and when teachers are available; and then, maybe, to the disgust of Miss
Durham, Mr. Herbert, etc., the Albanians of the district will, with an
eye to the future, prefer to visit the Yugoslav schools.
7. RELIGIOUS AND OTHER MATTERS IN THE BORDER REGION
Having glanced at what the Serbs have done in such a very short
time--most of the years since 1913 being years of war--to win the
gratitude of their Albanian fellow-subjects, we shall, in following a
possible frontier between Yugoslavia and the Albanians, at any rate
believe that many Albanians of those thus coming under Yugoslav rule
would regard the change, as well they may, with equanimity. Suppose,
then, that the frontier were to run along the watershed at the top of
the mountain range to the west of Lake Ochrida. The people living to the
east of this line in that district would acknowledge their Serbian
origin. Thence passing to the neighbourhood of the village of Lin and
from there in a northwesterly direction, so as to include in Yugoslavia
the Golo Brdo, the so-called Bald Mountains, whose thirty villages are
inhabited by Islamized Serbs who only speak, with very rare exceptions,
the Serbian language, one may say that not only would their inclusion in
Yugoslavia be beneficial to these people, but that they would accept it
with alacrity. No very deep impression has been made upon them by the
religion to which, not long ago, they were converted. In the Golo Brdo
it was in great measure due to the Greek Church which, about the middle
of the nineteenth century, left the region without a single priest, so
that children of the age of eight had not been christened, and the
people in disgust went over to Islam. Near Ochrida, some of them were
asked whether they frequented the mosque.
"Never," they replied.
"What is your religion?"
"Well, it is very strange," they told us, "but we have none."
"What religion did you formerly have?"
"Well, we don't know."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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