Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/11

 12 B. IV. JAN., 1918.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

importance stood once Moschopoli. It possessed a high school under the name of 'AKa.8rjfj.ia, and a printing house the second established in Turkey after that of Constantinople where Vlachian books in Greek character, besides many others, were printed, showing the existence of a national consciousness before any thought in this direction had ever occurred to their kins- folk of the Danubian principalities. In the 'AKa8r)fj.ia were professors like Theodore Cavalioti, author of a Greek- VI ach- Albanian vocabulary and various other works, whom Sathas calls ypa/x/xare/cbs apto-ros (Bioy/3a<6cu, fv 'AO^vats, 1868, p. 496). His pupil Constantino Teheagani, a writer himself, in order to improve his knowledge and be thus of more use to his own people, had visited London, Cambridge, and other places of learning (lohann Thunmann, ' Untersuchungen iiber die Geschichte der '6'stlichen europaischen Volker, vol. i., Leip- zig, 1774, p. 179, note K). There was also going on an extensive commerce, mainly with Venice at her period of glory. Vlach folk-songs tell us about long, long lines of caravans passing day and night, laden with silks of all descriptions ; and this vague reminiscence of bygone times is amply confirmed by evidences found in the Venetian archives.* After the plunder and partial ruin of Mosch6poli, its noble tradi- tions were taken and carried on by towns like Krushevo, Vlacho-Clissura, Nevesca, and the large Vlachian colonies in Tran- sylvania.

Rarely, here and there, one meets this side of life being dealt with by English travellers in Leake, for instance, or in such a passage of Stuart Glennie as the following, which affords a glimpse of a Vlach interior :

" Most snugly furnished, but in Eastern fashion, was the room in which I was installed. "There was neither chair nor table, but the floor was covered with thick, richly coloured rugs, the handiwork of the household ; and along the \vall on either side of the hearth, and under the windows, was a range of comfortable cushions. All the wall opposite the hearth was occupied by a most artistically designed and elaborately carved wardrobe, also of native workmanship." f

A more direct allusion is that by H. N. Brailsford, when he comes to write about Vlacho-Clissura :

lorga refers to many letters of Vlach merchants which he recently examined in Venice.
 * In the Drum Drept, Nos. 3-6, 1914, Prof. N.

t Quoted by Lucy M. J. Garnett in ' The Women of Turkey,' London, 1890, vol. i. p. 8.

" Half its houses are empty, and their architec ture, solid, roomy, and with some incipient tendency to ornament, speaks of a greater trade than any that survives. Its comfortable shop- keepers, seated at ease on their cushions within the stout walls that defy the incessant rains of the mountain-top, will tell you that when they were boys Klissoura was the second city of Macedonia, hardly distanced by Salonica." ' Macedonia,' London, 1905, p. 177. N*'

I mention but a few of the relatively recent works. One has to be rather careful with these. Since the starting of different propaganda in Turkey, English travellers, though more impartial, could not altogether escape the prevailing turbulent atmosphere. Unconsciously some even with purpose they take sides : facts are inverted, figures vitiated ; much more so in the case of the Vlachs, who had no separate Church, by which the people were distinguished and classified in the Turkish system. There are exceptions indeed, such as the fluently written, but none the less scholarly book of A. J. B. Wace and M. S. Thompson, ' The Nomads of the Balkans ' (London, 1914). The authors lived a good deal amongst the Vlachs, to the extent of learn- ing their vernacular tongue. Beyond what they had to say in ' The Nomads of the Balkans,' they called attention* to the fact that, since the way of living and the habits of these people had changed but very little from immemorial times, their study would perhaps enlighten us concerning what had occurred long ago, in the distant past, with regard to which no documents of any kind are available. M. BEZA.

PAULUS AMBROSIUS CROKE :

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ACCOUNT BOOK.

PAULUS AMBROSIUS CKOKE, from whose account book the following notes are taken, was a younger son of Sir John Croke of Chilton and the Lady Elizabeth, his wife. The date of his birth is not known to me, but he was admitted to the Inner Temple on Feb. 18, 1582, and rose to be a Bencher of that society. He married first Frances, daughter (and coheir with her sister Anne) of Francis Welsborne of East Hanney, Berks. This lady died in 1605. He theu married Susanna, daughter of Thomas Coo of Boxford in Suffolk, who had previously

May, 1911, ' The Distribution of Early Civiliza- tion in Northern Greece,' a paper read by the authors before the Royal Geographical Society.
 * See in The Geographical Journal, No. 5,