Vlachs

“ The majority of the Vlachs live in the towns, as traders, while most of our people live in the villages, as farm laborers. Those Vlachs who live in the villages are mostly cattle breeders. The Vlachs and the Macedonian Slavs differ in language, national dress and character, consequently they can never lay any claims to our villages, and we have never tried to make out that the Vlach villages are ours. There have never been any misunderstandings in the past between ourselves and the Vlachs. They have never ruled over us nor have they ever done us any harm. ”

“ On their stones or from their holes in the gound these small singers saw the glow of the stars and stridulated. And afterwards one could hear from afar the bells of the herd. They are the Vlachs. The large herd which is grazing must be theirs . Listen to all those bells! ....Little, big, high, low, sweet, harsh. Constant ringing, like the stars, like the crickets. ”

“ Happy are the mountains that grow not old
In summer all green and in winter snowed over
They wait for the spring, and sweet summer clover
The sun buds the branches, green trees unfold
This brings out the herds and the young Vlachs
playing their flutes
The song doesn't grow old! Old Fotis has aged but his voice has stayed light as in his youth. If only that front tooth hadn't been missing! ”

“ The Vlachs who settle in the lowland districts are excellent husbandmen. The urban population is considerable; the Vlachs of Salonica, Monastir, Serres and other large towns are, for the most part, descended from refugees from Moschopolis, once the principal centre of Macedonian commerce. The towns of Metzovo, on the confines of Albania, and Klisura, in the Bistritza valley, are almost exclusively Vlach. The urban and most of the rural Vlachs are bilingual, speaking Greek as well as Rumanian ”

“ But it's not the same thing for those who herd them.
The Vlachs lead a difficult life! They struggle against the hard winters, against the rocks, against the rivers.
They go from one place to another, up hill and down dale. ”

“ The Thracians, the progenitors of the Vlachs, took refuge in the mountainous districts and for some centuries disappeared from history: originally an agricultural people, they became nomad shepherds. In Albania the aboriginal Illyrian element, which preserved its ancient language, maintained itself in the mountains and eventually forced back the immigrant race. The Greeks, who occupied the maritime and southern regions, were driven to the sea-coast, the islands and the fortified towns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then the children asked her this and that, about the sheep, the barns, the mountains. And Aphrodo told them, while spinning, about the life of the Vlachs in the mountains, on the plains, in summer and in winter.
They learnt thousands of things which they had never heard about before. How the thousands of sheep and goats gave milk, cheese, butter, wool, and their meat to provide food for people. The herds are happy where they find pasture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Vlachs are for the most part either highland shepherds or wandering owners of horses and mules. Their settlements are scattered all over the mountains of Macedonia: some of these consist of permanent dwellings, others of huts occupied only in the summer. The compactest groups are found in the Pindus and Agrapha mountains (extending into Albania and Thessaly) , in the neighbourhood of Monastir, Grevena and Castoria, and in the district of Meglen. ”

“ An entirely different people made its appearance shortly before the arrival of the Petshenegs, the Vlachs, a race of nomads of whom no one knows whence they came; they wander about the Balkan peninsula still, for during all these centuries no one has managed to induce them all to settle down permanently.
From the tenth century till the fourteenth the Balkan peoples, varied as they were, and are still, settled down to a more or less ordered existence, developing into nations, waging war against others, and behaving in much the same manner as they do to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Dacia. From the 6th to the 12th century, wave after wave of barbarian conquerors, Goths, Tatars, Slavs and others, passed over the country, and, according to one school of historians, almost obliterated its original Daco-Roman population; the modern Vlachs, on this theory, representing a later body of immigrants from Transdanubian territory. According to others, the ancient inhabitants were, at worst, only submerged for a time, and their direct descendants are the Rumans of to-day. Each of these conflicting views is supported by strong evidence ”

“ Rumanian historians have striven, byThe Vlachs in the 13th century. piecing together the stray fragments of evidence which survive, to prove that their Vlach ancestors had not, as sometimes alleged, been reduced to a scattered community of nomadic shepherds, dwelling among the Carpathians as the serfs of their more powerful neighbours. The researches of Haşdeu, Xenopol and other historians tend to show the existence of a highly organized Vlach society in Transylvania, Oltland and certain districts of Hungary and Moldavia ”

“ There are at least four Slavonic dialects in Macedonia, but the suffix-article, though varying in form, is a constant feature in all. The Slavs of western Macedonia are of a lively, enterprising character, and share the commercial aptitude of the Vlachs: those of the eastern and southern regions are a quiet, sober, hardworking agricultural race, more obviously homogeneous with the population of Bulgaria. In upper Macedonia large family communities, resembling the Servian and Bulgarian zadruga, are commonly found: they sometimes number over 50 members. ”

“ And, in the second place, as Greeks, Servians, and Bulgarians based their respective claims to Macedonian territory on the racial character of the inhabitants, Roumania asserted that the presence of a large Roumanian (or Vlach) population in that disputed region gave her an equally valid claim to a share in the common estate.
In all Macedonia there may be some 100,000 Vlachs, though Roumanian officials put the number much higher. Many of them are highland shepherds; others engage in transportation with trains of horses or mules; those in the lowlands are good farmers. ”

“ 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 emperor’s attention was next demanded in the east, where several claimants to the throne successively rose and fell. In 1189 Frederick Barbarossa of Germany sought and obtained leave to lead his troops on the third crusade through the Byzantine territory; but he had no sooner crossed the border than Isaac, who had meanwhile sought an alliance with Saladin, threw every impediment in his way, and was only compelled by force of arms to fulfil his engagements. The next five years were disturbed by fresh rebellions of the Vlachs, against whom Isaac led several expeditions in person. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of these however some will now be using Greek and others Bulgarian in everyday life and their children will not know Vlach at all. Quite apart from questions which involve politics, information of any kind is difficult to acquire. At times courtesy towards the stranger which especially in the villages as we have good reason to know is very real indeed, demands that all answers given should be adapted to the questioner’s assumed desires ”

“ Estimates of population are all exceedingly doubtful; the Turkish figures take no account of race and are only concerned with religion, so that a Greek may mean a Bulgarian, Vlach or Albanian member of the Patriarchist Church. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But owing to the fact that the males outnumber the females the men are obliged to take brides from other villages. Pure Vlach villages like Turia and Perivoli are too proud to give their daughters in marriage to Kupatshari and so the bachelors of Labanitsa take brides from villages like Zalovo which are more or less completely hellenized. ”

“ Round the village are vineyards, and orchards of plums, pears, apples, cherries and walnuts. The inhabitants live by agriculture or in bad seasons brigandage, though of late the younger men have begun to emigrate to America mainly owing to the conscription of Christians for the army instituted by the constitutional regime in Turkey. Passing through the middle of this village we soon after reached Vriashteno, a village of a similar type, but dirtier and inhabited by Valakhadhes. ”