Tatars

The Tatars, formerly also spelt Tartars, is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name across Eastern Europe and Asia.

Quotes

• The Tartars of the Oxus, the King's guard,
  First, with black sheep-skin caps and with long spears;
  Large men, large steeds; who from Bokhara come
  And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.
  Next the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south,
  The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,
  And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands;
  Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink
  The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
  And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came
  From far, and more doubtful service owned;
  The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks
  Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards
  And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes
  Who roam o’er Kipchak and the northern waste,
  Kalmuks and unkemped Kuzzaks, tribes who stray
  Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes,
  Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere.
  • Matthew Arnold, from Sohrab and Rustum (1853)

Figurative usage

Tartar (dated) A fearsome or angrily violent person.

• Now listen here you buggers, we’ve caught a fuking tartar;
  At every kind of bludgin’ that bastard’s got the starter,
  At poker and at two-up he shook our fucking rules,
  He swipes our fucking liquor and he robs our fucking girls.
  • Anonymous, but attributed by H. A. Lindsay to Henry Lawson, "The Bastard from the Bush"; Richard Walsh, Traditional Australian Verse (Allen & Unwin, 2009), p. 277