Book One: High Albania, A Victorian Traveller's Balkan Odyssey

Well, had you shoved me into a library and ordered me by gunpoint to pick the one book that would start my career as a law student, I would not have picked this one out if it were the only book on the shelves. Within the first three pages, I had to consult the dictionary twice - once to confirm what I suspected, the second 'cuz even the context didn't illuminate. Great. Perhaps this is the lesson to be learned - get used to consulting a dictionary, girlie.

The words: "suzerainty" and "colporteur".

Anyway, this book is a surprisingly good read. At five o'clock one morning in May 1908, Mary Edith Durham left the northern Albanian town of Scutari to seek the Albanian highlanders. This book is a recounting of her trials as a traveler in the region. A woman. Mountain tribes who were guided by their own laws and customs "handed down over the centuries in the unwritten 'Canon of Lek Dukagjin'.

I thought I was in trouble when I read this:

Dukaghini - the tribes who accept the Canon, though a more restricted district is now called Dukaghini - includes Pulati proper, that is, Kiri, Plani, Mgula, and Ghoanni; Upper Pulati - that is, Shala, Shoshi, Nikaj, Berisha, Merturi, and Toplana; and Postripa - that is, Ura Strengit, Mazredu, Drishti, Shlaku, Suma, and Dushmani. Also all Puka. The Canon is, however, much more widely spread. It is the law also in Mirdita, and Kthela, and Luria. It has been carried by branches of many of the above-named tribes into the plains of Metoja and Kosovo. [Kosovo! Finally something I recognize.] It prevails also, I believe, in all the large Moslem tribes, but details of the usages among them I have not yet obtained.

The most important fact in North Albania is blood-vengeance, which is indeed the old, old idea of purification by blood. It is spread throughout the land. All else is subservient to it.

Reading this passage again, it does not seem as daunting as the first time. It is merely explaining which regions/lands accept and follow the Canon. But seriously, the first read-through had me a touch worried. Turns out there was nothing to be worried about. The book is truly an accounting of this lady's travels.

Blood feuds make for great stories. Here's one:

We sat roung, while the Man-that-claimed-blood told his tale. His only son had wished to marry a certain widow, and gave her in token thereof a ring...But her parents, whose property she was, would not recognize this betrothal, and sold her to another.
"My son," said the man, "would have paid for her fully, and she wished to marry him. Then was he very angry, and would shoot her husband. But he bethought him, the husband was not guilty, for perhaps he knew not of her betrothal. The guilty ones were the men of her family who sold her. To clear his honour, he shot one of her brothers. Then another brother shot my son, and I have no other. I want blood for my son's blood. They are to blame. They first put shame on him, and then they killed him."

It's all about shame and retribution. Oh, and women are chattel.

She is allowed to see a primitive system [my word, not hers] of justice and law in transition. As evidenced by the following passage:

By recent legislation some tribes not restrict blood-guiltiness to the actual offender... A Shala man said that Ghoanni case was a bad one. He would not like to have to kill a child, but "if it is the law to kill one of the same house, and the murderer has fled and left no male but a child, then you must. It is a pity, but it is the law."

Could he not wait the return of the offender, or till the child was of age to bear arms? "No; you could not wait because of your honour. Only blood can clean it."

I can't imagine living in a land where this might occur:

Then, pointing to a certain star, one said: "That is the biggest," and another said: "No, that one there is bigger." A fierce dispute took place; some took one side, some the other; rifles cracked, bullets sang. When the smoke cleared and the first excitement was over, there lay seventeen dead men--slain for a star--and eleven wounded. Their comrades buried the dead where they fell--for they died in sin--sine sacramento.

Here's a response of one mountain man upon learning the king would send gendarmes after a perpetrator in the event a crime was committed. This guy's got a point.

"Why spend all this time when it is far more convenient and satisfactory to shoot your enemy yourself?"

Another change she witnesses is the evolution of their own code when they are confronted with a situation previously not considered.

The subject of the debate was the case of the child who had been shot at Ghoanni by the Shoshi man. Shoshi, to its credit be it said, was violently indignant over the affair, and public opinion ran so high that the ghaksur had not dared to remain in the tribe...The medjliss now was held to decide whether his house should be burnt as punishment...
The difficulty was that there was no law under which this could be done. The blood had been taken outside the tribe, therefore was not a crime against the tribe, and not punishable by it...[The wronged family was incapable of executing justice.]
The burning of the house would entail passing a new law to punish a man for a crime against another tribe. This would mean an entire reconstruction of the code, and nothing less than considering themselves as a nation, and not as detached tribes.

I thought this was clever and may try this argument myself one day:

"Do you know," he asked, "about the maltsori (mountain man) who was dying? He said to the Blessed Virgin: 'I know that I am much too bad to go to Paradise, but I pray you to put me there just to spite the devil; it will annoy him extremely.'"

And then the Constitution comes. "Mon dieu, under a decent government, what a people this would be!"

For two whole days and nights over two thousand heavily-armed men were loose in the town--nor was there either military or police force sufficient to have coped with an outbreak,--but not one incident occurred to mar the general joy.