THE NOMADS OF THE BALKANS
2i6
To-day it is a small village occup3dng the town and inhabited partly by Albanians and partly by Vlachs, some of whom are true natives and
the
Balkans.
kernel of the old others Farsherots.
Even
in the
days of
its
greatness there
was probably a considerable Farsherot element in the population, which is recorded in local tradition and accepted by Weigand on philological grounds. The Geography of the Thessalian monks Daniel and Gregory published at Vienna in 1791 says that it had much wealth, twelve kinds of trades, a good and famous school, a printing press and was in a word adorned with all the beauties of a European cit}^ The printing press was managed by a monk called Gregory who published religious books, of which ten are known, and was renowned as one of the earliest presses in European Turkey. To-day no sign of the press, either of type or machinery survives, and it might reasonably be doubted whether the press ever existed there at all, since no European traveller ever saw it, for it is possible that the books were printed in Constantinople, Venice, Vienna or some similar place for Muskopore. Local tradition is not always to be trusted and the point can only be decided by an examination of all the books bearing the imprint Muskopol'e. But the town was justly famous as a seat of Greek learning and education, loasaph a well known patriarch of Achrida, to whom the wealthy Vlach merchants gave the golden mitre made in Venice and now preserved in the Cathedral of St Clement
was a native of the town, and so also Kavalliotis, and Boyadzhi who compiled Vlach and Albanian lexicons and grammars to further the spread of Hellenism. The history of Shipiska is in every respect similar to that of its neighbour Muskopol'e. These two towns with Nikolitsa and Linotopi were companions in prosperity and in misfortune, and one may safely say that no Vlach villages ever before or since have reached such a pitch of material greatness. Their wealth and fame are known all over the Balkans, and their at Okhridha,
Daniel,
ruin
is
proverbial, for Vlach songs
still
riches nor their education could save
when they marched
to set their foot
tell
how
neither their
them from the Albanians upon them.