Czy Królewicz Marko i jego pobratymcy byli bohaterami z krwi i kości?

Abstract

Were Royal Prince Marko and his kinsmen the real live heroes?

The problem of corporeality of heroes in the South Slav heroic epic is considered on the basic of the analysis of the series of songs from Kosovo about Royal Prince Marko and The Wedding of Maksim Crnojević. For comparison the old Russian and Ukrainian heroic songs which are an example of East Slav epic are included. Supernatural strength of plucky fellows, shown in the hyperbolical way, indicates the origin of these themes from the older legends and tales. In most cases the heroes’ appearance is replaced with the clothes description. Although sometimes the beauty, as it is in the case of The Wedding of Maksim Crnojević, plays the crucial role. The confrontation of the heroes of the song The Wedding of the King Vukašin is expressed as the number of metony-mies. The plucky fellows take care of their bodies and keep them clean. The most frequent way of showing the strength is the fight. The heroes use different kinds of weapons and also the body strength. The fights are cruel and sometimes they do not follow the rules of knight’s ethos.