Greetings and welcome to a quiet corner of the great, greasy interwebs. I'm Marko the Werelynx and I'll be starting the slideshow this week just as soon as the bulb in the projector warms up.
Last weekend I went for a lovely walk in a park in Prague that I hadn't visited for over 20 years. It's a park associated with an old Czech legend that pretty much all the websites in English, that I've bothered to look at, in hopes of shortening this introduction with a simple link, have failed to provide the goods.
But the Czech Radio site has about the best discussion of the legend of Šárka and the Maiden's War.
The story most Czechs carry around in their heads is an amalgam of many versions of the story, including Jaroslav Vrchlický's epic poem "Šárka"and Alois Jirásek's book of Old Czech Legends.
My own short version of the story is that once upon a time, during the reign of Prince Přemysl, there was a woman's rebellion led by Vlasta. The women built a fortification at Děvín across the Vltava river from Přemysl's fortification at Vyšehrad. Ctírad was some flavor of minor royalty and an officer in Přemysl's manly army who essentially tries to rape Šárka, who joins the rebellion and lays a trap for Ctírad...
... and a score of his men as they troop through the area I walked in last Saturday.
Oh, I'd better get going with these photos or we'll never get through this. So, photos without commentary interspersed with bits of the story. Additional fluffy commentary may appear in the occasional hover.
As Ctírad and his men walked through the valley, they came upon beautiful Šárka bound to a tree. Beside her, placed just out of her reach, were a horn and a jug of mead.
Šárka pleads with Ctírad to free her, claiming that Vlasta's warriors have kidnapped her from her father and while camped in the valley had tied her to this tree and left the horn and jug as tortuous reminders of her inability to call for help in this secluded spot and of her thirst.
Ctírad shows remorse for the way he treated Šárka earlier and frees her from her bonds. He and his men then partake of the mead, which is drugged, and they fall asleep. Šárka sounds the horn and Vlasta's troops come out of hiding and proceed to slaughter the sleeping men, capture Ctírad and drag him off to be imprisoned in the women's fort.
Šárka pleas for clemency for Ctírad. Vlasta vows that he must die and before he can be put to death, in full view of Vyšehrad and Prince Přemysl, Šárka visits Ctírad in prison.
Under Vlasta's death sentence, Ctírad is killed horribly and the news quickly spreads and enrages the men of the land who march on Děvín. The women refuse to fight and Vlasta rides out alone to face the angry hordes. She dies in battle and Šárka flees rather than surrender to Prince Přemysl. The remaining women attempt to surrender, but are instead slaughtered and their fort is burned and leveled to the ground.
Šárka, full of remorse and despair, climbs to the top of the highest cliff in the valley where she forgave and then betrayed Ctírad and jumps to her death on the rocks below.
And that's a brief retelling of the Maiden's War.