A. J. B. Wace

“ At the foot of the slope was the river of Ghrevena, a wide but shallow stream, which flows into the Haliakmon a few miles further east. Directly in front on the further bank was the town with its trees, minarets and clock tower nestling in the valley. Immediately to the east a flat, open common by the river was the actual scene of the fair, thronged with people and dotted with booths. Being late arrivals—the fair had begun that morning—it took us some time to find a vacant space to pitch our tents. ”

“ From time to time on our way up from Kalabaka we passed under rocks of the same weird formation and saw others standing by the edges of the valleys like grim sentinels. Then we turned off up the bed of the Liurghani river where the plane trees on either side prevented any distant view. At about nine o’clock w'e leave the river bed, and at 10 a.m. camp on the hill-side about an hour from Velemishti. Here we were in the midst of a fine champaign country which was very pleasant to the eyes after the scorched and treeless Thessalian plains. ”

“ Excepting some of the women in certain of the more remote villages all the Vlachs of both sexes know in addition to their native language at least one other tongue, either Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian or Serb. In the case of the women however this is largely a modern development for only fifty years ago in an accessible village like Metsovo few knew any other language but Vlach ; the men on the other hand owing to the necessities of trade have almost certainly been bilingual for many generations. ”

“ Velestinos for the time being becomes almost a Vlach town, and numerous Vlach families take up their abode in Trikkala, Larissa, Elassona and the other towns and villages near by. The villages in the hills however are always regarded by the Vlachs as being their real home ; they are essentially a mountain people and as soon as they begin to settle permanently in the plains, as many have done in the past, far away from their native hills and woods and streams they lose their national characteristics and rapidly become merged into the surrounding races. ”

“ They are slow and stupid and excessively dirty. Amongst their neighbours they have a bad reputation, for they are thought to be dishonest and treacherous. In fact the name Hashiot with some is almost a synonym for a dirty and thievish beggar.
The woods in the neighbourhood of Velemishti made it a favourable place for all who wished to cross the frontier unobserved. In the autumn of 1911, when owing to the cholera in Macedonia, the Greek authorities took strict measures to see that all who entered Greece secretly should at least do quarantine, the extent of this traffic was revealed. ”

“ Above the town to the east is a large Turkish school and in a similar position to the west are the barracks. There are Greek and Vlach schools, several mosques, seven Greek churches and a Vlach chapel. A market well attended by the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages is held every Monday. The population cannot be estimated because so much of it is floating. The Christians consist of Greeks from the Hashiot and Kupatshar villages, and Vlachs from Samarina, Smiksi, Perivoli, and Avdhela who are always more numerous in the winter. ”

“ Such was our journey with Vlach families from Thessaly up to their homes in Macedonia. In Samarina alone there are each summer over eight hundred families, which with few exceptions spend the winter elsewhere, and though all do not go so far afield as Tirnavos, still some go yet further, and most if not all twice every year in spring and autumn, set out with all their belongings on a journey of several days. ”

“ These armatoli were often brigands, who were taken into service on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief. Robbers frequently betrayed one another to the authorities, and if any armatoli and brigands fell in a skirmish, the Turks philosophically considered that it was merely a case of dog eating dog. Ghrevena is often mentioned in the modern Greek klephtic ballads, large numbers of which refer to Vlach or Kupatshar worthies. When the armatoli system fell into disorder this region, like most of Western Macedonia, was put into the strong hand of Ali Pasha. ”

“ Servia, Bulgaria and Roumania became independent states and their nationals left under Turkish rule demanded or had demanded for them by others churches and schools of their own. It hardly perhaps need be said that one and all of these movements were most disconcerting for the Greeks and in particular for the Greek Patriarchate which ever since 1767, when it suppressed the Bulgarian Patriarchate at Okhridha in Macedonia, has fought tooth and nail against all attempts at religious or educational freedom. Among the Vlachs the national movement began in the Pindus villages about 1867 ”

“ The revolt however was far from being coextensive with the Greek race, and also was not exclusively Greek for the other Christians in the south Albanians and Vlachs too helped and became part of the newly liberated population. Thus there is in Greece to-day a considerable number of Albanians who have been from the first loyal Hellenic subjects. The Christians left outside Greece and still under Turkish rule naturally looked towards the new kingdom, and many moved southwards to come under Greek rule. ”

“ Two-thirds at least of the population of this town are Vlachs or of Vlach extraction. Some of the Samarina Vlachs since the cession of Thessaly to Greece in 1881, became permanent residents on Greek soil, and founded a New Samarina in the southern part of Pindus due west of Trikkala above Karvuno-Lepenitsa, to which they go in the summer. But the majority are still faithful to their old homes, and as we passed through the town several families joined us increasing the caravan to over a mile in length. ”

“ The district called Hashia comprises the hill country between the Peneus and the Haliakmon on both sides of the former Graeco-Turkish frontier. Its western limit may be marked roughly by a line drawn from Ghrevena to Kalabaka, and its eastern limit by a similar line from Serfije through Elassona to Tirnavos. The name seems to imply that the villages in this district are all chiftliks. That is to say that each village instead of being composed of small holdings, is the absolute property of one or more absentee landlords. ”

“ These tents have two points in their favour, first the sides can be touched without any fear of letting in the rain, and secondly they are very light and portable. The two poles and the cross-bar, hardly thicker than laths, make no appreciable difference to any mule load, and the blanket helps to temper the hardness of a wooden pack saddle. In a more severe climate a Vlach tent might prove insufficient ; a door would be an advantage, and might easily be contrived ; but for Macedonia however they will be found in all ways satisfactory. ”

“ How every one at Samarina ate meat every day and wine was brought up from Shatishta three days’ journey with mules. We had spent the previous July excavating in the Thessalian plains amid heat, mosquitoes and dust, so these tales of woods and streams proved all the more enticing. ”

“ The whole journey is often calculated by so many kunăk’i or camps, and the length of each day’s journey depends on the position of these rather than on the distance actually covered. The sun was so hot that those who could not find shade under the mulberries unpacked and set up their tents. As a race the Vlachs seem to feel the heat to an excessive degree, and even in the hills will complain of the sun on a day which most would consider only reasonably warm. A Vlach tent, which is only used for sun or heavy rain, is of a simple and effective type (Plate III 2) . ”

“ The children of these mixed marriages talk only Greek, the language they learn from their mothers, and so the younger generation for the most part knows only Greek. The name Kupatshari is derived by the Vlachs from the word kupatshu, oak tree, because the district inhabited by them is covered with oak woods. Lower down in the Haliakmon valley there are no woods, and higher up in the country from Turia to Samarina is the region of pines and beeches. ”

“ Though at one time of sufficient importance to give their name to the greater part of Northern Greece, during the last few centuries their existence as a separate people has almost been forgotten. At the present day they are to be found widely scattered over the more mountainous and remote parts of the peninsula from Acarnania in the south to as far north as the mountains of Bulgaria and Servia. Their settlements are all small, there is no such thing as an exclusively Vlach town and nowhere do they occupy any large continuous tract of country. ”

“ Roumanian elementary schools were founded in several of the Vlach villages and afterwards higher grade schools were started in Yannina, Salonica, and Monastir. Eventually in 1905 the Vlachs were recognized by the Turks as forming a separate ‘ millet ’ or nationality. This however brought no real unity as the Vlach villages are widely scattered and many from their position alone are too closely connected with Greece to wish to take a course of their own. ”

“ Our own party had been increased by the addition of a new mule, a purchase at the fair, which was said to be nervous, and had an uncertain temper. Just beyond the outskirts of Ghrevena we left the metalled road that goes towards Yannina, and turned up a muddy track over low hills covered with thick woods of stunted oaks towards Mavronoro. Mavronoro is a Kupatshar village, and to judge by appearances prosperous. The houses are strongly built of stone, and have few windows on the ground floor 30 as to be capable of defence. ”

“ Many more came out to say good-bye, and send messages to friends and relations at Ghrevena and elsewhere.
Beyond Trikkala we set our faces northwards. Here the character of the country changes rapidly ; trees become more common ; the wide, open plain contracts, and beyond Kalabaka gives place to a wooded valley through which the Peneus comes down from Malakasi. Up this valley is the famous route that leads over the Zighos to Metsovo and Yannina and throughout history has been the main road into Thessaly from the west. ”

“ Then when men rush in on either side and lift the bundles to help the mule to rise, the perverse animal as often as not politely declines to do so, and rolls over on its side kicking out in a tangle of ropes, bales, chickens, cooking pots, puppies and any other small items that may have been thrown on top. Between each of the three divisions of the caravan there was a gap, and with the last mounted on the mules was all that could not walk, grandmothers, cats, babies and chickens. ”

“ From outside one sees a high loopholed wall built in an oblong space. At each angle is a square tower and in the middle of each of the long sides there is another. The gate is in the middle of the southern short wall facing towards the river of Ghrevena and the two corner towers on this side are larger than the others. The entrance goes obliquely through the thick wall and one is in the midst of a large courtyard in the centre of which a big, strongly built, Turkish house stands like a keep. ”

“ The horse which leads the caravan usually has a lighter load, but is always ridden, for no Mach muleteer will walk when he can possibly, ride (Plate II 2) . Imnāndălui which literally means on foot, is Vlach slang for being in the gutter. Attached to our party was a muleteer from Smiksi with his five mules, three of which were devoted to carrying an old woman, her daughter and their belongings, and the other two to transporting part of the property of our muleteer’s family. Thus on leaving Tirnavos we had in all a train of ten animals. ”

“ The higher of the villages on Pindus are under snow each winter and each year as soon as summer ends most of the inhabitants move down to the plains with their flocks and herds, taking with them whatever is needed to carry on their trade. Thus for the six winter months there is a large Vlach population living in the plains of Thessaly and Macedonia ”

“ The morning and early afternoon were spent in endless preparations. In view of a long and hot journey leeches were put on the mules’ hocks, and they were all re-shod. A large amount of wool, for the women to work during the summer, besides household goods and chattels, and clothes had to be stowed away in large striped sacks, and made up into bundles of equal weight, and lastly a lamb had to be roasted whole, an essential preparation for a Vlach journey. All at length being ready, the baggage was loaded on the mules and at five o’clock in the afternoon we left Tirnavos. ”

“ The peasant has no interest in repairing what is not his own, and the landlord is anxious only for his income. The inhabitants, though as might be expected in hill villages, they are often sturdy and healthy in appearance, are probably the lowest type of Greek to be found. ”

“ The rear was brought up by the long and slowly moving procession of laden mules (Plate II 1) , by side of which walked the muleteers and men urging them on with sticks, stones and curses, and ever on the look out lest a mule should get into rough ground. If a mule gets into uneven ground, the clumsy bundles balanced on its pack saddle, which is never tightly girthed, begin to sway ominously from side to side, and may turn right over to one side saddle and all, and so involve five minutes’ delay while all is unfastened, and reloaded. ”

“ For this reason at the beginning of the war of 1897 Greek irregular bands under Davelis with some Garibaldians under Cipriani made a fruitless raid over the frontier with the object of seizing Ghrevena and so cutting the Turkish communications between Epirus and Macedonia. The town is the seat of a Greek orthodox bishop and what we know of its history is principally due to its bishops. Pouqueville says that it is included by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his list of the towns of Macedonia as Γρίβανα, but the Bonn text reads Πρίβανα. ”

“ They still however retain the Vlach national costume, and many Vlach words occur in their dialect as well as many non-Greek sounds such as sh, zh, tsh, and dzh. They inhabit the district between Ghrevena and the pure Vlach villages of Pindus. At one of their villages, Labanitsa, which is only half hellenized we obtained some insight as to the process by which denationalisation occurs. In the school and church Greek is the only language used. All the older men in the village know Vlach and so do many of the women. ”