of a seat called the Hof. The chief industries are those connected with the large fishing trade.
VLACHS. The Vlach (Vlakh, Wallach) or Ruman race
constitutes a distinct division of the Latin family of peoples,
Distribution of the Vlach race.
widely disseminated throughout south-eastern Europe,
both north and south of the Danube, and extending
sporadically from the Russian river Bug to the
Adriatic. The total numbers of the Vlachs may be
estimated at 10,000,000 or 11,000,000. North of the Danube,
5,400,000 dwell in Rumaraa, 1,250,000 are settled in Transylvania,
where they constitute a large majority of the population,
and a still greater number are to be found in the Banat and
other Hungarian districts west and north of Transylvania.
Close upon 1,000,000 inhabit Bessarabia and the adjoining
parts of South Russia, and about 230,000 are in the Austrian
province of Bukovina. South of the Danube, about 500,000
are scattered over northern Greece and European Turkey,
under the name of Kutzo-Vlachs, Tzintzars or Aromani. In
Servia this element is preponderant in the Timok valley, while
in Istria it is represented by the Cici, at present largely Slavonized,
as are now entirely the kindred Morlachs of Dalmatia.
Since, however, it is quite impossible to obtain exact statistics
over so wide an area, and in countries where politics and racial
feeling are so closely connected, the figures given above can
only be regarded as approximately accurate; and some writers
place the total of the Vlachs as low as 9,000,000. It is noteworthy
that the Rumans north of the Danube continually gain
ground at the expense of their neighbours; and even the long
successful Greek propaganda among the Kutzo-Vlachs were
checked after 1860 by the labours of Apostolu Margaritis and
other nationalists.
A detailed account of the physical, mental and moral characteristics of the Vlachs, their modern civilization and their historical development, will be found under the headings Rumania and Macedonia.
All divisions of the race prefer to style themselves Romani, Romeni, Rumeni or Aromani; and it is from the native pronunciation of this name that we have the equivalent expression Ruman, a word which must by no means be confined to that part of the Vlach race inhabiting the present kingdom of Rumania.
The name “Vlachs,” applied to the Rumans by their neighbours but never adopted by themselves, appears under many Its name. allied forms, the Slavs saying Volokh or Woloch, the Greeks Vlachoi, the Magyars Olóh, and the Turks, at a later date, Ifflók. In its origin identical with the English Wealh or Welsh, it represents a Slavonic adaptation of a generic term applied by the Teutonic races to all Roman provincials during the 4th and 5th centuries. The Slavs, at least in their principal extent, first knew the Roman empire through a Teutonic medium, and adopted their term Volokh from the Ostro-Gothic equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon Wealh. It thus finds its analogies in the German name for Italy—Welschland (Walischland), in the Walloons of the Low Countries and the Wallgau of Tirol. An early instance of its application to the Roman population of the Eastern empire is found (c. 550-600) in the Traveller's Song, where, in a passage which in all probability connects itself with the early trade-route between the Baltic staple of Wollin and Byzantium, the gleeman speaks of Caesar's realm as Walaric, “Welshry.” In verse 140 he speaks of the Rum-walas, and it is to be observed that Rum is one of the words by which the Vlachs of eastern Europe still know themselves.
The Vlachs claim to be a Latin race in the same sense as the Spaniards or Provençals—Latin by language and culture, Its Latin character. and, in a smaller degree, by descent. Despite the long predominance of Greek, Slavonic and Turkish influence, there is no valid objection to this claim, which is now generally accepted by competent ethnologists. The language of the Vlachs is Latin in structure and to a great extent in vocabulary; their features and stature would not render them conspicuous as foreigners in south Italy; and that their ancestors were Roman provincials is attested not only by the names “Vlach” and “Ruman” but also by popular and literary tradition. In their customs and folk-lore both Latin and Slavonic traditions assert themselves. Of their Roman traditions the Trajan saga, the celebration of the Latin festivals of the Rosalia and Kalendae, the belief in the striga (witch), the names of the months and days of the week, may be taken as typical examples. Some Roman words connected with the Christian religion, like biserica (basilica) = a church, botez = baptizo, duminica = Sunday, preot (presbyter) = priest, point to a continuous tradition of the Illyrian church, though most of their ecclesiastical terms, like their liturgy and alphabet, were derived from the Slavonic. In most that concerns political organization the Slavonic element is also preponderant, though there are words like impärat = imperator, and domn = dominus, which point to the old stock. Many words relating to kinship are also Latin, some, like vitrig (vitricus) = father-in-law, being alone preserved by this branch of the Romance family. But if the Latin descent of the Vlachs may be regarded as proven, it is far less easy to determine their place of origin and to trace their early migrations.
The centre of gravity of the Vlach or Ruman race is at present unquestionably north of the Danube in the almost circular Its original home. territory between the Danube, Theiss and Dniester, and corresponds roughly with the Roman province of Dacia, formed by Trajan in A.D. 106. From this circumstance the popular idea has arisen that the race itself represents the descendants of the Romanized population of Trajan's Dacia, which was assumed to have maintained an unbroken existence in Walachia, Transylvania and the neighbour provinces, beneath the dominion of a succession of invaders. The Vlachs of Pindus, and the southern region generally, were, on this hypothesis, to be regarded as later immigrants from the lands north of the Danube. In 1871, E. R. Roesler published at Leipzig, in a collective form, a series of essays entitled Romänische Studien, in which he absolutely denied the claim of the Rumanian and Transylvanian Vlachs to be regarded as autochthonous Dacians. He laid stress on the statements of Vopiscus and others as implying the total withdrawal of the Roman provincials from Trajan's Dacia by Aurelian, in A.D. 272, and on the non-mention by historians of a Latin population in the lands on the left bank of the lower Danube, during their successive occupation by Goths, Huns, Gepidae, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars and other barbarian races. He found the first trace of a Ruman settlement north of the Danube in a Transylvanian diploma of 1222. Roesler's thesis has been generally regarded as an entirely new departure in critical ethnography. As a matter of fact, his conclusions had to a great extent been already anticipated by F. J. Sulzer in his Geschichte des Transalpinischen Daciens, published at Vienna in 1781, and at a still earlier date by the Dalmatian historian G. Lucio (Lucius of Traü) in his work De Regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae, Amsterdam, 1666.
The theory of the later immigration of the Rumans into their present abodes north of the Danube, as stated in its most extreme form by Roesler, commanded wide acceptance, and in Hungary it was politically utilized as a plea for refusing parity of treatment to a race of comparatively recent intruders. In Rumania itself Roesler's views were resented as an attack on Ruman nationality. Outside Rumania they found a determined opponent in Dr J. Jung, of Innsbruck, who upheld the continuity of the Roman provincial stock in Trajan's Dacia, disputing from historic analogies the total withdrawal of the provincials by Aurelian, and the reaction against Roesler was carried still farther by J. L. Pič, Professor A. D. Xenopol of Jassy, B. P. Hasdeu, D. Onciul and many other Rumanian writers, who maintain that, while their own race north of the Danube represents the original Daco-Roman population of this region, the Vlachs of Turkey and Greece are similarly descended from the Moeso-Roman and Illyro-Roman inhabitants of the provinces lying south of the river. On this theory the entire Vlach race occupies almost precisely the same territories to-day as in the 3rd century.
