This is the most important piece of Serbian national literature ever created. "The Mountain Wreath" is an epic poem written by Petar II Petrović Njegoš (1813-1851), a Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the town of Cetinje and a ruler of the state of Montenegro. Montenegro was the only part of the Medieval Serbian state which has never been conquered by the Ottoman Turks, due to its difficult mountain terrain and its brave people. Montenegro means Black Mountain (Crna Gora). The name of the poem, "The Mountain Wreath", symbolizes Montenegrin highlander clans joined together in defence of Christian faith and European culture against the invading Muslim Ottoman Turks. It was based on true historical events, it is an epic poem written in a form of drama, but it is mostly of philosophical nature. Its main subject is an attempt by Montenegrin Christians to purify their land from Montenegrin converts to Islam. The poem was written in the town of Cetinje in 1846, and originally published in Vienna in 1847. It depicts the true Serbian heroic soul, which is rare to find these days. Today, it has been characterized by liberal democrats as an evil Serbian genocidal racist ethnical cleansing agenda towards Muslims. And it is actual now the same way as it was actual back then, like nothing has ever changed. The poem is very large and difficult for reading. I will quote two parts here, one being the very beginning of the poem, and the other being Montenegrin response to a Turkish letter. And I will provide a link to the full content, hoping there will be some enthusiasts to read it all.



The only known photograph of Petar II Petrović Njegoš, made by Serbian photographer Anastas Jovanović in the summer of 1851. Njegoš was a monk, a Prince-Bishop, a warrior, and a poet altogether. He was a very tall person, like 2.2 meters. Montenegrins are known to be the tallest people in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petar_II_Petrovi%C4%87-Njego%C5%A1

Petar II Petrovic Njegos

THE MOUNTAIN WREATH

Unabridged Internet Edition [First Serbian Edition: Wien, 1847]

Translated into English by Vasa D. Mihailovich,
Professor of Slavic Languages, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA)

---

A MEETING ON THE EVE OF WHITSUNTIDE ON THE MOUNT LOVCEN

It is the dead of night. Everyone is asleep.

BISHOP DANILO (talking to himself)

Lo the devil with seven scarlet cloaks,
with two swords and with two crowns on his head,
the great-grandchild of the Turk, with Koran!
Behind him hordes of that accursed litter,
march to lay waste to the whole planet Earth,
just as locusts devastate the green fields.
If the French dike had not stood in the way,
the Arab sea would have flooded it all!
Osman was crowned in an infernal dream
and given the half-moon like an apple.
Orkan! What an evil guest in Europe!
Now Byzantium is indeed nothing but
a dowry of youthful Theodora;
the star of doom still hovers over it.
Upon Murat Paleologos calls
to bury both Greeks and Serbs together.
Brankovic and Gerluka want the same.
Thanks, Mohammad, for hanging Gerluka!
Besides Asia, where their nest is hidden,
the devil's tribe gobled up the nations -
one every day, as an owl gulps a bird:
Murat Serbia, and Bajazet Bosnia,
Mohammed Greece and Murat Epirus,
the two Selims Cyprus and Africa.
Each took something, nothing was left over;
it is dreadful to hear what's happening.
World is too small for the devil's large maw
to eat his full, let alone overeat!
Janko defends the dead King Wladislaw;
but why do so when he failed to save him?
In Skenderbeg beats Obilic's heart,
but he perished as a forlorn exile.
What can I do? Who is there to help me?
There are few hands and all too little strength.
I'am a lone straw tossing in the whirlwind,
a sad orphan without friend or kinfolk.
My people sleep a deep and lifeless sleep;
no parent's hand to wipe away my tears.
Above my head the heaven is shut tight;
it does not hear my cries or my prayers.
The world has now become a hell for me,
people have turned into hellish spirits.
O my dark day! O my black destiny!
O my wretched Serbian nation snuffed out!
I have outlived many of your troubles,
yet I must fight against the worst of all!
Yes, when the head on a body is smashed,
the limbs die out in frightful agony.
Plague of mankind, may God's wrath be on you!
Is half a world you've already poisoned
with your mean deeds not large enough for you,
that you had to spew out all the venom
of your black soul on this hard rock as well?
Is Serbia from the Danube River
to the blue sea too small an offering?
You rule the throne you've unjustly taken
and are prideful of your bloody scepter;
you insult God from the holy altar,
a mosque rises where the broken Cross lies.
Why do you want to poison its shadow,
which people took to the mountain shelters
for their lasting pride and consolation,
to remind them of their heroic past?
It is washed in blood so many times over,
a hundred times in yours, as oft in ours!
Behold the work of that wicked monarch,
whom the devil teaches all kinds of things:
"Montenegro I cannot win or tame,
nor call it mine in any real sense;
this is how one should deal with its people."
And so began the devil's Messiah
to offer them sweetmeats of his false faith.
May God strike you, loathsome degenerates,
why do we need the Turk's faith among us?
What will you do with your ancestors' curse?
With what will you appear before Milos
and before all other Serbian heroes,
whose names will live as long as the sun shines?
When I think of today's council meeting,
flames of horror flare up deep inside me.
A brother will slaughter his own brother,
and the arch-foe, so strong and so evil,
will destroy e'en the seed within mothers.
O wretched day, may God's curse be on you!
when you brought me to the light of this world.
A hundred times I've cursed that hour last year
when the Turks failed, or didn't want, to kill me;
my people's hopes I would not betray now.

Vuk Micunovic lies near the Bishop. He is pretending to sleep but can hear everything very well

VUK MICUNOVIC

Don't, my Bishop, if you have faith in God!
What misfortune has come over you now
that you do wail like some sad cuckoo-bird
and drown yourself in our Serbian troubles?
Is today not a festive occasion
on which you have gathered Montenegrins
to cleanse our land of loathsome infidels?
Besides, this is our slava holiday
on which our best and noblest lads gather
to test their strength and their abilities,
the strength of arms, and fleetness of their feet,
to vie also in the target-shooting,
to cleave the roast ram's shoulder in wager,
to hear also the liturgy in church,
dance the kolo all around the churchyard,
and thrust their chests in knightly exercise.
To all brave men that is a holy incense,
making youthful hearts as strong as iron!
Banish, Bishop, such dark and gloomy thoughts!
Men bravely bear, wailing is for women.
A timid chief has no business ruling!
You are not left just to your resources.
Do you not see these five hundred brave lads?
What marvels of strength and fleet-footedness
have we not seen here among them today?
Did you see how they were target-shooting,
how skilfully they played the game of grad,
and how nimbly they did grab the small caps?
As wolf-cubs start to follow their mother,
so they begin playfully to sharpen
their dreaded teeth upon each other's throats.
As soon as the falcon grows his first plumes,
he cannot be peaceful any longer.
Instead, his nest he keeps rearranging,
Grabbing the straws one after another,
he flies shrieking toward the light blue sky,
In this there is a lesson to be learned.
Beside the youths present here around you,
there are six times as many back at home.
Their strength, Bishop, is surely your strength too.
Before the Turks will have conquered them all,
many a wife of the Turk will wear black.
Our struggle won't come to an end until
we or the Turks are exterminated.
What right to hope has anyone of us
except in God and in our own two hands.
The hope we had was buried forever
in one large tomb at the Kosovo Field.
When things go well, 'tis easy to be good;
adversity shows who is the hero.

Crosses have been carried from Lovcen to the hill above the Crkvine.
Men are sitting on the hill, shooting and counting the echoes of each shot.

SIRDAR JANKO DJURASKOVIC

What a fine gun, worth a human head!
Every one of our guns echoes six times,
but dzeferdar of Vuk Tomanovic
keeps echoing nine times of equal strength

SIRDAR RADONJA

Montenegrins, do you see this wonder?
Fifty full years I've spun of my life's yarn.
I've always spent my summers on Lovcen
and have clambered up to this high summit.
Hundreds of times I have gazed at the clouds
sailing in flocks from the sea down yonder
and covering this entire mountain range.
I've watched them float and rush now here, now there
with lightning bolts and with mighty rumble
and with the roar of terrible thunder.
Hundreds of times I have rested up here,
warming myself in the sun peacefully.
I've watched often the lightning beneath me,
listened to the thunder rending the sky,
as in the din of the frightening hail
the clouds below make everything barren
-but this wonder I have yet to witness!
Do you notice, upon your faith in God,
how much there is of the sea and the coast,
of proud Bosnia and Hercegovina,
Albania way down there by the sea,
how much there is of our Montenegro?
The clouds cover all these lands evenly!
The thunder's roar can be heard all around,
all beneath us the lightning keeps flashing,
but we alone are lying in the sun.
It has become rather hot up here now,
since the top of this mountain's always cool.

OBRAD

Did you see this miracle and omen
when two flashes made a cross in the sky?
One flash came from Kom straight on to Lovcen;
the other flashed from Skadar to Ostrog.
They formed a cross made out of living fire.
How lovely it is just to look at it!
Never before in this wide world of ours
has someone heard or seen such a cross.
God, help us Serbs in all our misfortune;
this, too, must be a good omen for us!

VUK RASLAPCEVIC

What do you aim at with your gun, Drasko?

VOIVODE DRASKO

I want to kill one of the cuckoo-birds,
but I don't want to waste a single cartridge.

VUK RASLAPCEVIC

Please don't do that, Drasko, upon your life!
It isn't proper to kill a cuckoo-bird.
Do you not know, may the devil take you,
that cuckoos are the daughters of Lazar?

A great commotion arises above the Crkvine,
on the northern side above the lake.

SIRDAR VUKOTA

What's this clamour? What is troubling you now?
So help me God, you are worse than children!

VUKOTA MRVALJEVIC

Straight at us flew a flock of partridges
and we captured each one of them alive.
The great uproar arose for that reason.

EVERYONE SHOUTS AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE:

Let them all go, may God's grace be with you,
because trouble has driven them our way;
you wouldn't have caught one of them otherwise.
They've fled to you only to find shelter,
and surely not for you to slaughter them.

They let the partridges fly away and returned with crosses
to the place they had taken them from.

---

Ten kavasses come from Podgorica, sent by the new vizier;
who is making a tour of the empire. They give Bishop Danilo a letter
The Bishop reads it thoughfully

VOIVODE BATRIC

Tell us, Bishop, what does the Vizier write?
We would not want anything to be hid,
even if all Turks had grown mighty wings!

BISHOP DANILO (reads the letter word for word)

"Selim Vizier, slave of the Prophet's slave,
servant of the brother of the world's sun,
envoy of him who rules all of the earth.
Now be it known, leaders with your Bishop,
that the tsar of all tsars has ordered me
to make a tour of his land long and wide,
to see if all is in perfect order,
to see that wolves do not over-eat meat,
to see that sheep do not wander astray
and lose their fleece in a bush by the road,
to shorten that which is overly long,
to pour out that which has been overfilled,
to check the teeth of all the young people,
to see that a rose doesn't get lost in thorns
and that a pearl doesn't perish in the mire,
and to tighten the reins of the raya,
since the raya is like other livestock.
And so I've heard about your mountains, too.
The family of the holy Prophet
knows the correct value of bravery.
People lie when they say of the lion
that he's afraid of a mouse - not at all!
Come to me now under my spacious tent,
you, Bishop, and you, the leading sirdars.
Show up only under the tsar's emblem
in order to receive gifts from my hand,
then you can live as you have lived before.
Strong teeth can crack even the hardest nut.
A good sabre can cut a club's handle,
not to speak of a head of ripe cabbage.
How can the reed be trained never to bend
before the force of a strong hurricane?
Who can prevent the onrushing torrents
from rushing on toward the wide blue sea?
He who comes out from the splendid shadow
of the Prophet's temlying banner
will be burned by the sun as by lightning.
A feeble fist can never forge tough steel!
In a pumpkin mouse - what's but a captive?
Why champ the bit - it only breaks the teeth!
Without thunder heaven has no value.
In a poor man eyes are like dishwater.
The common folk are like stupid cattle -
servile only when their ribs are cracking.
Woe to the land over which armies pass!"

KNEZ JANKO

A merchant lies to you with a coy smile,
a woman lies while she is shedding tears,
but no one lies as deftly as a Turk.

SIRDAR JANKO

Let's not detain the envoys much longer;
let us, instead, send them away quickly,
that their pasha won't remain long in doubt.
Let him know soon, then do whate'er he may.

VUK MICUNOVIC

Please answer him, Bishop, as best you know,
and save his face just as he has saved yours!

BISHOP DANILO (writes the answer)

"An answer to Selim-Pasa's letter
from the Bishop and the other leaders.
Hard walnut is a peculiar fruit.
You'll not break it, but it will break your teeth.
The price of wine is not what once it was,
nor is the world what you think it should be.
To give Europe as present to Prophet -
it is a sin even to think of it!
A large pear sticks easily in the throat.
Human blood is dangerous nouirshment.
It has started gushing out of your nose.
You have stuffed your belly with many sins!
The saddle-girth snapped on the Prophet's mare.
Charles, Leopold's courageous voivode,
John Sobieski, too, the Duke of Savoy,
all together they broke the demon's horns.
The book of fate does not reveal the same
for two brothers carrying the same name.
Burak stumbled just before Vienna.
The wagon was overturned down the hill.
To the cruel men an empire is no good
except to spread their shame before the world.
A savage mind and a poisoned temper
has a wild boar, not a human being.
He whose law is written by his cudgel
leaves behind stench of inhumanity.
I have divined what you wanted to say.
Many footprints are leading to the cave.
Do not prepare for guests from the mountain!
I am sure they have no other thoughts now
than to sharpen their teeth for their neighbours
and to guard their flocks against predators.
The entrance to a beehive is narrow.
An axe has been made ready for the bear.
You have other lands and sheep besides ours.
Go oppress them and fleece their skin instead!
Where'er you come, groans rise on every side;
bad is oppressed by worse, good by evil.
I used to climb down your rope in the past,
but the rope snapped almost in two pieces;
we have become much better friends since then.
You have driven wisdom into my head."

Finishes the letter and reads it before all Montenegrins and Turks.

KNEZ ROGAN

Here's you letter. Now on your way quickly!
Take it to him. Let him amuse himself!

The Vizier's envoys leave sadly

http://www.rastko.rs/knjizevnost/umetnicka/njegos/mountain_wreath.html

I don't have the time time to read all this, but the Turks are under-rated when it comes to EVIL.

I will forever strive to purchase no item that lists Turkey as Country of Origin.

If only there was more I could do.