Wadham Peacock studied history at Cambridge University and from 1878 to 1880 worked as personal secretary to the British Consul-General in Shkodra, Sir William Kirby Greene. He was mentioned in 1880 by the Montenegrin traveller and writer Spiridion Gopçević (1855-1936), whom he accompanied on a climb of Mount Maranaj, where he almost lost his life in an avalanche. Peacock's ten years of work in Albania gave him, in any case, a good knowledge of the country. Thirty years later, shortly after Albania's independence, he published the 256-page book, Albania: the Foundling State of Europe [Europe's new abandoned state, London, 1914], as well as the following essay (prepared by: Robert Elsie). The title of this essay - published in the prestigious journal The Fortnightly Review, in 1913 - is The “Wild Albanian” ["The Wild Albanian"]. The title of this publication in Albanian is from the editorial office of Telegrafi.

By: Wadham Peacock[1]
Translated by: Agron Shala

Bismarck, with his brutal disregard for facts that did not suit him, declared at the Congress of Berlin in 1878: There is no Albanian nation.. The Albanian League [of Prizren - transl. note], even as he spoke, proved him wrong; and now, more than thirty-four years later, when the work which the Congress, of necessity, left unfinished, must be taken a step further towards its logical conclusion - the Albanian nation constitutes one of the most serious questions to be settled by the courts of the Great Nations. Fortunately for Europe, the agreement between the Powers is so strong in its unanimity that Servia, the only Balkan state which dared to act on the erroneous statement of Prince Bismarck, has been compelled to withdraw her claims.

Now the decision that Albania will be autonomous is no longer in question; the following questions: What will be the status of the prince or ruler?, What will be the exact boundaries of the new arrival in the European circle? and Will the new state be under the shadow of the Sultan's nominal sovereignty? they are simply matters of detail that can be resolved peacefully by the Powers. The central and important fact is that the Albanian nation has been recognized by the European conscience, and that civilization has escaped a twentieth-century Poland.

Between the Albanian and the Slav there stand centuries of hatred and blood feud. The Albanian sees the Slav as an invader and plunderer; the Slav sees the Albanian as a troublesome person who, though occasionally defeated, has always refused to submit; and, having the great advantage of a better command of literature, he has constantly represented the silent Albanian as a thief and plunderer of the Slav villages. But, from the historical point of view, the truth is different. Leaving aside the fact that both the Albanian and the Slav can be - and are - thieves on certain occasions, the Albanians and their relatives had centuries of fighting among themselves when the Slavic hordes crossed the Danube and drove the old inhabitants, in great numbers, from the plains to the hills and from the hills to the mountains.

Among the inaccessible cliffs on the western side of the Balkan Peninsula, facing the Adriatic Sea, the remnants of the indigenous peoples of Illyria, Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace have resisted for centuries the repeated waves of Celts, Goths, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Turks. Like the Montenegrins who hold the northern part of their mountains, the Albanians have been defeated, have seen their villages burned and their families massacred, but have never been finally subdued. The only difference is that, although the Albanians had defended the fortresses for many generations before the Montenegrin Slavs came south of the Danube, they never had the good fortune, or perhaps the wisdom, to have a powerful literary representative. Even Lord Byron overlooked them in favor of the Greeks, although he acknowledged their the wild Albanian, with a knee-length dress, the merit of never turning his back on the enemy and never betraying the guest.

It is impossible that the liberation of Greece could have been achieved if it had not been the Albanian warriors who provided the best fighting material for the uprising. Admiral Miauli, Boçari, Vulgari and many other heroes of the beginning of the last century were Albanians, or of Albanian descent, but the modern Greek lives on the literary achievements of the ancient Hellenes, while the strong men of Albania, like their predecessors who lived before Agamemnon, have been left in oblivion, because no one has focused the attention of Europe on them.

Byron, Finlay, and hundreds of others did their best to convince Europe that the modern Greek is the true descendant of the ancient Hellene, but none of them gave the Albanian his due. Then the fashion changed; the Slav came into the limelight, and Mr. Gladstone, Lord Tennyson with his sonnet to Montenegro, Mrs. Irby of Sarajevo, and a host of writers came out to praise the less charming but still Slavized Serb and Bulgarian, with the result that the average man believes that the Slavs were the original owners of the Balkan Peninsula, and that the Turks took it from them at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.

The Albanian, proud and silent on his rocks, without even a single unfortunate battle to serve as a publicity stunt, has asked nothing of Europe for centuries, and it has given him nothing. Perhaps the Greeks did not respond to the glory expected of them, and so they fell into the background, but it is certain that the Slavs came to the fore in Victorian times, and from 1880 they were the darling children of hysterical Europe. The Slavized Bulgarian is a harsh, hardworking, self-contained and unsophisticated man, and it was somewhat difficult to maintain a high level of enthusiasm for him. But the Serb, outwardly, is a pleasant and picturesque creature, with a keen sense of dramatic values. Constantine, the last of the Byzantine emperors, fell in an even more dramatic manner in Constantinople than Lazarus - the last Serbian tsar on the Kosovo Plain - but the national mourning for Kosovo's black day seems to have touched the imagination of Europe, while the historically much more significant death of Constantine Palaiologos, inside the gate of Saint Roman, on May 29, 1453, has left him forgotten.

Serbia is charming in the passive sense of the word; it attracts people with its easy philosophy and carefree way of dealing with and looking at life. Modern Bulgaria does not. It inspires respect, perhaps, but not love. In racial characteristics, the Serbs resemble the Irish of the West, and the Bulgarians resemble the Scots of the Lowlands; and the most convincing man naturally makes the best impression on the passing observer. Thus it happens that writers, on the Balkans, often unconsciously inspire their readers, those who do not travel, with the idea that the Serbs, represented today by the Serbs and Montenegrins, were the original owners of the Balkans, but shared the eastern part with the Bulgarians, while the Turks were invaders who unjustly took the country and are now rightfully returning it to its legitimate owners.

In reality, the Albanians, or Albanians, as they are more properly called, represent the original owners of the peninsula, for the Serbs did not cross the Danube until about 550 AD, and the Bulgarians until 679, when the Albanians had enjoyed over eleven centuries of possession of the land, animated by tribal strife, battles with or under the Macedonian kings, and in combat with Rome. For every city and province that the Slavs may claim by right of conquest under some vague and transient empire, the Albanians can dispute the title of original ownership of the land from ages when neither history nor Slavs were known in the Balkans. The Romans, unlike most of the conquerors who came after them, were administrators, and a province usually benefited from their rule.

The Thracian-Illyrian tribes, represented today by the Albanians or Albanians, were not seriously troubled by the Roman governors and colonists, or rather, they were neglected and allowed to fall into a state of lethargy by the turbulent type of civilization in which their own kings had reared them. The Romans maintained order, but did not open up the country. However, when the Slavs and Bulgarians spread over the country like a swarm of locusts, the native inhabitants were either exterminated or fled to the mountains where they lived fighting against what was called “authority,” but which, in their minds, was the tyranny of the usurper and conqueror. The 500-year war of Montenegro against the Turks has often been told in enthusiastic language. But the more than 1000-year war of the Albanians against the Slavs and Turks has always been passed off as an unimportant incident.

The very name “Albanian” [“Albanian” and “Albania” in this article are translated “Albanians”, “Albania” - transl. note] serves prejudice. For the Western European, it brings to mind travelers’ tales of Albanian robbers, and stories about the guards of Sultan Abdyl Hamid. The name sounds - and is - modern; while “Serbian”, as the admirers of the modern Servians wisely write it, has an ancient flavor. The tribes that are known today as Albanians do not know themselves by that name. They are Albanians, the Sons of the Mountain Eagle, and their country is Albania or Albania - the Land of the Mountain Eagle. They have a legend that when the soldiers told Pyrrhus that his movements in war were as swift as the flight of an eagle, he replied that this was true, because his soldiers were the sons of the eagle and their spears were the feathers with which he flew. If this story has any basis in fact, it shows that the name Albanian was known, or adopted by the people and their king about the year 300 BC, and we can only be surprised at the modesty that does not date the name even earlier. In any case, Pyrrhus, the greatest military man of his time, was an Albanian, and in comparison with him Tsar Dushan is modern and arrogant.

The name “Albania” was not heard of until the end of the eleventh century, when the Normans, under Robert Guiscard, after defeating the emperor Alexius Comnenus at Durrës, marched on Elbasan, then called Albanopolis, and finding the native name too difficult for their language, called the country, of which the chief city was Albanopolis, by the easy term “Albania.” The word, which does not seem to have been officially used until the first half of the fourteenth century, actually refers to the land on the western side of the Caspian Sea, and much confusion has arisen from the inability of the Normans to cope with the word “Albanian.” Many educated Albanians claim to be descendants of the Pelasgians, but this is disputed by some European authorities. Since we know almost nothing about the Pelasgians, the matter remains speculative and impossible to prove one way or the other; but, in any case, it is certain that the Albanians are descendants of those Thracian-Illyrian tribes which, however they were called by Greek authors, occupied the land in the north of Hellas, when history was emerging from legend.

The earliest known king of Illyria is said to have been Ylli, who died in 1225 BC. Under his grandson, Daunin, the country was conquered by the Liburnians who had fled from Asia after the fall of Troy. The Liburnians occupied the Dalmatian coast and the islands from Corfu northwards, and were gradually absorbed by the native population. Only Northern Albania was included in Illyria, which extended northwards over Montenegro, Herzegovina and Dalmatia. Southern Albania was known as Epirus, and this division of the country makes the selection of historical facts relating to Albania as a whole more difficult than usual. But it is easy to suppose that the centuries that passed brought continuous tribal clashes between the Illyrians, Epirotes, Macedonians and other Thracian-Illyrian peoples, and about 600 BC the first major invasion took place, of which we have no clear knowledge.

The history of the Balkan peninsula has always alternated, at longer or shorter intervals, between local quarrels and great incursions of barbarians, who traversed the country and inundated the plains, but left the mountains unoccupied. It is in these mountains that Albanian history lies chiefly, for while the population of the lowlands was absorbed or absorbed the invaders, the old races fled to the mountains and preserved, untouched, their primitive language and customs. The Celts were the first barbarian invaders, and, as usually happens in such incursions, unlike vast racial migrations, they were probably a small body of fighting men with women and children who quickly disappeared in the mass of the population where they settled. They were absorbed by the Illyrian kingdom, whose capital was Shkodra, and, like the Liburnians who replaced them at sea, gained fame and fortune as pirates in the Adriatic and even in the Mediterranean. In the first half of the 4th century BC, Bardhyl, king of Illyria, conquered Epirus and a good part of Macedonia, but was defeated and pushed back to his mountains by Philip, father of Leka the Great.

A little later, Alexander, king of the Molossians in Southern Albania, undertook an expedition into Italy, and thus brought Rome into contact with the shores opposite the Adriatic. All these small kingdoms were clearly divisions of the same race, and were very closely allied to each other. The sister of Alexander, king of the Molossians, was the mother of Leka the Great; the men who marched to Babylon, Persia, and India were the ancestors of the Albanians; while Epirus and Illyria shared in the anarchy which followed the death of the great conqueror, who himself has been claimed as an Albanian, and with great justice.

Pyrrhus, the warrior king of Epirus, was undoubtedly an Albanian, and about sixty years after his death, Agron emerged from the chaos as king of the old kingdom of Bardhyl and also of Epirus. Like his relative, Leka the Great, he was a brilliant warrior and like him died after an orgy, leaving behind a widow, Teuta, who was a woman of strong character. She is said to have placed a chain on the Buna River, where two hills narrow the riverbed above the village of Reç, and imposed a tax on all ships passing up and down. The Albanians say that the rings where she tied her chains are still visible in the rocks. Furthermore, she raised an army, built a fleet, and with less caution than modern Albanians, set out to conquer the island of Is (now Vis), which happened to be in alliance with the Romans.

The Roman Republic sent a delegation to Teuta, but she killed one of the envoys and boldly attacked Durrës and Corfu. The Romans, in consequence, turned their arms towards the Illyrian coast and it did not take long to defeat Teuta. She was expelled from all the lands she had conquered, even from her capital, Shkodra, and was forced to accept a humiliating peace. However, the Illyrian Albanians had not yet learned their lesson and had not understood the growing power of Rome. Dhimiter Fari, who succeeded Teuta as ruler of the country and guardian of Agron's son, although he owed much to Rome, began to plunder and plunder the allies of the Republic, while he tried to unite the Albanian states into a single alliance. He failed, and the Albanian lands fell under the power of the Romans who were content with establishing a protectorate over the kingdom of the new king, Pinus. The three Albanian states - Illyria, Epirus and Macedonia - rose up against Rome under Philip of Macedon, when Hannibal seemed on course to crush the Republic, and only a small part of what is today Albania south of the Drini remained loyal to its commitments.

When the Carthaginian danger disappeared, Rome turned once more towards the lands across the Adriatic. Genci, the last king in Shkodra, had allied himself with Perseus of Macedonia and had returned to Adriatic piracy like his predecessors. Thirty days sufficed for the fall of the northern kingdom of Albania. The praetor Amicus, in 168 BC, landed on the shore and forced Genci to retreat to Shkodra, where the king surrendered a little later and was taken along with his wife, two sons and his brother to adorn the triumph in Rome. Perseus was utterly defeated by the consul Paul at Pydna, shortly afterwards, and all the Albanian lands were incorporated into the Roman Empire. Epirus, in particular, was severely punished, and the prosperity of the country, considerable until then, was completely destroyed.

The Albanians withdrew to their mountains, and the Romans did nothing to restore the wealth and culture of the time of the local kings. The cities, even Shkodra, fell into ruin, and when Augustus founded Nicopolis on the north of the Gulf of Arta, in commemoration of the Battle of Actium, there was no city of importance in Epirus or Illyria. Nicopolis itself did not last long, for under Honorius it had become the property of a Greek lady, and when Alaric and his Goths, in the fifth century, overran Illyria and Epirus, the city was sacked and from that time on was of no importance.

Under the empire, the abandoned country was divided between the provinces of Illyria and Epirus, with Northern Albania constituting the southern part of Illyria. When the Roman Empire was divided in 395 AD, the Albanians were assigned to the Eastern Empire, and the country became known as Prevalitana, with Shkodra as its capital. The condition of the country must have been very similar to that under Turkish rule. The prefects of the Empire ruled on the coast and in the plains, but in the mountains the Albanians enjoyed a kind of semi-independence, and as a result of this neglect, the country remained in a state of abandonment. But the Albanians were undoubtedly the owners of the land under the imperial rule of Constantinople.

The fifth century saw the first major invasions, from which the Byzantine Empire would eventually disappear. The rebellious Goths, under Alaric, after conquering Greece, turned north and devastated Epirus and Illyria, provinces which they had hitherto avoided because of their poverty since the Roman occupation. When the Goths invaded Italy, Albania enjoyed a period of relative peace under Justinian, until the arrival of the Slavs. The Huns and Avars were transient invaders; they did not settle in the land, but forced the Thracian-Illyrian tribes, who spoke both Latin and Albanian, to retreat to the mountains, while they cleared the way for the Slavs. At the end of the sixth century, the Slavic tribes, who had crossed the Danube in scattered groups about three hundred years before, came in large numbers to settle, and the lowlands were invaded and devastated by them, sometimes alone, sometimes in collaboration with the Avars.

The Thracian-Illyrians, at that time, were like the Romanized Britons; they had been tamed under Pax Romana, and were unable to withstand the ruthless invaders. They withdrew to the mountains of Albania, and there gradually abandoned the Latin language and the polish of Roman civilization. They were men who had to fight for their lives; the weak were exterminated, and the old Albanian language and customs were regained.

Serbia, though soft-spoken and persuasive when not superior, is essentially savage, and the Thracian-Illyrian tribes who were driven from Thrace and Macedonia into the mountains of Epirus and southern Illyria were the strongest remnants of a population that had seen old men, women, and children massacred, and houses burned by the invaders. Then began the eternal hatred between Albanian and Serb, which remains bitter even today, for the Albanian still sees the Slav as the invader and destroyer of his home and family. This explains why the modern Albanian has always been more friendly to the Muslim Turk than to the Christian Slav. The brutalities committed by the Turks were quite small things compared to the atrocities of the Slav.

In the first half of the seventh century, the Slavs were officially recognized by the Empire. Heraclius persuaded them to turn their arms against the Avars, and thereafter they retained the lands they had conquered - as fiefs of the Byzantine Empire, but governed by their own zhupans. The Thracian-Illyrian Albanians were from then on forced to retreat to the mountains of what is now Albania, while the Slavs occupied what is now Servia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia, with Ragusa as their capital. The next invaders on the Balkan Peninsula were the Bulgars, an Asiatic race who crossed from Bessarabia at the end of the seventh century. They were a people closely related to the Turks, who were to come after them, and, like the Turks, were primarily a race of warriors. But while the Turks always remained isolated in Europe, the Bulgarians were Slavized and adopted the language and customs of the populations they expelled from the eastern lands of the peninsula. They adopted Christianity in 864, under Boris, who, like his namesake today, converted, and under his successor, Simeon, around 900 they founded one of those short-lived Balkan "empires" that mushroomed alongside the more stable and respected Roman Empire of Byzantium. Simeon's rule extended to the northern part of the Balkan peninsula and replaced the rule of the Serbs who fell under his rule.

The Albanians were included in the Bulgarian Empire, but, as before, only the lowlands, not the mountains, were controlled by the conquerors. Simeon's rule, although he proudly assumed the title of Tsar or Caesar, was largely nominal in the West, and when he died in 927, his empire disintegrated. Shishman and his son, Samoil, nevertheless kept the West independent of Byzantium, with the capital at Ohrid, and it is likely that Tsar Simeon's period was the time when the Albanians came closest to complete subjugation by Slavs or Slavicized invaders. But in 1018, Simeon's Empire was completely destroyed by Emperor Basil the Bulgar-killer, and Albania once again came under nominal Byzantine rule, while the Bulgarians and Serbs were ruled directly by the imperial court.

On the other hand, the burst of energy from Constantinople also died out, because both Bulgarian and Serbian hegemony depended on the life of a single man. A new leader arose in Bulgaria, John Asen, who claimed to be a descendant of Shishman. He successfully rebelled against the Empire, and after his assassination, under his successors, especially John Asen II, Albania was incorporated into the Second Bulgarian Empire. Nominally, the Albanians passed from the Empire to the Bulgarians, from the Bulgarians to the Serbs, and back again as the kaleidoscope of powers shifted, but the hold of these empires over them was too temporary to permit any costly conquest of their wild mountains. When the emperor or the Slavs clearly gained the upper hand, the lowlands and cities of Albania fell into the hands of the conquerors, but in periods of weakness, the lowlands, and always the mountains, remained in the hands of those unyielding remnants of the ancient inhabitants - the Albanians. John Asen died in 1241, and the leadership of the Balkan Slavs began to pass to the Serbs, under the Nemanja dynasty, who first called themselves kings and then tsars of Serbia. Stephen of Serbia fought the Palaiologos and the Bulgarians, whose army was defeated at the Battle of Velbuzhd, on 28 June 1330.

The Albanians of the North remained more or less independent while these wars were waged around them, but in the time of Tsar Dushan the Slayer, in 1336 they were incorporated into his empire. After the dissolution of Dushan's kingdom, Northern Albania was governed from Shkodra by the princes of the Balsha family, originally from Provence, who had served the Serbian Tsars. In 1368, the prince converted to Catholicism, and the Albanian highlanders of the North remained of that faith ever since.

The Balshas greatly expanded their rule, but in 1383, Gjergj Balsha I was defeated and killed by the Turks near Berat, and Gjergj Balsha II surrendered Shkodra and Durrës to the Venetians, in exchange for their help against the Turks. However, the Venetians did not provide the Balshas with valuable assistance, so the family withdrew to Montenegro, and in Northern Albania they were succeeded by the Kastrioti family of Kruja, who were pure-blood Albanians and extended their rule over the entire country, except for the areas held by Venice.

Southern and Central Albania were independent under the rule of the Despot of Epirus, Michael the Angel, who, although illegitimate, claimed to be the heir of the emperors Isaac and Alexius the Angel. He raised the Albanian tribes, defeated the Frankish dukes of Thessalonica and Athens, and after his death, his nephew John the Angel fought with John the Duke for the Byzantine Empire, but was defeated in 1241. The heir of the Angels then retreated to the Albanian mountains, and as despots of Epirus, the family ruled the country for several years in independence from the emperor.

Meanwhile, the last conqueror of the Balkans was sweeping the peninsula. In 1354 the Turks were invited to Thrace by John Kantakouzenos to help him against Palaiologos. They settled at Gallipoli, and in 1361 Sultan Murad I captured Adrianople. Servia was conquered and destroyed on the Plain of Kosovo in 1389, where some Albanians, under their prince Balsha, fought in the army of Tsar Lazarus. Sultan Murad II marched against Albania in 1423 and took as hostages, among others, the four sons of John Kastrioti of Kruja. The youngest of these was George Kastrioti, the famous Skanderbeg, who was educated in Constantinople [Adrianopoeia - transl.] by the Sultan. In 1443, he rose up against the Turks and took Kruja, and although army after army was sent against him, he defeated many viziers and generals and Sultan Murad himself.

The bravery of the Albanians and the hardships of the mountains made Skanderbeg's leadership invincible, and even Mehmed II the Conqueror was defeated by the Albanian prince at Kruja in 1465. But Skanderbeg failed to obtain any help from Europe, and he died in 1467, leaving no worthy heir. Kruja was conquered by Mehmed II in 1478, and in the following year Shkodra, Tivat, and other coastal cities were surrendered to the Turks by Venice. In the mountains, the Albanians always enjoyed a partial freedom under the Turks, but Shkodra was at first governed by Turkish pashas.

In the early eighteenth century, a Muslim Albanian leader, Mehmet Bey of the Bushati family, from a village just south of Shkodra, took the city and massacred his rivals. He was so powerful that the Porte thought it wise to make the pashaly hereditary in his family, and he ruled not only Shkodra, but also Lezha, Tirana, Elbasan, and Dukagjin. Kara Mahmud, his son, was a completely independent prince. He twice invaded Montenegro and burned Cetina, and defeated the Turkish troops on the Kosovo Plain, but in 1796 he was defeated and killed in Montenegro. His descendants ruled Northern Albania, led uprisings in Bosnia and Serbia, and fought against the Sultan successfully. But after the Crimean War, the Porte sent an army to Shkodra, and the rule of the Muslim Albanian pashalys of the Bushati came to an end.

While the Bushati pashas challenged the sultan in northern Albania, Ali Pasha of Ioannina defeated them in the south. He united the southern Albanians, but after a long and successful career, he was finally besieged in the fortress of Ioannina and killed in 1822. During the last half of the century, the country was governed from Constantinople, but although the cities were occupied by garrisons, the highlanders retained their arms, independence, and their tribal laws and customs.

The Albanian League, which was founded in 1878 under the leadership of Hodo Bey of Shkodra and Prenk Bib Doda of Mirdita, united the Muslims and Christians of Northern Albania to protest against the surrender of Guci and Plav to Montenegro, and was successful to the point that the Ulcinj region was substituted for the mountain towns. Despite the exile of Hodo Bey and Prenk Bib Doda, the League has always had a clandestine existence, directed against all enemies of the Albanian nation.

Only to a lesser extent than Montenegro did Albania retain its freedom from Turkish rulers, and this was due to the ease with which the lowlands and coast could be occupied by troops. The leading families, among the Muslim Albanians, have furnished a large number of civil and military officials to the Ottoman service, and these pashas and beys have shown themselves to be men of the highest ability. There will be no lack of capable rulers when the new state is formed.

The Albanians have not only preserved their mountain hearths, but also their own language and laws. Albanian, to give it its modern name, is an Aryan language, very ancient, which was spoken by the Balkan tribes before the time of the Great Leka. It is a non-Slavic language, the Slavic words used are simply additions made in relatively recent times. In Old Serbia and on the borders of Montenegro, the Albanians have mixed and intermarried with the Slavs, but they have taken only a few Serbian words and not the whole language. In the South a similar process has taken place.

Albanian is undoubtedly close to Greek, and has borrowed many words, especially among the tribes along the border, so that the purest Albanian is found in the mountains of Catholic Mirdita and among the Muslim families in the south of Central Albania. This is so true that the tribes on the Montenegrin border find it difficult to understand those in the borderlands with Greece. About a third of the language consists of words borrowed from Celtic, Germanic, Latin, and Slavic, due to the invasions that the Albanians have suffered; another third is Aeolic Greek in a very archaic form; and the remaining third is unknown, but undoubtedly represents the language of the ancient Thracian-Illyrian tribes. Interesting speculations have been made as to the exact position of Albanian in the Aryan family, but it is fully accepted that it is a non-Slavic and very ancient language.

It is an extremely difficult language for a foreigner to speak, and Albanians claim that no one but the natives can pronounce its strange consonantal sounds correctly. The difficulty of learning the language is increased by the lack of a suitable alphabet. The Jesuits and Franciscans of Shkodra use the Latin alphabet; in the South, the Orthodox priests use Greek letters. But neither system is satisfactory, and consequently some grammarians have introduced diacritical marks, or have mixed the two sets of letters into a confused alphabet. Albanian has also been written in Turkish letters, but perhaps with less success, and it is a proof of the remarkable vitality of the language that it has survived through the centuries, unlettered, untaught, and unwritten in the schools.

Except where they have mixed with Slavs and other races, the Albanians are tall and fair-haired. Those who have suffered from the poverty of the mountains have no pretensions to beauty, but the average highlander, belonging to a wealthy tribe, has an oval face with an eagle nose, high cheekbones, blue eyes, yellow hair, and a long golden moustache. Their bodies are straight and slender, and not so heavy as those of the Montenegrins. Even in the cities, the Albanians rarely grow fat, but retain their slim and vital bodies throughout their lives. Some of the Mirditori could pass anywhere for Englishmen of the fair type.

The Albanians have always been divided into two large families: the Ghegs in the North and the Tosks in the South, with the Shkumbi River marking the border between them. No meaning has been found for the name Tosk, but the Gheg is said to mean giant, and in the fifteenth century it was used by the Turks as a kind of title for the ruling family of Mirdita.

The Northern Albanians are divided into tribes or clans; those in the North are included under the name of mountaineers, or men of the Black Mountains, including the Kelmend, Kastrat, Hot, Shkrel and other tribes; those in the East include the Shala, Shoshi, Sumaj and others, collectively called Pult or Forest Dwellers; as well as the confederation of Mirdita who are Catholics and ruled by a chief of the Doda family. Currently, their chief is Prenk Bib Dodë Pasha, who for many years was in exile in Asia Minor for his participation in the League. In Southern Albania, the Tosks are divided into three main groups: Toskë, Chamë and Labë, and are again divided into tribes.

In Northern Albania, the Mirditori and most of the highlanders are Catholics, and they are descendants of men who, in 1320, after the Serbian Tsars, who at that time held Shkodra and the plains, had abandoned Catholicism and accepted Orthodoxy, refused to renounce their allegiance to the Pope. The number of Orthodox in Northern Albania is very small, and half the inhabitants of Shkodra, most of the highlanders, a large part of Pulti, and almost all of those around Prizren, Gjakova, and Peja are Muslims. In Southern Albania, the citizens and inhabitants of the lowlands are mainly Muslims, except those towards the Greek border where they are mainly Orthodox. An Albanian official estimates that nearly half of the one million eight hundred thousand inhabitants are Muslims; less than a third are Orthodox, and the rest are Catholics. This is probably close to the truth, but every statistician has their own figures and reasons for them, albeit on a smaller scale than in Macedonia.

The Albanian territories between Tivar and Ulcinj were ceded to Montenegro in 1880, after an armed protest by the Albanian League, and the Albanian lands now include Shkodra and its plain, the highlands, Gucin and Plav, Peja, Djakovica, Prizren, Pulti, Mirdita, and the country west of the lakes of Ohrid and Janina as far as the Gulf of Arta. Around Prizren there is a minority of Slavs, and, in the south, below Janina, there is a large proportion of Greeks, but the boundaries given here contain all the territories left to the Albanians by the successive incursions into the Balkan Peninsula by the Slavs and Bulgarians.

Fortunately, the Serbian attempt to ignore the Albanians and to present Shkodra, Durrës and the surrounding plains as Slavic, because the Serbian Tsars held them at intervals from the seventh to the fourteenth century, has failed, mainly - it must be admitted - due to the assertion of Austro-Hungarian interests, and not to any love of historical justice on the part of Europe. With the exception of the fact that they have never had a chief over all the tribes, and have had a much larger territory to defend against more numerous enemies, the case of the Albanians is entirely similar to that of the Montenegrins. The Montenegrins held their lands for five hundred years in a small block of mountains, alone against the Turks; the Albanians have held their lands for over a thousand years against successive waves of Slavs, Bulgarians and Turks.

They have often been subdued, but they have always risen again, and by their long and persistent struggle have won time and again the right to the dry rocks, the few lowlands, and the insignificant ports which constitute their heritage, or rather what is left of it. They are the last remnants of the oldest race in Europe, for they represent the peoples who preceded the Greeks. They were deeply rooted in the soil of the Balkan Peninsula, hundreds of years before the first Slav crossed the Danube, and if the Serbs and Bulgarians have won a right to the lands from which they have expelled the ancient tribes, then at least these early inhabitants have justified their claim to the rocks and the coast, from which no enemy - Slav, Bulgarian, or Turk - has been able to dislodge them.

/Telegraph/

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[1] Russia: The Fortnightly Review, London, May 1913. Reprinted by the Center for Albanian Studies, London, October 2000.

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