The natural affection I have for my nation, which grew stronger immediately upon my acquisition of a clearer consciousness of my own self and my fellow-countrymen, augmented in good time through the lecture of the poetry of our priceless Kollár, swelled year by year, greater and greater in my breast, attracting me to everything that could help me to a better knowledge of our nation, as expressed in all of its tribes.
Quite clearly, the ‘nation’ he speaks of consists of the Slavs in general, of which his own Slovaks, and the Sorbs he is about to describe, are ‘tribes,’ the local expressions of the greater, organic whole. It is what allows him to speak of ‘our’ victory over the Turks at the lifting of the Siege of Vienna in 1683 by Polish King Jan III Sobieski,26 ‘our’ cities, as in his com
