Most societies seem to have epic heroes and events that define themas they like to see themselves: Even a young society such asAustralia has Ned Kelly, Eureka Stockade, and ANZAC. Others havetheir Robin Hood, Siegfried, Roland, or Davy Crockett. Lacplesis(Bearslayer) is such a work. Bearslayer is patriotic, brave, strong,tough, loyal, wise, fair, and virtuous, and he loves nature. Heembodies the strengths and virtues of the Latvian folk in alegendary age of greatness, before they were subjugated andcorrupted by "Strangers".The poem was important in the growth of Latvian self-awareness AsJazeps Rudzitis, the eminent Latvian folklorist and literaryscholar, put it, "There is no other work in Latvian literature whosestory has penetrated mass consciousness as deeply or resounded asrichly in literature and art as Bearslayer." Thus, it seemedworthwhile to me to make the poem available to people who wish toread it in English, and this volume is the result. It contains thefruits of two years' labour.In writing Lacplesis Andrejs Pumpurs made an enormous contributionto Latvian literature. Thus, it may seem presumptuous that I havegiven myself equal prominence with him on the title page. After all,he is the author of the original poem, of which the present text ismerely a translation. However, the task of translating a poem ismuch more than that of taking the words of the source language andreplacing them with equivalent words from the target language. InLatvian, in addition to tulkot (to translate), there is a secondverb atdzejot, which means approximately "re-versify". As I explainin the Technical Notes (p. iii), I have transformed Pumpurs'soriginal Latvian work into an English poem in heroic verse: Theresult is an atdzejojums, not "merely" a translation.The moral support I received from a number of people during the twoyears I worked on the translation was particularly important tome. I am especially indebted to Edgars Kariks of the Baltic Officeof the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, who gaveconstant encouragement and concrete support, and Ojars Kalninš ofthe Latvian Institute in Riga, who was extremely positive andsupportive from an early stage in the project. These two gave me thecourage to keep going. Among others, Rita Berzinš read an earlyfragment and encouraged me to believe I was on the right track, andJana Felder (née Martinson) responded enthusiastically to apresentation at a conference. Valters Nollendorfs encouraged me totrust my own feeling of what sounded right, and Guntis Smidchensshowed interest in the translation from the point of view of auniversity teacher.I am greatly indebted to my Latvian teacher in Adelaide, IlzeOstrovska. Without her I would never have learned enough Latvian toread the original poem. Mirdza Kate Baltais edited the first versionof the manuscript and helped me eliminate a very large number oferrors, as well as making numerous suggestions for improvements. Itis definitely not her fault that there are still errors in thetext-quite apart from certain liberties that I have allowed myself(see p.iii). My colleague in Riga, Kaspars Klavinš, read theentire manuscript and made a number of sensitive and insightfulsuggestions for corrections and improvements, for which I amgrateful.