Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/28

 so characteristic of the so-called Dalimil; he writes: ‘Prince Ulrich was hunting at Postoloprty; it befell that when he rode through a village a peasant-maiden was standing near a stream, barefoot and with bare shoulders. Now the maiden was very beautiful, and had a very bashful manner. Then the prince began to admire her, and immediately he took her as his wife. She bore the name of Božena, and became a noble princess, but the nobles were incensed against the prince because of this marriage. Then the prince said—the nobles listened unwillingly—“Peasants sometimes become nobles, and sometimes sons of nobles become peasants; for inherited silver obtains nobility, and often a poor noble is reduced to peasantry. 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, Božena shall be my wife. Rather would I entrust myself to a Bohemian peasant-girl than that I should take a German woman as my wife. Every heart clings to its nation, therefore would a German woman favour less my language. A German woman will have German servants. She will teach my children German, hence there would be strife in the nation and the land itself would perish. Lords, you heed not your own advantage when you gird against my marriage.”’

I have thought it well to translate this passage, not only because it is characteristic of the innate hatred of the Germans that has always existed in Bohemia, but also because it bears witness to the somewhat democratic views of the ancient Slavs who in contrast to the Latin and Teutonic races attached little importance to ancestry.

The chronicle of Dalimil ends with the coronation