Hero Tales and Legends of the Serbians

The Serbian?s wish that their friends should know their nation such as it is. They wish them to be acquainted with their national psychology. And nothing could give a better insight into the very soul of the Serbian nation than this book which Woislav M. Petrovitch has so happily conceived.

The Serbians belong ethnologically to the great family of the Slavonic nations. They are first cousins to the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Bulgars and they are brother to the Croats and Slovenes. But of all Slavonic nations the Serbian?s can legitimately claim to be the most poetical one. Their language is the richest and the most musical among all the Slavonic languages.

When the Serbian's ancestors occupied the western part of the Balkan Peninsula, they found there numerous Latin colonies and Greek towns and settlements. In the course of twelve centuries they have through intermarriage absorbed much Greek and Latin blood. That influence, and the influence of the commercial and political intercourse with Italy, have softened their language and their manners and intensified their original Slavonic love of what is beautiful, poetical, and noble. They are a special Slavonic type, modified by Latin and Greek influences. The Bulgars are a Slavonic nation of a quite different type, created by the circulation of Tartar blood in Slavonian veins. This simple fact throws much light on the conflicts between the Serbian?s and Bulgarians during the Middle Ages, and even today.