An Albanian Epic Poem:

The Bandits

Help me God as you once helped me,

Five hundred years are now behind us

Since Albania the fair was taken

Since the Turks snared and enslaved her,

Left it in blood our wretched homeland,

Let her suffocate and wither

That she ever live in sorrow,

That, when beaten, she kept silent

Mice within the walls wept for her,

Serpents under stones took pity!

As when first a steer’s yoked under,

Oxbow weighing hard upon it,

There’s no sense at all to prod it,

It will balk, not pull the ploughshare,

Only crisscross fields at fancy,

Furnish trouble for the farmer,

Will refuse to till the furrows

When alone or with another.

So it is with the Albanians,

Under foreign yoke unwilling

To be slaves, pay tithes and taxes.

Always have they wandered freely,

None but God above them knowing,

Never on their lands and pastures

Would they bow before a master,

Never with the Turks agreeing,

Never out of sight their riffles.

They waged war on them, were slaughtered,

Just as if with shkjas1 in battle.

Therefore, when Turkish ora’s2

Vigour waned, began to weaken,

When her drive began to crumble,

Russia day by day beset her

And the tribesmen of the Balkans

Newly fled the sultan’s power,

Did the Albanians start to ponder

How to free their native country

From the Turkish yoke and make it

As when ruled by Castriota3,

When Albanians lived in freedom,

Did not bow or show submission,

To a foreign king or sultan,

Did not pay them tithes and taxes,

And Albania’s banner fluttered

Like the wings of all God’s angels

Like the bolts of lightning flashing,

Waving high atop their homeland.