Page:The nomads of the Balkans, an account of life and customs among the Vlachs of Northern Pindus (1914).djvu/63

 of self-assertion and no race perhaps in the Balkans is more easily absorbed by others.

A similar difference can be seen in forms of amusement. Games of a vigorous type are not really known in Greece though a few have recently been imported and football is attempted at certain schools. The great aim of the Greek schoolboy in the town is to acquire a slow and staid gait, and even in the country he shows no desire for exercise. In a Vlach village however vigorous games which men as well as boys can play, are a normal amusement. These games are indeed crude, but they contain the main idea that all concerned should do something violent and that frequently. The reader may perhaps think this distinction exaggerated seeing the gymnastic training given in Greek schools with a view to winning successes at the Panhellenic games. But Panhellenic games and gymnastics of all kinds are still an artificial revival in Modern Greece, and are not as yet really native. The authors after many years’ travel in all parts of Greece have only once seen a village game in progress and there as it turned out the population was entirely Vlach. On another occasion the authors spent five days in an up-country quarantine station on the Graeco-Turkish frontier where those undergoing quarantine consisted of Greeks, Vlachs and Turks. The Vlachs killed time by playing games, at which the Greeks looked on in the intervals of card playing and cigarette smoking. The five commonest Vlach games are the following. First comes that called Muma ku Preftlu (The IMother with the Priest). One of the players sits down on the ground in the middle and another stands up behind him holding tightly by his collar or some other portion of his garments. The other players circle round running in and out, and try to smack the one sitting down as hard as they can on the head or shoulders without getting hit by the watcher. The watcher jumps about round the seated person, of whom he must not let go, and tiies to hit one of the others with his foot—before beginning the players slip off their shoes—anywhere, but on the hand which does not count. He who is hit must then take the post of the watcher who takes the place of the one