Twenty Years of Balkan TangleDurham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
History
Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle
Durham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Balkan Peninsula -- History; Eastern question (Balkan)
The Greeks, of course, opposed the work. A Greek Bishop is, in fact,
declared to have denounced the dissemination of "the New Testament
and other works contrary to the teaching of the Holy and Orthodox
Church." Nevertheless it continued. It was with one of the Society's
colporteurs that I rode through Albania. I was thus enabled
everywhere to meet the Nationalists and to observe how very widely
spread was the movement. The journey was extremely interesting, and
as exciting in many respects as Borrow's Bible in Spain.
Leaving Monastir in a carriage and driving through much of the
devastated Slav area I was greatly struck on descending into the
plain land by Lake Malik to see the marked difference in the type of
man that swung past on the road. I saw again the lean, strong figure
and the easy stride of the Albanian, the man akin to my old friends
of Scutari, a wholly different type from the Bulgar peasants among
whom I had been working, and I felt at home.
Koritza, the home of Nationalism in the South, was my first
halting-place. It was celebrated as being the only southern town in
which there was still an Albanian school in spite of Turk and Greek.
Like the schools of Scutari, it owed its existence to foreign
protection. It was founded by the American Mission. Its plucky
teacher, Miss Kyrias (now Mrs. Dako), conducted it with an ability
and enthusiasm worthy of the highest praise. And in spite of the
fact that attendance at the school meant that parents and children
risked persecution by the Turk and excommunication by the Greek
priest, yet the school was always full. The girls learned to read
and write Albanian and taught their brothers. Many parents told me
very earnestly how they longed for a boys' school too. The
unfortunate master of the Albanian boys' school, permitted during
the short period when the interdiction was removed, was still in
prison serving his term of fifteen years. Could not England, I was
asked, open a school? Now either a child must learn Greek or not
learn to read at all. And the Greek teachers even told children that
it was useless to pray in Albanian, for Christ was a Greek, and did
not understand any other language.
Everywhere it was the same. Deputations came to me begging for
schools. Even Orthodox priests, who were Albanian, ventured to
explain that what they wanted was an independent Church. Roumania,
Serbia, Greece, even Montenegro, each was free to elect its own
clergy and to preach and conduct the service in its own language. At
Leskoviki and Premeti folk were particularly urgent both for schools
and church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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