Lazar of Serbia

Lazar Hrebeljanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Лазар Хребељановић; c. 1329 – 15 June 1389) was a medieval Serbian ruler who created the largest and most powerful state on the territory of the disintegrated Serbian Empire. Lazar's state, referred to by historians as Moravian Serbia, comprised the basins of the Great Morava, West Morava, and South Morava rivers.

Quotes

• Whoever is a Serb and of Serb birth,
  And of Serb blood and heritage,
  And comes not to the Battle of Kosovo,
  May he never have the progeny his heart desires,
  Neither son nor daughter!
  May nothing grow that his hand sows,
  Neither dark wine nor white wheat!
  And let him be cursed from all ages to all ages!
  • Kosovo curse, in Ger Duijzings, Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo (Columbia UP, 2000) pp. 187–88

• Bitter was the tsar’s curse to hear; aye! and a word of woe:
  "Who comes not to the battle with me at Kósovo,
  Let nothing grow beneath his hand in the field that he shall till;
  Let not the white wheat spring in the field, nor the vine shoot on the hill!"
  • "Fragments of Kósovo Ballds", II. Heroic Ballads of Servia, translated by George Rapall Noyes and Leonard Bacon (Boston: Sherman, French & Co, 1913) p. 69