Albanians, an older race

Abstract

Throughout the western half of the Balkan peninsula-in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania-the remains of a very early people are found in the prehistoric caves. About 600 B.C. they were invaded and probably largely influenced by the Celts, from the north. From this Celto-Illyrian stock the modern Albanian descends.
He is thus the oldest inhabitant of the Balkan Peninsula, and the fact that he has survived the successive invasion and rule of the Romans, Bulgars, Serbs and Turks, and remained Albanian, sufficiently proved his tenacious sense of nationality. No conquer has succedded in absorbing him. Consecuently, among the Albanians we still find taces of some of the earliest European customs.
Like the Scotish Highlanders, the Albanians were a tribal people. The tribes at an early date formed two groups, under separate princes. These groups can still trace in the Ghegs of the north and the Tosks of the south. They are one and the same people speaking the same Albanian tongue. The Ghegs, however, live in far more rugged land, and in the matural fortresses of the mountains have retained some older usages than the Tosks of the South. The northern Albanian has further shown his tenacity of purpose by the large numbers of the tribesman who have remained faithfull to the Roman Catholic Church. Albania was Christianized at a very early date. Scutary was a bishopric of the Patriarchate of Rome several centuries before the pagan Serbs and Bulgars were conveted, and inspite of preasure brought to bear on them during the time that North Albania fell under Serb domination in the Middle Ages, the northern Albanians are among the very few of the Balkan people who consistently refused to join the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The country was devastated during the Great War, but the villages have been rebuilt. Once more the Albanian raises his flock on the rich mountain pastures and sends his live stock and his hides to the bazaar of Shkodra.
The townsman throughout Albania lives a very different life from his pastoral compatriot.
He is usually a skilled craftsman and works industriously. Almost all the fine gold embroidery of the Balkans is Albanian work. The gorgeous Court dress of Montenegro was the creation of Albanian tailors. And curiously enough, many of the designs still made by them resemble ornaments found in the prehistoric graves, so that both the skill and the patern seem to be inherited from the ancient Illyrians.
Church and Mosques are both to be found in the larger towns.
After the Turk had conquered Albania, at the end of fifteen century, the Albanian for years prayed the help odd Christian Europe and especially of Venice. None came, and in eighteen century Islam began to spread in Albania as in other Balkan lands. The Albanians, however, put race before religion and Christian and Muslim struggled together for Independence against the Turks. The Muslim Albanian is not fanatical: he often belonges to the very liberal Dervish sect of Bektashis.
There is nominally asystem of compulsory education in Albania for all children between the age of six and thirteen. The lack of schools prevents the letter of the law from being carried out. Yet, though the people lack higher education, hereditary lore, handed down through many generations, fills a great many gaps.
There are peasants in Albania who can work cores of certain diseases and of simple disorders, and native surgeons may be met with who are very skilful. They can perform operations, and they understand antiseptic treatment. Indeed this seems to have been practiced in Albania before it was known in England. Wounds were treated with raki, instead being washed with water as far back as any memory or record goes. A clever peasant surgeon will even mend a broken scull by replacing the bone by portions of ground shells.
The Albanian mother has many things to do. She has to make the coarse maize bread, and bake it on the hearth under an iron cover upon which the hot wood-ash is piled. She saves the wood-ash carefully and uses it in place of soap with which to wash the clothes which come out beautifully clean. The maize is grounded in primitive little water-millswith wooder turbine wheels, built over every torrent. The mother weaves the thick woollen stuff and takes it to mthe fulling mill, where two heavy wooden mallets, worked by water-power, pound and beat it into a thick felt. She also plaits the black braid with which to trim it. The fire on the hearth seldom goes out.It is banked up at night. When the last male of the house dies, the woman extinguishes the fire as e sign of mourning.
Albanian language as spolen from plains of Kosova to the Gulf of Arta has puzzeled philologists.
It is nither neither Greek nor Slav. It has a rather complicated Aryan grammar, and has its bedrock, doubtless, the tounge of the ancient Illyrian, the speech of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian: for Strabo, writing in the first century A.D. tells us that both peoples spoke the same language. In vain have Serb, Greek, and Turk tried to destroy it. Serbs and Montenegrians annexed thousands of Albanians and never permited them to have a school to this language the Albanian, whether Christian or Muslim clings with an affection and tenacity that have something of the heroic or print a paper in their own tongue.
The Christian Albanians of the south belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, and here a Greek bishop once even excommunicated the Albanian language, and priests taught that it was useless to pray in Albanian, as Christ did not understand it. The Turk punished with fifteen years imprisonment anyone who taught the forbidden language or printed it, but the indomitable Albanian printed his books abroad and smuggled them in with difficulty and danger. He took advantage, too, of foreing aid. Italy and Austria both intent on annexing Albania, started rival schools in north, for propaganda purpuses, with which Turks dared not interfere. The Albanian larned-and remained Albanian. When he could affoard it, he finished his education in Viena or Paris. Many students were trained at Robert College by the Americans, but the Albanians, now that their independence is secure, retain their own language.
There have been martyrs to the national cause; but at length it has triumphed.