Poetry
Kill Him!
Mor ho!
Samo Chalupka · 1864
Synopsis
A Roman emperor pitches his camp in Pannonia, on the borders of the land of the Slovaks. Young envoys bring him bread and salt as a sign of peace and tell him that these free men consider it an injustice to have a master, and a greater one still to be one. The emperor rejects the offering and swears to enslave them; the Slovak youth then hurl themselves into battle with the cry of “Mor ho!”, “kill him!”.
Context
The poem appears in 1864 in the journal Sokol, with a commentary by its author, then enters in 1868 into Spevy, published at Banská Bystrica. It is probably based on Pavel Jozef Šafárik's History of the Slavic Language and Literature (1826), which reports, after Ammianus Marcellinus, the confrontation of the Limigantes and the emperor Constantius II in 358. In 1944, during the Slovak National Uprising, the free radio of Banská Bystrica quotes a quatrain of it in its bulletins, and a partisan detachment takes its name from it.
Who it is for
A heroic poem with a rhythm close to folk song, short, to be read in one go and aloud.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success of the national revival, it became a symbol of Slovak resistance.
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