Page:The nomads of the Balkans, an account of life and customs among the Vlachs of Northern Pindus (1914).djvu/15

 establishment of an independent Hellenic kingdom. The revolt however was far from being coextensive with the Greek race, and also was not exclusively Greek for the other Christians in the south Albanians and Vlachs too helped and became part of the newly liberated population. Thus there is in Greece to-day a considerable number of Albanians who have been from the first loyal Hellenic subjects. The Christians left outside Greece and still under Turkish rule naturally looked towards the new kingdom, and many moved southwards to come under Greek rule. Among these were numbers of Vlachs who previously partly hellenized soon became in every way Hellenic. This tendency towards Hellenism was all the greater because Greek was then not only the sole language of the church, but almost the only native language in the peninsula that was commonly written. The value of Greek at that time or slightly earlier can perhaps best be seen from a Greek reading book written by a Vlach priest of Muskopol'e in 1802. It begins with a preface in verse, the first lines of which without maligning the original may be rendered thus :—

Then follow a tetragloss exercise in Greek, Vlach, Albanian and Bulgarian, all in Greek script ; a dissertation on the value of learning in general and on the special advantages of the book in question ; instruction in the elements of Christian knowledge and natural physics ; a complete letter writer with model examples of letters to dignitaries of the church, parents, relations, friends, schoolmasters, rich Beys and great Pashas ; lessons in the four rules of arithmetic ; and at the end is a calendar showing the chief feasts of the Orthodox Church. By about the middle of the nineteenth century or somewhat later the other subject Christian races followed the example of Greece. Servia, Bulgaria and Roumania became independent states and their nationals left under