heyduks

Updated: May 21, 2025

The traditional ballads give us vivid pictures of the heyduks, or brigands. Highway robbery up till, and well into, the nineteenth century was both a lucrative business and a sport which well suited the lazy but adventurous spirit of the people. It perpetuated in fact the everlasting raids of one noble against another in pre-Turk days.

M. E. (Mary Edith) Durham - Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle