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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE
embellish the subject with brilliant speech—But he should not jeer at me—Saying, he meddles with what he does not understand—Of one thing I am full certain —That I have my nation much at heart—That has encouraged me in this work—That has aroused my energy." The first part of the book narrates the well-known tales of the making of Bohemia; the appearance of Cech and his companions in the land; their settlement near the mountain Rip; the adventures of Krok, Premysl, and Libussa; and the deeds of the early Premyslide All these semi-mythical tales are related in princes. very much the same manner in which Cosmas had told them two centuries before, and Hayek was to tell them two centuries later. Among the most interesting episodes in the Chronicle are the descriptions of the murder of Prince Venceslas by his treacherous younger brother Boleslav, and of the first meeting of Prince Ulrick and the peasant-maiden The peculiar Bozena, whom he afterwards wedded. national prejudice of many Bohemian nobles, founded not on pride of birth, but on intense racial antipathy, appears very clearly in DalimiFs account of Prince Ulrick's marriage. When the nobles reproached him for his unequal alliance, he answers: "We all descend from one father—And he ranks as a noble—Whose father had much silver—And as nobility and peasantry are thus intermingled—Bozena shall be my wife— Rather would I entrust myself to a Bohemian peasantgirl—Than that I should take a German queen as my wife—Every heart clings to its nation—Therefore a German woman would less favour my language;—A German woman will have German servants—German
