Photo by Theron J. Damon 

 AN ANCIENT BRIDGE NEAR THE TOWN OF SCUTARI, ALBANIA 



millenniums the waves and impulses of 

 progress have not reached him, or have 

 passed by, leaving him untouched. 



THE VENDETTA IS STIEE PRACTICED 



Today, as in the past, it is true that 

 one in five of the male mountaineers falls 

 a sacrifice to the terrible vendetta, which 

 only civilization can eradicate from Al- 

 banian national life. To strike a person, 

 even inadvertently, is a matter for blood 

 revenge. Nothing else can repair the 

 wounded honor. If the offender himself 

 is not killed, one of his relatives must be 

 the victim, and thus the endless chain is 

 begun. When the vendetta has gone 

 ridiculously far, it may be bought off, if 

 there is sufficient money at hand, or 

 "called oft'" through some of the in- 

 tricacies of the Albanian code. 



Let no one speak of the Albanian as 

 lawless. He lives most scrupulously up 

 to all that he knows ; but that is the law 

 given him by the customs and nature of 

 his ancestors centuries ago, somewhat 

 ''codified" in the fifteenth century, though 



never to this day written down. Among 

 the curious rules that govern his life are 

 such as these : Persons descended from a 

 common male ancestor, through the male 

 line, consider one another as brothers, or 

 brother and sister, and thus all marriage 

 within a tribe is excluded. Young men 

 may likewise swear brotherhood, and this 

 forms a tie which subjects the men and 

 their oft'spring for generations to the 

 same marriage laws that blood relation- 

 ship would involve. 



Persons related through the same god- 

 father cannot marry, and of godfathers 

 there are two kinds, that of baptism and 

 that of hair. When a child, boy or girl, 

 is about two years old, its hair, never 

 before having been touched by scissors, 

 is cut with much ceremony. The god- 

 father performs the cutting, leaving, if 

 the child be a Christian, one lock for each 

 of the four points of the compass, form- 

 ing a cross ; if a Moslem, three locks to 

 form a triangle. In the case of a ven- 

 detta a man may not be harmed if in the 

 company of a child or a woman. 



1092 



