Brewer's: Klephts

(The) etymologically means robbers, but came to be a title of distinction in modern Greece. Those Greeks who rejected all overtures of their Turkish conquerors, betook themselves to the mountains, where they kept up for several years a desultory warfare, supporting themselves by raids on Turkish settlers. Aristoteles Valaoritis (born 1824) is the great “poet of the Klephts.” (See Nineteenth Century, July, 1891, p. 130.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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