the same time, as a specimen of the literature of the people, which consists almost entirely of war ballads and heroic songs:
