Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
With respect to the name of Suli, the Suliotes themselves trace it to
an accident:--"Some old men," says the Albanian author, reciting his
own personal investigations amongst the oldest of the Suliotes, "replied
that they did not remember having any information from their ancestors
concerning the first inhabitants of Suli, except this only: that some
goat and swine herds used to lead their flocks to graze on the mountains
where Suli and Ghiafa now stand; that these mountains were not only
steep and almost inaccessible, but clothed with thickets of wood, and
infested by wild boars; that these herdsmen, being oppressed by the
tyranny of the Turks of a village called to this day Gardichi, took the
resolution of flying for a distance of six hours' journey to this sylvan
and inaccessible position, of sharing in common the few animals which
they had, and of suffering voluntarily every physical privation, rather
than submit to the slightest wrong from their foreign tyrants. This
resolution, they added, must be presumed to have been executed with
success; because we find that, in the lapse of five or six years, these
original occupants of the fastness were joined by thirty other families.
Somewhere about that time it was that they began to awaken the jealousy
of the Turks; and a certain Turk, named Suli, went in high scorn and
defiance, with many other associates, to expel them from this strong
position; but our stout forefathers met them with arms in their hands.
Suli, the leader and inciter of the Turks, was killed outright upon
the ground; and, on the very spot where he fell, at this day stands the
centre of our modern Suli, which took its name, therefore, from that
same slaughtered Turk, who was the first insolent and malicious enemy
with whom our country in its days of infancy had to contend for its
existence."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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