Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Czech rushed to bring him immediately, and meanwhile the Kurpie carried Zbyszko to the prince's mansion.
"One can fight with them, but it is not desirable," answered Macko; "and then it is not proper for a knight, because they are peasants." "The Swiss are peasants also. Do they confess Christ?" "There are no such people in Mazowsze. They are our people. Did you see the archers in the castles? They are all the Kurpie, because there are no better archers than they are."
It was daylight when they arrived; but after they announced themselves at the gate, it was dark before the bridge was lowered. They were received by Zbyszko's former acquaintance, Mikolaj of Dlugolas, who commanded the garrison consisting of a few knights and three hundred of the famous archers of Kurpie. To his great sorrow, Zbyszko learned that the court was absent.
Nets were fastened along two sides of the glade, and behind these were the men whose duty it was to turn the beasts toward the hunters, or to kill them with spears if they became entangled in the nets. Many of the Kurpie were sent to drive every living thing from the depths of the forest into the glade.
"Let me rest now, because I am very ill. If I die, you will return to Zgorzelice and tell how everything happened; then they can engage a mass. I suppose they will bury me here or in Ciechanow." "I think they will bury you in Ciechanow or in Przasnysz, because only the Kurpie are buried in the forest, and the wolves howl over their graves.
"They cannot be better than the Englishmen and the Scotch, whom I saw at the Burgundian court." "I have seen them also in Malborg," interrupted the Mazur. "They are strong, but they cannot compare with the Kurpie, among whom a boy seven years old, will not be allowed to eat, until he has knocked the food with an arrow from the summit of a pine."
The Kurpie disliked to leave their wilderness, because they felt uneasy without the rustling of the trees above their heads; therefore the inhabitants of Przasnysz brought their famous beer, their flour ground in wind mills or water mills built on the river Wengierka, salt which was very rare in the wilderness, iron, leather and other fruits of human industry, taking in exchange skins, costly furs, dried mushrooms, nuts, herbs, good in case of sickness, or clods of amber which were plentiful among the Kurpie.
In the meanwhile, far in the depths of the wilderness, the horns of the Kurpie were heard, and the noisy sound of a krzywula answered from the glade; then perfect silence followed. From time to time the chatter of the squirrels was heard in the tops of the pines.
The huntsmen seeing how his hands closed and his mouth remained open, said to one another that he would not live; but the more experienced Kurpie, among whom many an one had on him the traces of a bear's paws, a boar's tusks or an urus' horns, affirmed that the urus' horn had slipped between the knight's ribs, that perhaps one or two of his ribs were broken, but that the backbone was not, because if it were, he could not rise.
"Perhaps in the swamps there are some unclean spirits; but I never heard about dragons, and even if they were there, we would not give them girls, but we would destroy them. Bah! had there been any, the Kurpie would have worn belts of their skins long ago." "What kind of people are they; is it possible to fight with them?" asked de Lorche.
Word Of The Day