The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini

For centuries, the highlanders of northern Albania lived almost without a state or courts. They obeyed a customary law handed down by word of mouth, the Kanun, attributed to Prince Lekë Dukagjini (15th century). The Franciscan Shtjefën Gjeçovi collected it, and his text was published in Shkodër in 1933.

The Kanun governs the whole of life: the Church, the family, marriage, the house, land, livestock, work, the given word, honour, damages and crimes. Authority rests with the Elders, gathered in assembly. Families group into clans, and clans into Banners (bajrak), each led by a Standard-bearer.

Three values dominate. The first is honour, which cannot be bought back: “honour taken has no fine” (§ 597). The second is the besa, a sacred word that binds the whole family and can suspend a feud. The third is hospitality: “the house of the Albanian belongs to God and to the guest” (§ 602). The guest is inviolable, and an offence done to him must be avenged.

From these values comes the blood feud: blood that is shed calls for blood, sometimes over several generations, unless the Elders bring about a reconciliation. Society is strictly patriarchal. A woman leaves her father’s house for her husband’s and inherits nothing.

Notes from the web editor

The Albanian text is Gjeçovi’s, as published in Shkodër in 1933. It comes from a PDF published on www.lezha.net, itself a transcription of that edition with many errors. The Albanian is in the archaic northern (Gheg) spelling of the time, and has not been modernised. Gjeçovi died in 1929, and the text is in the public domain.

About the translation. The English translation was made with Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, directly from the Albanian. The whole text was then reviewed against the Albanian a second time, book by book, and about seventy corrections were made. It has not been compared with Leonard Fox’s published translation (The Code of Lekë Dukagjini, 1989), which is the standard English version and remains under copyright. A French translation, made the same way from the Albanian, is also available. Both translations are a work in progress: some words of the Gheg are still unidentified, and these places are marked.

Corrections to the source. The following errors of the 1933 text or of its transcription have been corrected, in the Albanian and in the translation:

If you find errors, or have a correction to suggest, please write to [email protected].

BOOK ONE — THE CHURCH

Article One — CIVIL PART

CHAPTER ONE — The Precinct of the Church, the Graves, the Estates and Property of the Church, the Parish Priest, the Servant, the Workers of the Church

SECTION ONE — The Precinct of the Church.

By the precinct [literally “shade”] of the church is meant the area reaching as far as the boundary of the land on which are built:

1. The Church has the right to own property, whether livestock or land and houses, inside and outside the parish.

2. The Church has a share in the mountain, in the winter pasture, in the water and in the mill of the parish commons.

4. The Church has the right to buy and to sell, and also to receive and to keep the gifts that come to it from the generosity of benefactors, and to dispose of them as it sees fit.

1. The Church stands under the rule of the Head of the Faith and not under the law of the Kanun: therefore the Kanun cannot lay any burden on the Church, but only has the duty to defend it when it needs its help.

2. Should any dispute arise between the Church and the parish, the parish cannot demand a pledge from the Church; it shall instead bring its complaint to the Head of the Faith – the Bishop – and both the Church and the parish shall abide by his judgment without a word.

3. For any failing the Church may commit in the eyes of the parish, no fine can be taken from the Church; it is only obliged to make good the damages that have been caused on its account.

4. The Church pays no dues, does not go out to war, does not provide bread for the young men of the Banner, and does not do forced labour in the works of the parish. Only when the parish decides to carry out some work to maintain or to increase the wealth of the local commons, in which the Church has a share, is the Church then bound to pay money, to provide bread and to send a worker to the work, in the manner in which the parish has apportioned it to everyone by hearth.

“The church, the mill, the smithy and the shop cannot have a guest violated.” [That is, harm done to someone there does not count as an offence against a host.]

1. Whoever violates the Church owes a fine a) to the Church, b) to the parish, c) to the Banner (Bajrak).- He violates the Church who quarrels with, insults or threatens someone, or who beats or kills someone, within the precinct of the church.

2. The fine is taken from the offender by the parish and not by the Church; for the Church has neither sword nor rope.

3. Whoever is killed or beaten or in any way whatever dishonoured by someone while entering or leaving the precinct of the church leaves no shame upon the Church; for the Church cannot have a guest violated.

4. But if a gun is fired outside the precinct of the church and someone places himself under the protection of the Church, then he is recognised as the guest of the Church; and if anyone violates the protection of the Church, the parish is bound to restore its honour. (Vinctum, si aedes ejus (Dialis Flaminis) intrierit, solvit necessum est.- Gellius, b. 10. c. 15.-)

SECTION TWO — The Graves.

§ 5. 1. Into the graves of one brotherhood or of one clan the dead or the slain of another brotherhood or clan does not enter.- If anyone does this without the leave of the brotherhood or clan to which the graves belong, the Kanun obliges him to remove the dead man from the grave that is not his.

2. If a household that has neither brotherhood nor clan comes to settle in the village with the consent of the village, its burial place is assigned among those of the parish, and it is obliged to buy candles or some other thing for the altar.

3. Whoever quarrels with, insults or threatens someone, and whoever kills or beats someone among the graves, incurs a fine as for the precinct of the church.

SECTION THREE — The Estates and Property of the Church.

1. The estates and property of the Church are inviolable and no one may lay a hand on them.

2. The estates and property of the Church are under the guard of the priest of the church and of the parish.

3. Whoever dares to encroach on the estates and property of the Church is called to order by the parish. [The source repeats here, by mistake, the end of the next item.]

4. When someone does damage to the Church in its estates and property, the parish assesses the damage, which the one who caused it shall pay.

5. Whoever steals the property of the Church, besides having to return that property according to the kanun of the place where the church stands, also has the duty to pay a fine to the Church for the honour taken, and a fine to the parish for the protection violated, because the Church is under the protection of the parish.

6. When the thief acknowledges his fault and, before the outrage he has done to the Church becomes known, gives himself up to the Priest of the Parish, returning the stolen property, he owes no fine at all: the Priest has the right to pardon him.

7. If the thief gives himself up to the Priest after the latter has proclaimed the theft in the parish, the parish has the right to take the fine from him both for the locality and for the Church, even though the parish priest has pardoned the offence, together with all the stolen property.

1. The estates and property of the Church are administered by the Parish Priest, and the parish has no right to demand an account from the Parish Priest for the use of the income drawn from the property of the Church.

SECTION FOUR — The Priest of the Parish, or Parish Priest.

1. The Parish Priest is placed in the Parish by the Bishop, and the Bishop alone may remove him from the Parish.

1. The Parish Priest has the right to teach and to admonish the Parish and to perform for it the offices of the Faith in whatever way the care of souls requires, and no one of the parish has the power to interfere in the duties of the Priesthood.

2. The Parish Priest, for the service he renders to the Parish, has the right to receive the tithes of the Church, according to the Kanun of the place where the church stands.

3. The Parish has no duty to bring the tithes to the Parish Priest’s door; the Parish Priest shall collect them, and shall do so with his own workers.

4. The Parish Priest has the right to take the income of the property of the Church, both of the lands and of the livestock, and no one can call him to account for it except his own Superior.

5. The Parish Priest has the duty to render the Parish all the spiritual and religious service that the law of the Church lays upon him; and in addition certain services such as: blessing the houses, saying Mass once in a while during the year at graveyards far from the church of the Parish, etc.

1. Whoever speaks against the Parish Priest, or insults and snarls at him, or lays a hand on him, beats him or kills him, shall answer for it to the Parish in the manner of the Kanun of the place. The Parish is bound to demand satisfaction for the honour of its Parish Priest.

2. If someone kills the Parish Priest, the murderer is pursued by the Parish, the Banner and the house of the slain man.

3. If the killer is slain by the Parish or by the Banner, the house of the Priest may not kill anyone else from the house of the murderer; for otherwise it brings blood upon its own house.

4. If the Priest kills someone, neither the Church nor the Priest is fined, and the Priest does not fall into blood: the blood falls upon the house of the Priest.

5. Rarely and almost never is the Priest put to the oath 1) and only for a very grave matter.

6. Should it happen that the Priest is put to the oath, whether to clear the locality or as a juror, he alone shall be counted and taken as twenty-four persons.

7. When the Priest takes an oath, since he is held to be a just man and one consecrated to eternal Justice, it is not required that he touch the Gospel with his hand; it is enough that he pronounce the words of the oath before the Gospel.

8. If the Parish Priest incurs a fine, the Kanun does not touch him: it is the business of his Superior.

9. If the offence of the Priest against the Parish is too grave, the Priest shall submit to the judgment of the Kanun. The Superior sends another Priest to lay down the pledge before the Kanun in the name of the Parish Priest.

10. The Priest of the Parish may raise his hand against someone and even strike him, and for all that he brings no shame on the one who is beaten, nor does he himself become answerable before the Kanun.

SECTION FIVE — The Servant of the Church.

2. Wherever the servant of the Church goes, and with whatever message he knocks at someone’s door by order of his master, he goes and speaks in the name of the Parish Priest.

3. If anyone molests the servant of the Church by word or by deed, he is held to be molesting the Parish Priest, and he incurs the fine of the Church according to the Kanun.

4. The fine that is taken on account of the servant of the Church does not belong to the servant, but to the Church and the village.

5. If someone kills the servant of the Church, the killer, if he is of the local Parish, is pursued only by the house of the slain man; but if he is of another village, then he is also pursued by the Parish in which the servant was killed.

SECTION SIX — The Workers of the Church.

§ 12. – 1.- Whoever harasses the workers of the Church incurs the fine of the Parish.

2. However many workers there may be at the work of the Church, the one who harasses them pays only one fine, but a heavier one.

3. The fine that is taken for harassing the workers of the Church is divided between the Church and the workers.

Article Two — PENAL PART

SECTION SEVEN — The Nature of Punishments.

By punishment is meant an evil which is inflicted on someone by lawful authority in return for what he has done.

Only the Standard-bearer (Bajraktar) with the chiefs, and sometimes also with the superiors of the Church, has the right to fix the punishment for an offence committed against the Church.

On the offender who has offended the Church, the punishment is imposed by the chiefs and by the common people.

Note: according to the kanun a fine in money may be paid in certain goods, reckoning the oka of grain at 1 grosh, the oka of raki at 5 grosh, and a plough-ox at 400 grosh.

SECTION EIGHT — The Fixing of the Punishment According to the Kind of Offence.

§ 17. 1. Whoever breaks into the church is burned out and cast out of the Banner with all his household. The offender – the perpetrator – is executed by a volley of the Banner, and his blood goes unavenged. The brotherhood and the nearest clan of the wrongdoer buy his land, and its price goes to the church that was broken into.

2. Whoever steals another’s property and goes and hides it in the church, without the knowledge of the Parish Priest, owes the Church a fine of 1000 grosh for the honour taken, and a fine of 100 rams and 1 ox to the Banner, besides the property, which he shall return to its owner in the manner of the Kanun.

3. Whoever steals the livestock of the Church [a few words are corrupt in the source] shall pay two for one, as to anyone else.

4. Whoever steals in the cell or dwelling of the Parish Priest shall pay two for one for the stolen property, 100 grosh to the Church for the honour taken, and a fine of 100 rams and 1 ox to the Banner.

5. He who insults or speaks against the Priest of the Parish before the people owes a fine of 100 grosh to the Church, and a fine of 100 rams and 1 ox to the Banner.

7. Whoever slanders the Priest in a grave matter touching his honour has his house burned and owes a fine of 100 rams and 1 ox to the Banner.

8. If someone lays a hand on the Priest, beats him, pushes him or spits on him, he is burned out and cast out of the land, and his land is left to grass (fallow) for some years.

9. He who kills the Priest is executed by a volley of the Banner and his blood is lost. In addition his house is burned, his land is left to grass, and his fruit trees, vineyards and gardens are cut down and laid waste. His land, his estates and what remains of his goods stay with the Church; but the brotherhood may redeem them with money.

10. If someone speaks ill to the servant of the Church, or harasses him, he shall give a fine of 10 rams to the Banner, or even more, according to the gravity of the offence.

11. He who kills the Servant of the Church, if the killer is of the village, has his house burned and 100 rams and 1 ox are taken from him as a fine.

12. If someone harasses the workers of the Church by word or by deed, the offender shall pay the fine of 10 rams.

13. As for him who does not submit to the punishment of the Church and of the Kanun, the Banner shall gather in a body at his house and shall take from him everything in his fold.

BOOK TWO — THE FAMILY

CHAPTER TWO — THE STRUCTURE OF THE FAMILY.

SECTION NINE — The Family Considered in Itself.

The family is a gathering of members who live under one roof, whose purpose is the increase of humankind by means of marriage, and their upbringing towards the development of the body and the development of the mind and of judgment.

The family is made up of the people of the house; as these increase, they divide into brotherhoods, the brotherhoods into kin-groups, the kin-groups into clans, the clans into Banners, and all together they are gathered into one wider Family, which is called the Nation, and they have one fatherland, one blood, one language and the same customs.

According to the Kanun, the rule of the house belongs to the eldest under the roof of the house or to the first brother; if they do not have the qualities needed to carry out this office as duty requires, then the people of the house choose in assembly the one who is the most capable, the wisest and the most careful.

1) to sit in the place of honour in his own house, even though there are others older than he in the house;

2) over his own weapons, even if they are worth a hundred purses; over his saddle horse; over his own bedding and covers; over the coffee utensils; and these things are not included even by the kanun of the division [of the household];

3) over the earnings of the people of the house, whether from wages or from gifts;

4) to buy, to sell and to exchange land, such as fields, meadows, enclosures, woodlots, the turn at the irrigation channel, livestock and copperware;

10) to punish the people of the house when they do not behave as the good of the house requires.

d) Separating the stubborn one from the house with the share that belongs to him, in order to drive out dishonour and danger.

10) If someone of the house stands surety for more than the value of his weapon, or sells, buys or exchanges something without the leave of the head of the house, [the head] has the right not to answer for it, because the Kanun does not recognise as valid either a sale, a purchase, an exchange or a surety of this kind, and every thing or animal shall be given back, because it was done without the leave of the head of the house.

2) To keep the people of the house in check, so that they do not bring some harm or ruin upon it;

4) To keep an eye on the lands, so that they do not lie fallow; on the herd of livestock, so that its condition does not decline;

5) To act with good sense and prudence inside and outside the house, so that ruin and extinction do not overtake the house;

6) To see to the clothing and footwear of the people of the house out of the earnings of the house;

7) To keep to the path of justice in the house, and not to take the side of one more than of another;

3) To give orders to the women of the house, to send them for water, for wood, to take bread to the workers, to irrigate, to carry manure, to reap and to hoe or to weed.

1) To prepare the midday meal and the supper, to cook, to set the table and to share out the food;

3) Not to sell, buy or exchange anything without the leave of the head of the house. The mistress of the house does not knead bread, does not go for water, does not gather wood, nor carry manure, nor irrigate, nor reap or weed, nor take bread to the workers;

4) To see to fairness in providing for the people and the children of the house; not to take anyone’s side more than another’s;

5) The mistress of the house shall look after the children while the women are at work.

1) To remove the head of the house if they see that he does not work for the good of the house or is leading them towards ruin;

2) To remove the mistress of the house, if they catch her pilfering, or selling something in secret – were it even a single egg – or taking the side of her own children more than of the others.

3) Each over his own weapons; they may sell them, exchange them or leave them in pawn, but they have no right to ask the house for another;

4) Over the oxen the right belongs to the ploughman who drives them: to help someone with them, on loan or for nothing, without needing the leave of the head of the house;

5) Over the flock of sheep the right belongs to the shepherd who keeps them; the head of the house has no right to interfere in this office; before he sells an animal or slaughters any head of stock he shall tell the shepherd, and the shepherd knows which sheep or goat, or which cow, should be taken out.

2) They may stand surety even without asking the head of the house, but only up to the value of their weapon, because this is their own;

3) They may not go to work for anyone without the leave of the head of the house;

5) The people of the house may not oppose the head of the house in the affairs of the house or of its labour;

7) Whoever the head of the house points his finger at to go out to war shall go;

8) The women are bound to work for the house; if time is left over, once they are free of the work of the house, they may do handiwork of their own.

SECTION TEN — The Family Considered in the Village and in the Banner.

5) It has the right to lead with firebrand and axe at the burning of a house in its own clan;

7) If a house falls into some grave offence for which the punishment of the firebrand and the axe is due, neither the village nor the Banner may set a hand to the destruction unless the offender himself leads. [So the source; the sense of items 5–6 suggests that a house of the offender’s own clan must lead.]

1) The head of the house shall answer for every damage that his people do to anyone;

1) He shall attend the assembly of the Banner when “A man per house” is called;

2) He shall answer in rotation with the village for “two meals of bread” for the young men of the Banner;

BOOK THREE — MARRIAGE

SECTION ELEVEN — The Definition and the Kinds of Marriage.

To marry according to the kanun means to form a house, to add one more member to the house, both for the labour of its work and for the increase of children.

a) Marriage with the crown [the church wedding], approved by the Faith and by the kanun of Lekë;

b) The woman kept over and above the crown [i.e. besides a wedded wife], against the Faith and the kanun of Lekë;

c) The abducted woman or girl, irregular in the eyes of the Faith and the kanun;

SECTION TWELVE — The Right of the Young Man and of the Girl.

“The young man has the right to concern himself with his own marriage, if he has no parents.”

d) nor in the token, nor in the clothes, nor in the shoes, nor in the fixing of the day.

The girl, even if she has no parents, has no right to concern herself with her own marriage; the right is in the hands of her brothers or her cousins.

SECTION THIRTEEN — The Duties of the Husband and of the Wife.

b) to guard his wife’s honour and not to leave her cause to complain of any want.

The wife has the right to demand from her husband her maintenance, clothing and footwear.

SECTION FOURTEEN — The Right of the Widower and of the Widow.

The widower, if he has no parents, has the right to speak for himself about his own marriage (but the man of the Mountains of Albania does not do this, even if he knows that he will remain unmarried; the custom is to put forward another to speak for him about the marriage).

“The widow speaks for herself. – The widow turns the wedding party back on the road.”

CHAPTER THREE — MATCHMAKING. BETROTHAL

SECTION FIFTEEN — Matchmaking.

A matchmaker is the one who strives to put in a good word with the girl’s parents, so that they accept or give the girl for that young man.

1. The matchmaker is the intermediary between the groom and the bride (between the young man and the girl), so that neither side goes back on its word.

2. The matchmaker has a right to the matchmaker’s 50 grosh, “for shoes”, fixed by the kanun.

4. The matchmaker is found either by the girl’s house or by the young man’s house.

5. The matchmaker’s shoes are always paid for by the groom’s house, even if the matchmaker was appointed by the bride’s house.

6. The matchmaker has the right to speak for the girl’s parents as well as for the young man’s parents.

7. The matchmaker’s obligation is to go about bringing them to an understanding, and to carry the money, together with the groom’s father or brother, to the girl’s parents.

8. The matchmaker has the right to take part in every matter between the young man’s parents and the girl’s, up to the day of the marriage.

SECTION SIXTEEN — Betrothal

c) That she is not a niece of the clan of the young man who wants to betroth her;

The kanun does not make a betrothal or a marriage where the above impediments intervene, even if it be at four hundred generations (if anyone errs against these impediments, his own clan fines him, and it happens that it burns his house as well).

In a free betrothal it is kanun that the matchmaker and the father – or the brother – of the young man go to the girl’s parents to take the token on the appointed night.

On entering, the matchmaker shall stir the fire before asking for the girl; when he has stirred the fire, he speaks. When they have eaten supper, the groom’s father shall put both the money and the token into the matchmaker’s hand. The matchmaker, having counted the money onto the bowl [më qethit; uncertain], shall rise to his feet and deliver both the money and the token into the hand of the girl’s father.

A girl who has been abducted or has run away, should she find a husband, cannot be adorned as a bride; she shall go as a maiden – in a maiden’s clothes – for the reason that she was taken and went outside the kanun, without a matchmaker.

SECTION SEVENTEEN — The Token.

The token consists of a ring of copper or of silver (of late), for gold is hardly known in our highlands. “The ring and ten grosh” are according to the kanun. The token is neither exchanged nor returned during the lifetime of the one who betroths the girl. By the token the girl is claimed, and, if the word is broken, the girl’s parents owe a blood to the groom’s house.

At whatever moment the fancy takes him, the young man is free to give up the betrothed girl, but he loses the token and all the money he has paid for the girl; the reason is: “whoever gives up a girl under the ring, the kanun makes forfeit both the token and the money he has paid for her.” Before the young man gives up the girl, he shall inform the matchmaker, and the latter, with two fellow villagers of the young man, shall go to the girl’s parents and, before the eyes of two fellow villagers of the girl, tell them that the young man who had betrothed their girl is renouncing her, and that they are free to marry her elsewhere.

The betrothed girl cannot give up the young man, even if she does not care for him.

If the girl refuses to go to the husband who has betrothed her, and her parents also support their daughter, she can never marry anyone else during the groom’s lifetime.

The girl’s parents are bound to return to the groom’s house, down to the last coin, what it has paid for that girl.

The token and the ten grosh of the kanun, which were sent to the girl when she was betrothed, shall remain in her chest until the day of the groom’s death; and let the girl, the young man and the parents know that this token does not let her stir.

In the eyes of the kanun the girl remains bound, and she may marry only with the leave of the groom who betrothed her, if he renounces her; otherwise she cannot marry, and it is not kanun for anyone else to go and ask for her once he knows that she is pledged.

Even if the groom takes another wife, the girl betrothed by him remains bound all the same.

On the death of the groom, the kanun frees the girl, and, if she wishes, she may marry, for the reason that “with the death of the groom, the token is held to be lost”.

If the girl refuses to go to the husband who betrothed her, they shall give her to him even by force, with “a cartridge on her back”; and if he catches sight of the girl running away, he kills her with her parents’ cartridge, and the girl’s blood goes unavenged, for the reason that he killed her with their cartridge.

SECTION EIGHTEEN.

“To fix the day” means to settle the day and the firm term on which the wedding escorts are to set out to fetch the bride.

Once “the day is fixed” for the girl, since it is an appointed day, the wedding escorts shall set out on that day; the kanun neither postpones it nor allows it to be postponed.

The wedding escorts shall go to fetch the bride on that day, even if they know that the bride is dying; dragging and crawling they shall bring her to the groom’s house.

The way is not barred to the wedding escorts even if the groom’s parents or the girl’s parents have a dead person in the house.

With the dead in the house, the wedding escorts shall set out; the bride enters the house, the dead leaves the house. On that side let there be lamenting, on this side singing. (This is said to show that not even death can stop the wedding escorts on this day, for as to singing, there is no singing.)

SECTION NINETEEN — The Price that Was Given and Is Given for Women.

The price that used to be given for girls or women, fifty years ago and before, consisted of 50, 100, 200 up to 400 grosh.

The price under the more recent kanun consists of 1500 grosh, as much as the blood of a woman is worth.

SECTION TWENTY — The Inheritance of the Albanian Woman.

The Albanian woman has no inheritance of any kind from her parents, neither in property nor in the house – the kanun regards the woman as a superfluity in the house.

The parents do not concern themselves with a dowry or with anything at all for their daughter; the one who betroths her shall take care of that.

The parents of the young man who has betrothed the girl shall see to everything that is needed for her marriage.

CHAPTER FOUR — THE WEDDING

SECTION TWENTY-ONE — The Preparation of the Wedding in the Kanun.

Note: in earlier times there was wine in place of raki.

a) 12 wedding escorts (krushq) and, as the thirteenth, the woman escort (krushka);

Four weeks before the wedding the groom’s father or the head of the house shall go in person to invite the wedding escorts.

First the escorts who are friends [from outside] are invited, then the escorts who are fellow villagers.

a) Nephews and great-nephews; even if one is in the cradle, his mother shall lead the ram by the hand with the cradle on her back;

b) On Friday evening go the caller, the strufulleca, the women who knead, the women who carry water, the ram-bringers, and the escorts who are friends.

On Saturday, when the wedding escorts have set out, the fattened animal of the wedding shall be slaughtered.

SECTION TWENTY-TWO — The Leadership of the Wedding Escorts.

§ 50. “The leadership of the wedding escorts is sought and asked of him alone to whom it belongs; there is no man [else] who can lead.” [The source is corrupt here.]

If the master of the wedding should err and appoint as first escort one to whom the leadership of the escort does not fall, besides incurring a fine, the kanun does not recognise the chief escort whom he appointed.

b) He shall not be of the brotherhood or the clan of the groom, but of another clan.

The kanun does not look at the appearance of the chief escort, but at whose right the leadership is, and even if he be a child and ugly to the eye, the groom’s house shall accept him.

The order of the wedding escorts when they set out to fetch the bride, and when returning with her, is according to the kanun as follows.

Last of all shall go the groom’s father or brother, leading a horse by the hand.

The wedding escorts, as they set out for the bride, shall each fire one shot in the groom’s yard.

SECTION TWENTY-THREE

“The wedding escorts, without or with the bride, and the mourners with the dead, may not pass by anyone’s door, unless it is the path or the road of the village or the highway.”

§ 52. There is no man who can bar the village road and the highway to anyone, even if it passes in front of the door of his house.

Where a person passes, livestock passes too; the living pass, and the dead are carried past. Should the highway be ruined, through mud and mire, there shall pass the traveller and the livestock, the bride with the wedding escorts, and the mourners with the dead.

The consent of the owner is required – without exception – to pass close by his house, and he may open the path, but with the stipulation that it does not become a road there and that his honour is not violated.

If anyone, whether wedding escorts or mourners with the dead, should make bold to pass by his door, the kanun allows him to turn them back, for the reason that he has the path of his house and of his property for himself and not as a highway.

Where they have happened to push on by force, it has come about that they became companions of the dead man, and that the [black] kerchief of mourning was put on the bride’s head.

SECTION TWENTY-FOUR.

“Let the local wedding escort yield the road to the escort who is a friend [from outside].”

The wedding escorts on the road, going for the bride, may not fire their guns, and the kanun proclaims that no one is to molest them.

Travellers, of whatever rank and standing they may be, who meet wedding escorts shall step off the road until the escorts have passed.

The local escort shall yield the road to the escort who is a friend [from outside]; this is a kanun of duty and of manliness, which our mountains have had for as long as can be remembered.

If I meet wedding escorts who are friends [from outside] in my village or in my Banner, the kanun lays on me the duty to step aside with my escorts until they have passed.

If two parties of wedding escorts meet in a village or in a Banner that is not their own, the kanun of duty is that both the one party and the other step aside, and part with honour and without a word.

SECTION TWENTY-FIVE.

§ 53. The kanun commands us not to provoke a guest in our house. [The source reads, apparently by mistake, “does not command”.]

“A wedding escort is a wedding escort”, and the kanun leaves the way open to us to provoke him, even though he sits at our hearthstone. – To provoke a wedding escort is counted as a shame for no one.

The wedding escorts come and bring with them meat, relishes, raki (wine), the money for their lodging and other things; in the eyes of the kanun the wedding escorts eat their own bread in my house.

1. – A ram of a full 12 oka; if it comes short, the bride’s father has the right to compel the Chief Escort to buy another ram as the kanun requires;

6. – 12 grosh of lodging money; – this money is for the bread which the bride’s house provides for the wedding escorts, an oka for a grosh;

a) The wedding escorts come that night as raiders and like a band of robbers, to fall on their prey and to take a person as a captive, and they do not come as guests;

b) The master of the house, therefore, also has the way open to harass them, even to the point of taking their weapons from them, and they cannot bring a claim against him, because the kanun does not hear their complaint.

In the house from which the bride departs it is not kanun to sing, nor to fire guns.

Even if the wedding escorts arrive early in the bride’s village, it is not kanun to set out for the house before the sun has set and dusk has fallen.

A short distance from the bride’s house, one of the fellow villagers of the bride, who shall be neither of the same blood nor of the same clan as the bride, shall come out to meet the wedding escorts.

The wedding escorts, on arriving in the bride’s yard, shall each fire one shot, and likewise when they come out to set off with the bride.

Only the Chief Escort speaks; it is not kanun for the other escorts to speak, unless one of them is called or asked by name.

The wedding escorts shall eat together with the woman escort at one table; it is not kanun to separate them into two.

When the meal is finished, the wedding guests shall lay the gifts for the bride upon an unbroken loaf on the table.

The gift consists of one grosh per head; it is not kanun to give either more or less.

CHAPTER FIVE — THE KANUN OF THE BRIDEGROOM.

SECTION TWENTY-SIX.

“If the groom dies, the bride’s parents are bound to return half of the price to the groom’s house.”

If the groom dies before taking the bride, the in-law keeps the Token (the ring) and the ten grosh of the kanun, but the rest of the money he shall return to the groom’s parents down to the last coin.

If the groom married and spent only one night with the bride and died, the in-law shall return half of the price to the groom’s parents.

If the groom dies in the year in which he married, the in-law still returns half of the price to the groom’s parents. If the groom dies at the end of two years after the marriage, the in-law keeps two parts of the price for himself and returns the third to the groom’s parents.

If the groom dies in the second year too, but leaving a child at the hearthstone, the in-law owes nothing at all to the groom’s parents, for the reason that his daughter left the house provided with offspring and paid the price with the child she left in the household.

If the groom dies at the end of three years, his parents have nothing left to take from the in-law, for the reason that the latter’s daughter has done her service in their house.

SECTION TWENTY-SEVEN — The Death of the Bride.

If the bride dies at the end of three years after the marriage, without leaving a child in her husband’s household, her parents have the right to take her clothes and her silver ornaments, but the chest with its lock and one set of clothes shall remain with the husband’s parents.

If the wife dies leaving a son or a daughter with her husband, her parents have a right to the silver ornaments [one word unclear in the source], but the other things shall remain in the husband’s house.

SECTION TWENTY-EIGHT.

“A woman does not fall into blood.” – “A woman throws the blood onto her parents.”

It is true that according to our kanun “blood follows the finger”, but this kanun does not include the woman, for the reason that “A woman does not fall into blood” even if it happens that she kills someone. If a woman kills her own husband or anyone else, her parents shall answer for that blood. The husband buys the labour and the life in common of the wife, but not her life.

If some harm comes to the wife through the fault of her husband, her parents call him to account under the kanun.

If the husband beats his wife, he does not fall into fault in the eyes of the kanun, nor can her parents seek redress for the beating.

If the husband wounds his wife, and she complains to her parents, the husband shall answer to them.

If the wife kills her husband, and her brother-in-law rises to kill his sister-in-law because she killed his brother, this is not justified under the kanun. – The blood of a woman is not equal to the blood of a man; therefore the excess of the man’s blood shall be made good by the wife’s parents.

Just as the parents are bound to answer for every evil deed that their daughter does in her husband’s house or to anyone, so too [they receive] the price of her blood.

SECTION TWENTY-NINE.

The woman is regarded as a skin bag made for bearing as long as she is in her husband’s house, for her parents do not renounce their kin; they keep for themselves and upon themselves the responsibility for her, but also the right to demand an account, should any harm come to her.

SECTION THIRTY — The Widow.

A woman who has been left a widow and without children, on separating from her husband’s house, takes with her the clothes she brought as a bride and the chest with its lock.

A young woman who is left a widow, but with children, if she wishes to stay in her husband’s household with the children, shall be guaranteed by two sets of guarantors: two guarantors shall be from the village where she was widowed, that no one will have anything to do with her, and that she will not disgrace the name of her parents or of her dead husband; two others shall be provided by her parents or her cousins, that they will not separate her from the children, unless she herself asks to separate and to marry.

A woman who has been left without a husband and without children, and who, because she is advanced in years, begs her parents to leave her in her husband’s household, may not be troubled by anyone of the husband’s brotherhood or clan. A widow without sons, if she has married daughters, has the right to stay and to live in her husband’s household. She may also go to live with her parents or with one of her married daughters, and her husband’s land shall provide her daily bread – three loads of grain a year until her death.

If the widow marries, then she finds her living with her second husband, for the land of her first husband yields no more crops for her.

SECTION THIRTY-ONE — The Cut Fringe.

If the wife does not conduct herself as she should towards her husband, the kanun gives him leave to cut her fringe or her hair and to put her away.

The marriage bond remains, and neither the husband nor the wife may marry during their lifetime.

If the woman mends her ways, after the entreaties of well-wishers, it happens that the husband takes her back. For two things the woman has the cartridge on her back, and for one thing her fringe is cut and she is put away.

For these two acts of treachery the husband kills his wife, and he remains without need of protection or truce and without being pursued for blood, for the parents of the slain wife receive the price of her blood, and they shall give him the cartridge and provide him with guarantors.

For pilfering or theft the husband puts away his wife, but he has no right to do her any other violence.

The woman who is put away, on leaving her husband’s house, has no right to take anything with her except the clothes she has on her body. The woman who is put away loses her clothes, because the price which the husband paid for her stays with her parents.

If the woman who is put away has a son at the breast, her husband [a few words unclear in the source] is bound to assign her a place near his household, to give her the boy and to maintain her with clothing, footwear and bread.

SECTION THIRTY-TWO — The Woman Without the Crown.

He who takes a woman without the crown remains bound in the eyes of the Faith and also of the kanun.

The kanun gives these punishments to the man who takes a woman without the crown:

b) he is driven out of the country, and he may not set foot on his own land until he has sent away the woman kept without the crown;

c) if he has children with the woman without the crown, they are counted as illegitimate and therefore can never become heirs.

CHAPTER SIX — PARENTS. (Father – Mother – Sons)

SECTION THIRTY-THREE — The Father – the Husband.

b) to beat and to bind his wife, when she comes to scorn his word and his orders.

b) to beat, to bind, to confine or even to kill his son or his daughter; the kanun does not call him to account, and holds it as if he were killing himself: “Whoever kills himself goes with his blood unavenged”;

c) to put his son out to service for wages whenever he wishes, for the reason that “As long as the father is alive, the son is counted as a farmhand”; over the son’s earnings, whether from wages or of whatever kind;

e) to drive his son out of the house without a share, when he will not remain under his rule and obedience; – but, when the father dies, the son comes into his father’s inheritance.

a) The father is bound to strive for the good of his children, both in honour and in property;

SECTION THIRTY-FOUR — The Mother – the Wife.

d) If a stranger’s hand beats, wounds or kills a man’s wife, the husband seeks satisfaction for the honour, her parents for the wound and the blood;

e) If the husband’s kin beat a man’s wife, the wife’s parents demand satisfaction for her honour, if her husband does not take the matter up;

f) If the mother is a troublemaker (one who stirs up the house), her son puts his mother out of the house without a share and without goods, except that in the first year he shall give her her daily bread (three loads of grain), and he owes her nothing else.

SECTION THIRTY-FIVE — The Sons.

f) without their father’s consent they may neither buy nor sell anything, nor have dealings of any kind with anyone;

h) they may not turn their father out onto the highway, even though he is old [fanë in the source, read as t’anë, “their father”];

i) if a son plunders, steals or kills someone, the father shall answer for it, for the reason that “The gain and the risk of the sons are shared by the father and the brothers”;

j) if a son kills his father, the clan executes the murderer or drives him out of the country for ever;

k) if any one of the sons takes it into his head to separate from his father, he leaves without a share and without goods.

b) The first brother shall be consulted about everything inside and outside the house;

c) If it is the house of the Standard-bearer, the Banner belongs to the first son of the first brother;

d) If it is the house of the Voivode, the leadership belongs to the first son of the first brother;

e) If it is that of an Elder of the village, the senior eldership belongs to the son of the first brother.

Note: As long as the house is undivided, the uncle of the first brother’s sons [may act] in the offices of the village and of the Banner; once they divide, neither the uncle nor his sons have a right to interfere in the above-mentioned offices, because these belong to the sons of the first brother.

CHAPTER SEVEN — THE DIVISION [OF THE HOUSEHOLD].

2. Land: a) fields, b) vineyards, c) meadows, d) enclosures, e) woodlots and groves.

1. The house, with the land that it has around it, belongs to the youngest brother.

2. Building plots and folds are divided per brother, into as many shares as there are hearths into which the brothers divide.

1. The land of the forefathers shall be divided with the measuring rope – per brother.

2. Land bought by the sons after the death of their parents shall be divided per gun.

4. Fields, vineyards, meadows, enclosures, woodlots and groves shall be divided with the measuring rope per brother, as much to one as to the other.

5. The commons, the mountain and the high pasture are not divided; they shall hold them jointly, both for wood and for grazing.

The turn at the water shall be divided by measure, according to the oka. [The method of measuring is unclear in the source.]

1. Earnings and expenses belong to the household: the house enjoys them, and, before the house is divided, they shall be settled.

2. The kanun does not set apart individual earnings: “Whatever the division finds in the house stays in it.”

4. The gifts that are collected for the bride on the day of the marriage, whether at her parents’ or at her husband’s, are not included in the kanun of the division; they are the wife’s.

The copperware shall be divided per brother, as shall the ironware: axe, spade, scythe, billhook, sickle, saw, adze, chisel, etc., and likewise the farming implements.

c) spoons, bowls, pails (milk pails), the churn, the woodpile, cooking pots, jars, dishes and whatever vessels of wood and of earthenware there may be are divided by the mistress of the house according to the guidance of the elders, and likewise the hens.

“Small stock is divided per gun.” – In the division of small stock, cows, oxen and horses, only those take a share who are able to bear arms.

1. “The grain is divided per mouth.” To the men, the women and the children their daily bread shall be given on the day of the division.

2. A child – boy or girl – who has not completed its first year has no right to daily bread. When they have completed the year, a share of bread shall be allotted to them as to the others.

3. Not only the grain, but every other crop of the fields or of the gardens shall be divided per mouth.

Wine and raki, in a word everything that is eaten and drunk, shall be divided per mouth.

1. The Elders of the division shall be two or four, or as the need of the house that is being divided requires.

2. The Elders of the division have the right to take one sheep or goat for each Elder.

3. The “shoes” [fee] of the Elders of the division shall be paid jointly by the brothers who are dividing.

a) To an old man left alone shall be given the costs of his funeral meals before the house is divided.

b) To an unmarried brother shall be given the costs of his marriage before the house is divided.

c) Women have no part in the shares of the division, except for their daily bread – in all the things that are eaten and drunk.

§ 80. If the brothers make up their minds to separate during their father’s lifetime, they have no right to interfere either in the land or in the property, and each shall go to the share that his father assigns to him.

§ 81. After the father’s death, the kanun of the division makes no distinction between the brothers, but, as many as they are, into so many shares shall they divide their father’s property, both movable and immovable.

§ 82. If there are four brothers, and if they call in the Elders in order to divide, they shall divide the land of the forefathers with the measuring rope per brother.

§ 83. If two brothers separate on one side and two others on another, they divide the land of the forefathers in half, and the land bought by them per gun.

§ 84. If one of two separated brothers dies without leaving a son at the hearth, the land that had fallen to his share shall be divided in three [so the source], except for lands bought later and livestock acquired after they separated.

§ 86. Brothers who have once separated with stone and boundary, if they join together again and after some time make up their minds to separate anew, divide the lands according to the boundary of the first division. If they have bought new lands and acquired livestock after they joined together, they shall apply § 83.

§ 87. If there are two or more brothers, and one dies leaving a son behind, when they divide, the orphaned boy divides with his uncle as a brother and takes his father’s share.

CHAPTER EIGHT — INHERITANCE.

SECTION THIRTY-SIX — The Right of Inheritance in the Kanun.

§ 99. To keep in the house the girls of the extinct household, and to take care of them as to clothing and footwear.

§ 101. To receive them when they come on visits and to see them off according to the kanun.

§ 102. To hold the funeral meals for the daughters, if they die in their own house before or after marriage.

SECTION THIRTY-EIGHT — The Half-Brother.

§ 103. A half-brother, according to the Kanun, was the name for one who is born to the mother by a second husband.

§ 104. The half-brother has no right of inheritance or of belonging in the household of his mother’s first husband.

CHAPTER NINE — BEQUESTS.

SECTION THIRTY-NINE — The Definition of Wills.

Note: The Kanun of Lekë does not recognise wills, and, if anyone wishes to leave something of his property for his soul, the consent of his cousins is absolutely required.

By bequests or gifts or, as the tongue of our nation says, “leaving something for one’s soul” is understood leaving something to the church, such as a field or a meadow, a garden or a vineyard, a woodlot or a grove, the turn at the water, or even the whole estate, wild and cultivated; [the one who leaves it] shall: a) be of sound mind,

SECTION FORTY — Kinds of Bequests.

a) Bequests with a charge (with a duty) are those where the one who bequeaths fixes a duty for the church, e.g. to say one or two Masses a year for his soul or for those of his forefathers, in return for the property that he is leaving.

b) Bequests without a charge are those where the one who bequeaths leaves something to the church without fixing any duty at all, and it is held to be a gift.

c) The one who bequeaths is bound to gather his cousins and the Elders of the clan with witnesses, and both he and they shall put their finger to the paper as the kanun requires.

SECTION FORTY-ONE — The Right of the Man Whose Line Has Died Out.

§ 107. Everyone is master of his own property, and he who wishes to leave his goods to the church is free to do so and no one can prevent him.

§ 108. A father, even if he has no sons, cannot leave his daughters either land, or estate, or house.

§ 109. A father, during his own lifetime, has the right to give his daughters money, household goods and trinkets; after her father’s death a daughter has no right to claim what her father gave or promised.

SECTION FORTY-TWO — The Right of the Cousins.

§ 110. The cousins of the man whose line has died out have the right to redeem the land and the goods of the man whose line has died out, but they shall hand over the price of this property to the Church, according to his intention.

§ 111. If the man whose line has died out has left debts and blood obligations, they shall be paid out of the property redeemed by the cousins, and they shall hand over the remainder to the Church for the soul of the man whose line has died out.

§ 112. If the man whose line has died out dies unexpectedly, his cousins have a right to his goods and property.

§ 113. Even if the man whose line has died out has left nothing in writing, his cousins are bound to think of his soul; if the cousins do not take this matter in hand, the clan and the Elders of the village, when they divide his property, determine for them what they shall leave to the Church.

§ 114. If the man whose line has died out has married daughters, and if the cousins redeem his property, they are bound to receive them and to see them off according to the kanun.

§ 116. If the father dies unexpectedly, leaving a son who is an infant in the cradle, the cousins shall take charge of the property and of the boy until he is 15 years old.

SECTION FORTY-THREE — The Servant.

§ 118. Wages are paid according to the agreement made between the master and the servant.

§ 119. For any fault that the servant may commit, the master cannot make his wages forfeit.

§ 120. If the servant has stolen from or killed someone with the bread and the word of his master, the servant falls into guilt and into blood, but the damage is the master’s, and he shall get the servant out of the trouble.

§ 121. If the theft or the killing has taken place in the master’s village, he shall send the servant away, but he shall send him off with the wages of the year, for the reason that the fault was the master’s and not the servant’s.

§ 122. If the servant has done some mischief either in the master’s village or outside it, but of his own accord and without the master’s knowledge, the servant shall bear the damage and the fine, and if the master wishes to send him away, he shall give him his wages up to that day.

§ 123. If the servant kills someone of his own accord, he brings the blood upon his own house.

§ 124. If someone kills the servant, he falls into blood with the servant’s house, but for the master it is the violation of a guest.

§ 125. If the master takes it into his head to dismiss the servant, merely because he does not like him and without having found him at fault, he shall pay him the wages of the year.

§ 126. If the master moves with his household from one district to another, and does not take the servant with him, he owes him the wages of the year; if the servant has refused to follow him, he owes him his wages up to that day.

§ 127. If the servant takes a whim to leave his service before the term, merely because he is tired of it, the master shall give him his wages up to that day.

§ 128. If the servant does not act according to the master’s wishes, the master may dismiss him, but he may not abuse him or lay a hand on him.

§ 129. If the master abuses or beats the servant, and if the latter leaves before the term, he shall be given satisfaction for the beating and for the abuse.

§ 131. If a stranger’s hand beats the servant, the servant seeks judgment and the master seeks satisfaction for his violated bread.

BOOK FOUR — HOUSE, LIVESTOCK AND PROPERTY

CHAPTER TEN

SECTION FORTY-FOUR.

“A house broken into carries a fine of 500 grosh, and two for one to the owner.”

§ 132. A house is held to be such from its foundation, whether it be a tower, a low house or a hut; it is enough that it has a hearthstone and gives out smoke.

§ 133. Every building that stands in the yard is joined to the house, because it stands within its precinct; if it is broken into, it carries the fine and two for one.

§ 135. Call out, and if no one answers you, either stay and wait or go about your business.

§ 136. If you push on and open the door, the house is held to be broken into and also plundered, which carries a fine of 500 grosh, and the lost goods two for one.

§ 137. The Kanun says: whoever breaks into someone’s house owes, for the honour taken, a fine of 500 grosh to the Banner (Bajrak), and for the things stolen two for one to the owner.

§ 138. The livestock fold carries a fine of 500 grosh and two for one to the owner.

§ 139. The bee enclosure carries a fine of 500 grosh and two for one to the owner.

§ 140. The dairy store carries a fine of 500 grosh and two for one to the owner.

§ 141. The grain store carries a fine of 500 grosh and two for one to the owner.

§ 142. Whoever breaks down someone’s gateway to the yard, the field, the meadow or the garden that he has in front of his house owes a fine of 500 grosh, and to the owner the work made good.

CHAPTER ELEVEN — LIVESTOCK.

SECTION FORTY-FIVE — The Shepherd.

“A house broken into carries a fine of 500 grosh, and two for one to the owner.” [Repeated here in the source.]

§ 144. The hired shepherd is bound to keep his mind on the herd, so that it comes to no harm and does no harm to anyone.

§ 145. If the shepherd has done harm to someone with the animals, the owner of the herd pays for it and not the shepherd.

§ 146. If the shepherd loses any head of stock, he shall inform the owner of the herd, and both the owner and the shepherd shall exert themselves in searching for it.

§ 147. If the shepherd has lost an animal without sign or trace, the owner of the herd has the right to put the shepherd to the oath; if he has cleared himself by oath, he has no further duty.

§ 148. If an animal has broken its neck or been bitten by a wild beast, the shepherd is bound to take the proof of it to the owner, and he has no other duty.

§ 149. If someone has stolen an animal from the shepherd, his duty is to inform the owner of the herd, telling him the place and the time, where and when it was stolen; he has no other duty.

§ 150. If the shepherd himself turns out to be the thief, he shall return the stolen animals to the owner in the manner of the kanun, and the owner sends him on his way. If he has not completed the year, his wages shall be given to him up to the day on which he was found at fault.

§ 151. If the shepherd kills a thief who is stealing from or raiding the herd, he brings the blood upon his own house, and as for the animal or the herd that was raided, the owner must bear it. [The last verb is uncertain.]

§ 152. The shepherd is bound to guard the animals, and he shall not rely on whether land is fenced or unfenced, because “animals need a guard, for they walk, and the land does not move”.

SECTION FORTY-SIX — The Bell-Goat or Bell-Ram (the Bellwether).

§ 154. If the bell-goat or the bell-ram has been carried off as plunder, by violence or out of some spite and to shame the shepherd, and if the raiders were not killed in that onset, a fine of 500 grosh is taken from the raider and the animal two for one.

SECTION FORTY-SEVEN — Livestock on Halves.

§ 155. The principal stock is the owner’s; if any head dies, the loss is the owner’s. As proof, the token of it shall be taken to the owner by the one who holds it on halves.

§ 156. If goats or sheep have been given on halves, the offspring, the goat hair and the wool are divided in half between the master and the shepherd.

§ 157. The owner is not bound to concern himself either with salt or with a hut; that falls to the shepherd who takes them on halves.

§ 158. If a heifer calf has been given and has grown up in the shepherd’s house, when she calves, the first calf belongs to the shepherd who raised her, and the dairy produce is on halves.

§ 159. If the shepherd has wasted the dairy produce of the animals he holds on halves, he owes the owner either his share of the dairy produce or the offspring.

§ 162. On ten head of goats, the owner takes 5 oka of butter – half an oka per head.

§ 163. On ten head of sheep, the owner takes 5 oka of butter – half an oka per head.

§ 164. The owner has no right to the cheese, either of the goats or of the sheep.

SECTION FORTY-EIGHT — The Principal Stock.

§ 165. The principal stock is the owner’s, and it never increases nor decreases.

§ 168. The offspring belongs wholly to the shepherd, for as long as the principal stock is kept at his house.

§ 169. The dairy produce is divided as they agree between them. – In some places the dairy produce is not given at all.

§ 170. If any head of stock comes to harm, the loss is the shepherd’s, and he shall replace it to make up the number.

SECTION FORTY-NINE — Livestock with Liability.

§ 172. If you have taken animals on halves, the duty of liability does not bind you; the loss is the owner’s.

§ 173. If the loss was caused by the negligence of the shepherd, the loss is his and he shall replace the animal that was harmed.

SECTION FIFTY — The Sow on Halves.

§ 174. If a female piglet has been taken on halves as soon as the sow weans it, and the one who took it has raised it, he shall divide her litter in half with the owner.

§ 175. The sow stays with the shepherd who raised her, for which he shall give the owner one piglet more.

§ 176. If the sow has not conceived in that year, the shepherd may neither sell her nor slaughter her, but shall leave her to farrow once.

§ 177. If the sow has farrowed and the piglets have been lost before the mother weaned them, the shepherd shall keep her until she conceives and farrows a second time, and the piglets are divided as in § 174. [One verb at the start is uncertain.]

§ 179. If a full-grown sow has been given on halves, the litter is divided in half, and the sow is returned to the owner, for which one piglet more shall be left to the shepherd.

SECTION FIFTY-ONE — The Dog’s Post.

§ 182. If anyone kills the dog at its own post, he owes 500 grosh to the owner of the dog.

§ 183. The chained dog is let loose late in the evening, and stays untied until daylight comes.

§ 184. At sunrise the chained dog shall be at its post with the irons on its neck.

§ 185. If the dog rushes at you on the highway after daylight has come, and you could not escape it without killing it, and you have killed it, the owner of the dog cannot demand a pledge and an elder’s judgment, for the reason that “The highway pays for nothing”.

§ 186. If the dog rushes at you at any time of the day, and you turned your gun on it and killed it, hitting it in the forehead or in the chest, the dog goes unpaid.

§ 187. A dog doing damage is killed, but then only when it is found with “meat in its mouth”, e.g. while harming some head of stock in your flock.

§ 188. For a dog on the mountain, following its own flock, no excuse is accepted: if you have killed it, you pay for the dog.

§ 189. The Priest may not keep a chained dog at the Presbytery (the Church), for the reason that the Priest must be ready night and day for every need of the people.

SECTION FIFTY-TWO — The Ox for Hire.

§ 190. If the Priest wishes to keep a chained dog, he may not free it from its irons either by night or by day. [This paragraph belongs with the preceding section.]

§ 191. For an ox on hire, if the ploughman has wintered it, the charge is one load of grain; if the owner has wintered it, one load and a half.

§ 192. If the ox on hire has been stolen, the ploughman and the owner of the ox shall both exert themselves in searching for it.

§ 194. If the owner suspects that the ploughman has harmed the ox, the latter shall clear himself by oath.

§ 195. If a wild beast has torn the ox or a snake has bitten it on the mountain and the ploughman has found it dead, he shall take the hide or some other token to the owner.

§ 196. If the ox has disappeared without sign or trace, the ploughman shall justify himself to the owner by oath that he had no hand in the loss of the ox.

§ 197. If the ploughman has not worked the ox, though he had it and kept it at the manger, he still owes the owner the hire.

SECTION FIFTY-THREE — The Bees.

§ 199. “A bee enclosure broken into carries a fine of 500 grosh and two for one to the owner.”

§ 200. The bee enclosure, in the eyes of the Kanun, is put on a level with the house broken into, the livestock fold, the grain store and the dairy store.

§ 201. Whoever steals one beehive from the enclosure, the enclosure is held to be broken into; so he owes a fine of 500 grosh, and to the owner two hives for one.

§ 202. If he denies it, he has to take the oath with 12 jurors, 6 designated and 6 not designated.

§ 203. A beehive with the bees inside, by the valuation of the Kanun, is worth 50 grosh.

§ 205. A swarm that has fled and settles on someone else’s tree or fence belongs to the owner who follows after it, and the owner of the tree or the fence cannot withhold it from him.

§ 206. A swarm that has fled from its own enclosure, if it has settled on someone else’s tree or fence without anyone following it, the owner of the tree or the fence has the right to give it to no one and to keep it for himself.

§ 207. A swarm that leaves shall be followed step by step and pursued until it settles somewhere, and, wherever it stops, the owner collects it.

§ 208. If the swarm has left and gone to settle somewhere without anyone following it, whoever finds it first collects it for himself.

§ 209. If someone gets up some time later and claims the swarm that fled, without having followed it, the kanun does not hear his complaint and the oath is given to no one over bees, for the reason that no one can say that this swarm is mine if he did not follow it step by step when it fled from him, for “one bee is like another”.

§ 210. A swarm found in other people’s gardens or within the precinct of someone else’s house may not be collected by anyone; it belongs to the one in whose garden or precinct it was found.

§ 211. A swarm found on the mountain or in other people’s woodlots, if it was far from houses, belongs to the one who found it.

§ 212. A swarm found in the caves of the cliffs on someone else’s land, if it was far from houses, belongs to the one who found it; otherwise it belongs to the one within whose precinct it was found.

CHAPTER TWELVE — PROPERTY.

SECTION FIFTY-FOUR — The Determination of Property.

§ 214. The estate of a house has a yard and a garden, a vineyard and a field, a meadow and enclosures, a road and a path, and boundaries in the mountain, in the winter pasture and in the plain.

§ 216. Field, vineyard, garden and meadow, enclosure, woodlot and grove are separated by boundaries.

§ 217. The commons, the mountain and the high pasture are held in common, for the setting up of summer huts, for timber and wood for implements, and also for firewood.

§ 218. Propertied houses may have more than one share (rod), left to them as an inheritance from those whose line has died out.

§ 219. He who goes to set up a fold or a summer hut on the high pasture, with a plot, a garden or some piece of field, if he wishes to clear them, clears them and they remain his, and no one can either stop him or remove him from that place.

§ 220. The shade trees or the oaks which someone leaves standing to shade his animals at midday may not be cut down by anyone, because they belong to the one who first settled in that place.

§ 221. If a house moves away and uproots itself entirely from its village, and has not sold its plot and its land, they shall stay as they are and no one has the right to settle on them.

§ 222. If it has sold its land with everything on it, the site of the summer hut is still its own, and as long as that house endures, no one may take possession of it.

§ 223. Each house of a village in the Banner has the right to bring into use as much land in the commons as it can encompass all round with a stone thrown with the left hand.

§ 224. There where he begins to dig, he shall sit down cross-legged, take a pebble in his left hand and throw it to the four sides, crosswise, and around him that place is his. In earlier times they had the custom of throwing the axe.

§ 225. Land once cleared, whether for a garden, a field or a summer hut, even if its owner leaves it fallow for hundreds of years, no one else of the village or of the Banner may enter to work it. From son to son it remains his who first cleared it. (Highlands of Lezha.)

§ 226. He who does not look after his summer hut for 10 years loses it after 10 years, and it falls to the one who takes it first. (Orosh)

SECTION FIFTY-FIVE — Making Someone a Brother in the Village.

§ 227. To make someone a brother in the village means to accept a house of another Banner, so that it can come and settle in a village of a different Banner.

§ 228. Once the village has made that house a brother, anyone of this village may sell it land, but within the four boundaries.

§ 229. In the high pasture, in the winter pasture and in the commons, whether of the village or of the Banner, nothing is sold to it and it can never have a share as an owner; as for grazing and for wood and implements, the freedom to use them is granted to it as a courtesy.

§ 231. Funeral and wedding, pledge and fine, and the loan of flour it shares reciprocally with the village. It shall pay fines, and likewise it has a right to a share of the fines.

SECTION FIFTY-SIX — The Commons.

§ 232. The commons is the land which a village or a Banner holds jointly for grazing, for timber, for firewood, for hunting and for other needs.

§ 233. The commons is not divided, but as many houses or hearths as there are in the village have a right in the commons of the village, and as many hearths as there are in the Banner have a right in the commons of the Banner.

§ 234. The land of the commons cannot be sold by one without the others; the loss and the gain belong to all the hearths of the village or of the Banner.

§ 235. No one may open either a field, a vineyard or a garden in the commons without the matter being approved by the whole village or by the Banner.

§ 236. Whoever plants a tree in the commons, the one who planted it has a right to its timber and may cut it down when he sees fit, but no one else may put an axe to it.

§ 237. A tree planted in the commons belongs to the one who planted it, but its fruit is eaten by whoever can, without the one who planted it being able to stop them.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN — THE BOUNDARY.

SECTION FIFTY-SEVEN — The Boundaries of Land Are Not Moved.

§ 238. A boundary consists of large, upright stones, set as far below the ground as above it. A marked tree may also serve as a boundary.

§ 239. The boundary stone has witnesses around it. These are six or twelve pebbles (small stones), which are buried in the ground all round the foot of the boundary stone.

§ 240. At the setting of boundaries, besides the houses concerned, there must also be present the elders of the village, the elders of the Banner and as many as possible of the young people and children, and also people from the surrounding villages, so that the boundary is remembered.

§ 241. Each piece of land, whether it be field or meadow, garden or vineyard, woodlot or grove, enclosure, or the surroundings of the house, and village with village, Banner with Banner and house with house, are separated by a boundary.

§ 243. The bones of the grave and the boundary stone are equal before the Kanun. To move a boundary is the same as to disturb the bones of the dead.

§ 244. He who undertakes to divide boundaries, or to set right some forgotten boundary, shall take it upon his soul, shall load a stone and a clod of earth on his shoulder, and shall lead the two houses, or the two villages, or the two Banners, setting the new boundary or pointing out the marks of the old boundaries.

§ 245. With stone and earth on his shoulder, the elder who leads in the dividing of the old boundaries shall swear an oath before he sets out.

1) “By this stone and earth (or by this weight) with which I have loaded myself, from what I have heard from my forefathers, the lines of the boundaries were as I shall now show you, and as far as my mind and my soul tell me, I shall not weigh on the side of either party.”

2) “By this weight, here and here were the ancient boundaries and here I too am setting them; may I carry it in the next life if I am deceiving you.”

3) “By this weight, and may it weigh on me in the next life, just here were the old marks of the boundaries, as my great-grandfather told me when I was a small boy and a goatherd with him. He took it with him to the next life that the boundaries are here and here, and on his word I too take it upon my soul.”

4) “May this weight weigh on me in this life and in the next, if I do not go faithfully by the old boundaries.”

§ 247. Once you have taken it by weight (once you have taken the boundary stone on your shoulder), there is no man who can move it.

§ 248. If the stone and the clod have been given to the elder, and he has put them on his shoulder and has set about showing the boundaries, no one may come forward to stop him, but he is told: Lead on then, and if you do not act justly, may this weight weigh on you in the next life!

§ 249. When the elder has set the boundary, he shall hold his hand on it and say: “Whoever moves this stone, may it weigh on him in the next life.”

§ 250. Whoever moves a boundary with the aim of embroiling house with house, or village with village, or Banner with Banner, driven to it by promises and gifts, if he is found out, besides the fine and the disgrace, is also charged with the damages that are caused by this embroilment.

§ 251. If a killing has taken place as a result of the embroilment over the moved boundary, the one who caused it shall pay a fine of 100 rams and 1 ox, and is executed by the whole village.

SECTION FIFTY-EIGHT.

§ 252. In order to remove every misunderstanding, the boundary shall not bend and shall not wind about, but shall cut straight.

SECTION FIFTY-NINE.

§ 253. If someone pushes inside another’s boundary without knowing that it is another’s land, and no one has gone to his door or called out to him to tell him that he has crossed into what is another’s, even if he has done some damage to timber or to anything else [two words unclear in the source], he is not made to pay anything for the damage done, but he only leaves the place, since it has turned out to be another’s.

§ 254. If brothers, or cousins, or clan with clan, or village with village come to blows over boundaries, should a hundred be killed, they simply perish, for boundaries are not moved. Pledges and Elders shall disentangle them.

§ 255. If a killing happens at the time of the dividing of the boundaries, or if a killing occurs among shepherds on the mountain as they jostle one another over the boundary of the pasture on the mountain or in the high pasture, then all arbitration about the place of the boundary is cut short. “He asked me for the grazing penalty, I answered him with iron and flintlock.” There where the cairns are raised, the place of the boundary remains.

§ 257. If it happens that two men are killed shot for shot and a good distance from one another, the boundary of the one side stays at the cairn of the one, and that of the other at the cairn of the other.

§ 259. If it happens that the man who is shot does not fall from the gunshot, and takes heart and pushes on, now rising, now falling, crawling towards the other’s boundary, however deep he enters, there where he falls and, worn out by his wound, dies, his cairn is raised, and that cairn remains as the boundary, even though it is on another’s land.

§ 260. The land remains to the village and the Banner to which the slain man who pushed on belonged, and there is no man who dares to move the cairn that was left as the boundary, because it was taken with blood and with a life laid down.

§ 261. This right holds only when men are killed over boundaries and not for every killing.

SECTION SIXTY — The Boundary Won by the “Stone-Throw” or by the Loaded Slab.

(In very early times, perhaps when there were no guns, in the dividing of boundaries the stone-throw was used for nearby boundaries, and for the far ones a slab or a stone of monstrous size was made ready with a “who will take it on!”, that is, to load oneself with it.)

§ 262. The two Banners in dispute would each find a strong man, and the dividing of the boundaries would be left to them.

§ 263. By the stone-throw: Whoever managed to throw the stone furthest towards the other’s land, that land remained to his Banner. More plainly: if I hurled the stone further, I took that land from you; if you hurled it further, you took the land from me.

§ 264. With a slab or a great stone on the back: loading the slab or the stone on themselves, they pushed on until they sank beneath it. He who pushed on furthest, there the place of the boundary of his Banner would remain. (As that of the man from below Nderfanda at the Fusha të Lugjeve on Mal Shêjt, in the high pastures of Orosh.)

SECTION SIXTY-ONE — The Boundary Set with the “Axe”.

§ 265. If need presses me to get out some timber, either because I have no high pasture or because I cannot find the kind of timber that I require, I seize the axe and go into another’s high pasture. At the crack of the axe the guards of the high pasture come and find me cutting up a felled pine.

§ 266. If the trespasser has made haste, and the strength of his arms has served him, and he has swung the axe and driven it deep into the trunk of the pine, and if the guards of the high pasture have not been able to pull it out, the boundary of the Banner of the one who planted the axe remained there. (As happened to Gjokë Buça of Kaçinari with Kushneni.)

Note: The boundaries won by blood, by the stone-throw and by the planting of the axe are to be counted among the kanuns of the Giants, for the reason that in winning them strength was at work to drive away shame and disgrace. They will be understood more clearly still when we begin to set out in detail the customs of our Mountains.

SECTION SIXTY-TWO — The Village Road.

§ 267. “The road and the path between two boundaries require their own fathom [of width].”

a) The road of the quarters of the village shall be eight palms wide, four palms from the one, four from the other.

b) For the setting of a fence between two fields, eight palms shall be left: as much by the one as by the other.

c) If it is not a village road, but the road of two neighbours, these, if they leave a lane between them, shall each leave one palm, so that the boundary stays in the middle; if they leave no lane, they shall weave the fence together.

d) If the land is enclosed with an earth bank, it shall be begun as far from the other’s boundary as the bank is thick.

e) If a house is built, it shall be built as far from the other’s boundary as the eaves take up.

f) If a well is dug, it shall be dug far enough away not to draw off the water of the neighbour’s well, or as far as its mouth is wide. “Water is the blood of the earth.”

g) If an olive or a fig or any useful tree is planted, it shall be planted five feet from the other’s boundary; if it does not bear, it shall be put ten feet from the boundary. [The condition is uncertain.]

h) If the tree has grown within the boundary, but too close to the other’s boundary, and its owner has not pruned it, the neighbour has the right to prune it and to remove the damage: “Prune another’s overhang as far as the billhook reaches”.

i) If someone wishes to plant a tree of any kind, he shall keep it ten feet away from the other’s boundary.

j) A timber tree or fruit tree that harms another’s field with its shade shall either be uprooted by its owner, or he shall pay the yearly damage to the owner of the field (Highlands of Lezha).

k) Whoever cuts down someone’s timber tree or fruit tree around the house, purely out of spite, shall pay 500 grosh to the owner of the tree cut down.

SECTION SIXTY-THREE — The Highway.

§ 268. The highway shall be wide enough for a loaded horse and oxen with the yoke to pass.

§ 271. “Work moves the highway aside, but it cannot put it into water where the stock drowns, nor onto a ledge (rock) where the stock breaks its neck.”

§ 272. If you have moved the village road away from your land, you shall not make it too crooked, and you shall bear the labour of making it good yourself.

§ 273. If you have made it badly, and the harm falls on you, keep it for yourself; if the harm falls on another, it is laid at your door, and you shall answer according to the damage.

§ 274. “The road of the Banner shall be as wide as the staff of the Banner is long.”

SECTION SIXTY-FOUR — The Blind Road.

§ 275. A path or a stile or, in the words of the kanun, a blind road, if it is within your four boundaries, close it and work the land.

§ 276. If the path has always been there, where people on foot (fellow villagers) have passed, but it causes you damage in fields, gardens, vineyards and orchards, if you close it, you shall open another, but not too roundabout.

§ 277. If the path was granted as a courtesy and by word, and it turns into an abuse, you have the right to close it, and to send word to the village not to come that way any more.

§ 278. If it is a path by which fellow villagers, wedding escorts with the bride and mourners with the dead have passed, whether towards the Church or towards the graves, and it has been there of old, you cannot close it.

§ 279. For the moving of any path, the consent of the village is absolutely necessary.

SECTION SIXTY-FIVE — The Grazing Penalty.

§ 280. “Give the grazing penalty yourself, otherwise they will take it from you by force.”

§ 282. If a flock belonging to others has been caught on the mountain or in the winter pasture of another Banner, the owner of the flock shall pay the grazing penalty.

§ 284. “The bellwether’s bell cannot be taken as the grazing penalty; it is the honour of the flock.”

§ 285. The owner of the mountain has no right to touch the flock nor to take the animal with his own hand; the hand of the owner of the flock shall itself give him the animal for the damage.

§ 286. The owner of the mountain has no right to choose the animal, but shall take the animal that the hand of the shepherd gives him.

§ 287. If another’s flock enters another’s mountain a hundred times in a day, so many animals shall the owner of the flock pay.

§ 288. If the shepherd has refused to pay the grazing penalty, and the owner of the mountain has risen with some companions and has raided the flock on his own mountain, then both the village and the Banner support the raider, and demand an account from the owner of the flock. The village and the Banner of the shepherd shall either compel him to pay the grazing penalty, or renounce him.

BOOK FIVE — WORK

SECTION SIXTY-SIX.

§ 289. Work moves the highway aside, but it cannot put it into water where the stock drowns, nor onto a ledge (rock) where the stock breaks its neck. (See Section LXIII, “The Highway”, 271.)

§ 290. If the highway passes right through your land and you make up your mind to clear that land, you may move the road aside, but you may not put it through gullies and ravines or along the edges of waters, nor up against crags and cliffs.

§ 291. “Work moves the path.” If you make up your mind to work the land through which the village path runs, work it, but you shall find a place for the path.

§ 292. The kanun does not want anyone’s land to be harmed, and therefore it says that “The hoe and the pick move the road”, but the road and the path must be made good with another place. [Shaterkazi, read as shat e kazmë, “hoe and pick”, is uncertain.]

SECTION SIXTY-SEVEN — The Tenant Farmer.

§ 294. The landlord shall see to building a hut, a low house or a tower for the tenant and his household.

§ 296. If the tenant has oxen of his own, he works the land on such terms, for the hire of the yoke, as he settles with the owner of the land.

§ 297. If the tenant has no oxen of his own, he may not take them from someone else, but from the landlord.

§ 298. The implements, the ironware and their sharpening are the tenant’s burden.

§ 299. Dividing and channelling the irrigation water, and keeping his mind on the dams, is the tenant’s duty.

§ 300. If the tenant has diverted the water of the channel during another’s turn and of his own accord, the tenant pays the damage.

§ 301. Digging ditches for the land is the duty of the landlord and not of the tenant.

§ 303. The ploughing of the lands, the sowing, the hoeing, the irrigating, the reaping and the husking fall to the tenant and not to the landlord.

§ 304. Everything that the tenant sows on the landlord’s land (every crop) he shall divide with the landlord according to the agreement they have made.

§ 305. Fruit trees (figs, walnuts, pomegranates, apples, pears and the like): the tenant shakes them, gathers the fruit and divides it in half with the landlord.

§ 306. The tenant has the right to open a patch of garden on the landlord’s land, and this for himself, for cabbages, onions, garlic and other vegetables.

§ 308. If the tenant plants tobacco or potatoes outside the assigned garden, he has them on halves with the landlord.

§ 309. If the tenant holds the landlord’s livestock on halves, the straw stays with the tenant and the lands shall be manured with the manure. The tenant bears the labour of the work.

§ 310. If there are meadows joined to the grain land, the tenant mows them and divides the hay in half with the landlord; but the fencing and the irrigating fall to the tenant.

§ 311. The grazing of the meadows is kept by the tenant who guarded, fenced, irrigated and mowed them, and the landlord may not give it to anyone else; but the landlord’s livestock shall also graze there.

§ 312. The tenant stacks the hay of the meadows into ricks, but the carrying of it falls to the landlord.

§ 313. The reaping, the cleaning and the shelling of the maize fall to the tenant, unless the landlord gathers it into cribs, whole or in the ear, and heaps it up in his own yard; then the tenant does the work and the landlord sees to the cleaning.

§ 314. For the watering of the garden vegetables, the tenant takes the water in the turn of the landlord’s lands.

SECTION SIXTY-EIGHT — The Smith.

§ 315. “The smithy (like the Church, the mill and the inn) cannot have a guest violated.”

§ 317. The smith shall forge in the order in which people bring him their ironware.

§ 318. The smith shall not look to friendship, nor set apart the rich from the poor, the far from the near. His duty is to keep his mind on the order.

§ 319. The smith’s labour is paid with a koshiq [a measure of grain] for each pendë of land [the area a yoke of oxen ploughs in a day]. [Koshiq is uncertain.]

§ 320. The smith is bound to forge, but each person shall bring him the iron for himself.

§ 321. The tongs, the bellows, the anvil and the other tools are the smith’s. The charcoal shall be brought to him by the owners of the ironware. [The tool names are uncertain.]

§ 322. The smith’s duty is to re-edge and to sharpen the ironware all the year round.

§ 323. The owners of the ironware have their own day fixed once a year; and on this turn of forging they owe the smith the day’s bread and a worker. – For the rest of the year they owe him nothing.

§ 324. The smith is bound to forge for one year, and he may not turn anyone away.

§ 325. If the smith has added something of his own iron, the owners of the ironware shall pay him money for the iron he has used on them.

§ 326. For the forging of chains, traps, dog irons and other ironware that does not belong to husbandry, if anyone wishes to have them forged, he shall pay the smith’s labour separately.

§ 327. No one is bound to bring the smith’s wage for forging to his door: he shall go out himself to collect it.

§ 329. The smith’s duty is to forge one axe apiece for ten men of his village who go out to war.

§ 330. The smith, with all his household, is not exempt from any duty of the village.

SECTION SIXTY-NINE — The Mill.

§ 332. The miller shall be ready night and day, both to guard the loads, and to grind, and so that the customers lose nothing.

§ 333. Everything that the customers hand over to the millers, they shall take with responsibility.

§ 334. If anything is lost, the loss is the miller’s and not the customer’s; as much as the miller lost for them, he shall pay them.

§ 336. In the order in which the customers come, the miller is bound to grind their loads, without having before his eyes friend or well-wisher.

§ 337. A mill that is held jointly by the village has the days of its turns fixed.

§ 338. If the mill has an owner, the grinding goes as the customers come, just as at the smithy, at the spring and at the ferry. All these follow the order of arrival.

§ 339. If you had a fixed turn of grinding, a day or a half-day, and went to grind and found the mill occupied, you have the right to stop the stone and to cut off his grinding, to take out his flour and his grain and to grind for yourself.

§ 340. If you had no fixed turn of grinding, and went to the mill and found a hundred customers there, you shall stay and wait, or go to another mill.

SECTION SEVENTY — The Mill-Race.

§ 341. The mill-race, if it was bought with the estate, may not be lowered by anyone, may not be moved, and may not be dried up by anyone.

§ 342. This channel, if it was bought with its bed and its estate, is called an estate channel; therefore, even if the fields go dry, no one may make the millstones go dry.

§ 343. If there is one channel both for the mills and for the fields, and with the water of this channel the fields are irrigated and the mills grind, the millstones shall stay dry and the crops shall be watered, for the reason that “If you have had nothing to reap, you have nothing to grind.”

§ 344. As for the outcry of the millers that their millstones, which they hold separately, are left dry, the kanun does not hear their complaint and tells them that “For a shop and a mill, partners are not fined.”

§ 347. This path is required because the miller must pass along it to clean the channel and to channel the water.

§ 348. For channelling the water, all the millers, however many there are, shall come out together to the channel; whoever is absent without the leave of his fellows (the millers) shall pay a fine according to what the millers have fixed. No one else takes a share of this fine except the millers.

§ 349. If a death occurs in a miller’s house, the kanun frees him for eight days from every work that the village holds in common, and no one may come to his door to ask him for a worker, either for the village or for the mill.

§ 350. After eight days he shall send the worker, even if he is of the House of Gjomarku.

SECTION SEVENTY-ONE — Irrigation.

§ 352. The channel was laid out long ago with some kind of agreement and bound among the partnership; that agreement no one may now move.

§ 353. The places through which the channels pass were walked over with Elders and with people: what was walked over is called divided and settled, and has become an arbitration.

§ 354. A new arbitration cannot override the old, because “The kanun does not put Elder over Elder.”

§ 356. Even if someone complains about the channel, his complaint is not heard, because the channel had passed through that place before the complaint began; so, even if he wears himself out with pledges, there is no court that can stop the channel.

§ 357. The channel has flowed and has made the place its bed, the bed makes the place its estate; so there it shall stay, run and work.

§ 358. No one can move anyone from his own estate. No one can stop another’s work, because it has laid a foundation: “a foundation is not uprooted” is in the kanun.

§ 359. A channel, whether of the fields or of the mills, is for the good of the partnership: it must of necessity pass through some place. Wherever the survey line falls, the kanun lays on us the duty to bear both the light and the heavy.

§ 360. “A village is not left to go dry for the sake of one house.” “The common good is put before private damage.”

§ 362. Since the work is done for the common good, wherever the line of the channel falls, there it shall pass, even if you have no turn of water in the channel.

§ 363. Water does not know how to wind uphill and downhill: if its head falls towards your land, you cannot stop it.

§ 364. Once the course of the channel has been laid out, and you make up your mind to build a house among the marks of the channel, you may not move them; even if your hearth falls there, the channel shall pass beside it.

§ 365. If the channel falls through your plot, you cannot stop it, but the partnership shall make good the damage that befalls you, either by making you a sharer in the water of the channel, or with a price, or by giving you another place.

§ 366. If your mind is set in obstinacy, the channel is not stopped; the common good requires it: if you do not come to terms with your fellows, the court takes your place from you and can also fine you.

§ 368. The kanun does not allow the irrigation channel to be lowered, because it would come out lower than the measure that was set for it, and other people’s fields would be left dry.

§ 369. Whoever sets to work in the bed or the estate of the channel will either destroy it, or lower it, or raise it.

§ 370. The kanun does not allow the channel to be destroyed or lowered; therefore it shall be raised.

§ 371. Whatever someone touches in the estate of the channel for the good of his own house, the kanun does not forbid, but he shall see to it that he brings no harm to anyone, that the water does not diminish, and that its arrival is not delayed by windings.

§ 372. If someone has moved the estate of the channel for his own gain, he is bound to work himself to raise it, without anyone giving him help or a hand with the labour.

§ 374. If someone makes up his mind to raise the water channel higher, but on his own plot, in order to build a mill or a fulling mill, he shall make the new bed of the channel himself, but the water shall run through the estate channel.

§ 375. If anyone deliberately damages another’s channel, besides repairing it, he shall also pay the damage to the turn-holders, or he is fined according to the gravity of the offence.

§ 377. The old channel has taken its estate, so the new channel cannot dry it up.

§ 378. The kanun has made this proclamation so that channels do not multiply, for otherwise there would be no end of lawsuits and pledges.

§ 379. A channel has taken its estate who knows how many generations ago; therefore there is neither Elder nor kanun that can dry it up with a new channel.

§ 381. Whoever has a turn of water and needs to irrigate his field, meadow, garden, etc., is himself bound to go out and to close the dams.

§ 382. The dams of the channel are set and removed at sunrise or at sunset, or according to how much of the water someone has: the whole, half the channel, or a share.

§ 383. If the channel runs dry from its bed, or because of rains, or because it burst by itself, all the sharers in the channel, however many they are, shall come out to repair it and to channel the water.

§ 384. If the water has broken through at the place of someone who has a share in the channel, he shall repair it himself.

§ 385. If the channel has broken through at the place of someone who has no share in the channel, it falls to the holder of the water turn to come out and to close it.

§ 386. If livestock has broken through the water of the channel, its owner shall pay the damage to the one who suffered it.

SECTION SEVENTY-TWO — The Miller’s Toll.

§ 387. The grinding toll, which the miller takes for each load, consists of one babune.

§ 388. The miller has a right to the toll, like every worker to the wage for his labour. The worker wants his wage, and so too the miller wants his toll.

§ 389. The customer is bound to pay the toll according to what the kanun has fixed.

§ 390. “The Church, the mill, the smithy and the inn cannot have a guest violated.”

§ 391. In the mill all kinds of grain are ground and all sorts of people come, each one on his own business and for his own need.

§ 392. When going to the mill, each one takes his bread bag with him, and as long as he stays at the mill he eats his own bread.

§ 393. The miller grinds not for honour, but to take the toll for his own gain.

§ 394. The miller takes responsibility for the customers and for the loads until they have loaded the ground load and he has said to them “a good road to you”.

§ 395. Once the customer has set off and, as soon as he has gone beyond the precinct of the mill, someone confronts him and either kills him or takes his horse with the whole load, the miller neither has a guest violated nor is he held answerable, unless the customer had placed himself under his protection.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN — HUNTING

SECTION SEVENTY-THREE — The Determination of Hunting.

§ 396. The kanun has not fixed any season in which hunting is forbidden; in every season hunting is free in our mountains.

§ 397. If someone comes to hunt with greyhounds or with hounds in the surroundings of other people’s houses, the owner of the place has the right to stop him and not to let him hunt.

§ 398. No one may enter within another’s boundary to hunt; if anyone has dared to do so, his hunting is stopped and he goes home with nothing.

§ 399. If the village has gone out hunting as a whole village, everything that they kill they shall divide around.

§ 400. If fifty men are hunting and kill nothing but one hare, they shall divide it into that many shares.

§ 401. If 50 men go out hunting and half of them are armed and the other half unarmed, they take equal shares of the game, for the reason that they went out to the mountain with one purpose. The unarmed help the armed, now by shouting, now by keeping watch, now by surrounding the place.

§ 402. If the hunters’ hound has started some animal, and it tries to cross the highway, a traveller who happens to be there, who turns his weapon on it and kills it, may not take it.

§ 403. The game that was killed belongs to the owner of the hound, and the traveller who killed it is paid for the cost of his cartridge with a cartridge.

§ 404. He who draws blood from the game or kills it takes the “Shengjeta” from it [the hunter’s portion].

§ 405. The shengjeta consists of the lungs, and of the head for the game for which this is done.

§ 406. The shengjeta of the boar (the wild pig) consists of the head, the lungs and a sole’s piece of the hide, which the killer shall have separately.

§ 407. He who takes the shengjeta shall also take the shoulder, both of the boar and of the roe deer, and according to the kanun he shall take it to the Priest of the Parish.

§ 408. The killer, besides the shengjeta, has a share in the meat and in the hide of every game animal killed, like all the other hunters.

§ 409. If six hunters go out hunting and kill a boar, the killer takes the shengjeta, and they divide the meat and the hide together.

§ 410. If they were more than six, the killer takes the shengjeta and the whole hide, and they divide the meat per hunter.

§ 411. If the killer could not be determined, the shengjeta is taken by all the guns that were fired, and the meat and the hide are divided per hunter.

§ 412. If the hide of the boar does not yield as many pairs of sandals as there are hunters, they shall cut it up and divide it piece by piece.

§ 413. He who wounds the game is free to follow it through any village or Banner.

§ 414. If the wounded game is killed by other hunters, the one who wounded it takes the shengjeta, and both parties of hunters divide the meat and the hide.

§ 415. Wounded game, if it was not followed by the one who wounded it, belongs to the one who kills it.

§ 416. It is not kanun to weigh the meat of the game on the scales, but when they have cut it up into as many portions as there are hunters, they draw lots as it falls to each, or they leave it to one man and he divides it as it comes to hand.

§ 417. If it happens that hunters are hunting on the mountain and, as soon as they fire, someone shouts from the mountain: “Did you kill it, lads?” – and they rush and come up, finding the game not moved from its place and felled by the shot, they become sharers in the game like all the others.

§ 418. If the hunters have made haste and moved the game from that place to another, [the newcomers] have no right to that game.

§ 419. If you have gone out hunting, and someone has joined you, with a gun or even without a gun, if you kill anything, you shall give him a share.

SECTION SEVENTY-FOUR — Game Followed by Its Tracks.

§ 420. Animals followed by their tracks, if they are found to have gone into a hollow oak or into a cave, the one who followed and found them shall circle the oak three times with his tracks, or shall make three rows of tracks in front of the cave.

§ 422. A hundred foxes, martens or badgers followed by another man and gone in within the tracks, no one has the right to approach; the right belongs to the first tracks. [“Martens” is uncertain.]

§ 423. I set off on the tracks of an animal and another man comes out and cuts across my way, not knowing that someone is behind him, and shuts it in a cave or a hollow oak, circling it three times with his tracks; and after some time I turn up, I who had started it first: I have no right to that animal; it belongs to the one who shut it in.

§ 424. If I tracked an animal and shut it in a cave or a hollow oak, and set about cutting down the oak or attacking the cave to get it out, and it gets away from me and escapes, and I follow it until it goes into a cave or a hollow oak already tracked according to the kanun, I may not cross those tracks: I shall sit down there to wait until the owner of the tracks comes.

§ 425. When the owner of the tracks comes, they shall bear the labour of cutting down the oak together, and they shall divide the animals that are taken out.

§ 426. If the owner of the first tracks takes it into his head not to let the other man take his animal that escaped from him and hid there, the kanun gives the latter the right to take the animal that escaped from his fold into another’s fold.

§ 427. If an animal followed by someone escapes and goes into a cave or a hollow oak in someone else’s enclosure, he may not enter the enclosure without the owner’s leave. If he wishes to get the animal out, he shall divide it in half with the owner of the enclosure.

§ 428. If someone has gone out hunting and another man’s hound has followed him, the owner of the hound has no share in anything that he kills. If the owner of the hound sues him, the hunter shall pay him a day’s labour: 5 grosh.

SECTION SEVENTY-FIVE — Fishing.

§ 429. Fishing, like the hunting of animals, has no prohibition fixed by the kanun. In every season of the year fishing is free.

§ 430. Along the course of every river, within the boundary of his own village, anyone of the village may fish, and no one may stop him.

§ 431. Someone from another village may not come and fish within the boundary of a village.

§ 432. In the streams that are in one quarter of the village, no one may go fishing on his own, but they shall go out in a body.

§ 433. However many fish are caught, they shall be divided per hearth of that quarter.

§ 434. If five or six men have gone out from one house, and from another house only one man on his own, they shall divide the fish caught per house and not per head.

§ 435. In a stream that is close by someone’s house, no one may go to fish there without the owner’s leave, but he shall inform the owner, and the latter either goes himself, or sends one of his household, or gives leave to the one who spotted the fish to fish freely.

§ 436. If someone turns up – whether a guest or anyone of the village – just at the time of the fishing, he shall be given a share of the catch. It is kanun not to send off either a guest or a companion empty-handed.

§ 437. For fish caught with a net, a weighted net, perzivoj and kariqe [kinds of fish trap], the owners of these tools take two shares of the catch each.

§ 438. The fish caught shall be divided by count into as many shares or heaps as there are fishermen, and the large ones are divided by lot, as they fall to each.

§ 439. A weir trap or a basket may not be set facing other people’s fields, below which the river flows.

§ 440. If someone makes up his mind to set a weir trap or a basket facing other people’s lands, he shall come to an understanding with the owner of the land, and, if the latter allows him to set them, both the weir trap and the basket, they shall fish together, or now the one, now the other.

§ 441. Once someone has set a weir trap or a basket, no one else may set one above them, even if it is on his own land.

§ 442. If anyone dares to do so, setting his weir trap or basket above the other’s purely out of spite, the village has the right to remove the weir traps of both parties and not to let them fish at all.

§ 443. If someone has to float some timber (logs) down the river and has informed the owners of the weir trap or the basket that they should remove them until the timber has passed, and if they did not remove them and the timber wrecked them, the loss is the owner’s of the weir trap and the basket; the owner of the timber owes them nothing.

3. Fishing with rrjell. [Apparently a plant or substance used to stun fish; uncertain.]

§ 444. In pools or in places of still water that are within another’s boundary, no one may put in rrjell to kill fish.

§ 445. If the owner of the pool has given leave, they divide the catch in half.

§ 446. In fishing with rrjell, only the one who brings the load of rrjell takes a share.

§ 447. If poison has been put into the pools, along the course of the river or into the streams, the fish that are killed belong to those who put in the poison.

§ 449. The fish killed with poison may be followed by the owners of the poison along the course of the river, without anyone being able to stop them, even if they push on along the villages of another Banner.

§ 450. At the end of 24 (twenty-four) hours, the right of those who put in the poison comes to an end.

§ 451. Once poison has been put in by one party, the other party may not put in other poison either above or below those who put it in first.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN — TRADE.

SECTION SEVENTY-SIX — The Determination of Trade.

§ 452. Under the Kanun of trade one either buys and sells without conditions, that is, outright, or else with conditions, before witnesses, or else with earnest money.

§ 453. The earnest is that grosh (of money) which is given before the thing being bought is taken in hand.

§ 454. “The earnest makes the thing yours, but you shall pay whatever you still owe beyond it.”

§ 455. If you have given one or a hundred grosh as earnest, you are the owner of the thing secured with earnest.

§ 457. Once the earnest is given, even if a hundred buyers come forward, the seller may no longer go back.

§ 458. If the buyer has had second thoughts, even if he had given a hundred grosh as earnest, he loses them.

§ 459. If the seller should go back on his word, selling the thing secured with earnest to someone else because the other gave him more, the sale is illegal.

§ 460. If the matter comes before Elders and pledges, the kanun makes the seller take the thing back and give it to the one who had secured it with earnest.

§ 461. If the seller should deny that he has taken any earnest, and the giver has no witness, the kanun puts him to the oath: if he has sworn the oath, the earnest is lost.

§ 462. A thing bought with conditions, if it turns out to be defective, is returned to its owner.

§ 463. A thing which is bought with the fear that it may be stolen, if its owner turns up after it was bought, the buyer takes it to the one who sold it to him, and the seller of the stolen thing shall return to him the price that he had given for it. The principle of the kanun is: “Wherever the owner finds his property, he takes it.”

SECTION SEVENTY-SEVEN — The Sale of Land.

§ 464. Before any land, or a turn of irrigation water, or a turn at the mill is sold, it shall be offered at the door of the cousins, the brotherhood and the clan.

§ 465. “The neighbour buys the neighbour’s land, if the cousins, the brotherhood and the clan have not bought it.”

§ 466. If neither those mentioned nor the neighbour buy it, the owner is free to sell it to anyone in the village.

§ 467. If the village has not bought it either, then you are free to sell it to any buyer.

Note.

It has almost never happened in our Highlands that any land, mill or turn of irrigation water has been sold outside the village. If the cousins, the clan and the neighbour cannot afford to buy that land, mill or turn of water, the village will sell and resell itself, and will not allow an outsider to buy it and to get under its nose.

§ 468. If someone has gone and sold land, a mill or a turn of water without proclaiming it to the cousins, the brotherhood, the clan or the neighbour, the sale is illegal in the eyes of the kanun.

§ 470. The buyer may not object, knowing that he bought improperly, but he shall take his money back.

§ 471. If the buyer has said that he gave this warning to the seller before he bought the land, and has also confirmed this with his hand on the oath, the seller shall be fined according to the gravity of the offence, but the sale of the land remains illegal all the same and shall be undone.

§ 472. A separated brother and close cousins buy the land 100 grosh cheaper than the brotherhood and the distant clan. (In Dukagjin, Shala, Shoshi, etc., one gives it to the near kinsman 500 grosh cheaper than to the distant one.)

§ 473. Land sold with conditions: I sell you this land today, but if tomorrow you make up your mind to resell it, you may not give it to anyone else without first bringing it back to my door.

§ 474. This condition binds the buyer, and he may not sell it to anyone else without offering it at the door of the first seller.

§ 475. If the land was sold without the conditions mentioned, the buyer is free to sell it whenever he sees fit.

§ 476. For the sale of land, of a mill or of a turn of water, it is kanun to drink the raki.

SECTION SEVENTY-EIGHT — The Sale of Weapons and of the Horse.

§ 479. If you have bought a weapon, and the seller has said to you: “May you bear it with honour!”, and you have hung it on the hook with your own hand, it stays in your house, even if you later find some defect in it.

§ 481. If you have bought a horse, and tied it to the peg with your own hand, and turned your back and found it dead, the loss is yours; the owner shall be given the money.

§ 483. If you have bought an ox or a cow, etc., with conditions: if this animal turns out to have liver rot [kelbazët, liver fluke; probable reading] by Saint […]’s day. [The sentence breaks off in the source.]

SECTION SEVENTY-NINE — Prices in the Kanun.

2. A piece of land that yields 100 grosh of profit … 500. “A hundred grosh of profit, five hundred grosh of land.”

3. A pendë of land [a day’s ploughing for a yoke of oxen]: according to the land; for duties it is reckoned heavy. [Unclear.]

4. A lot in the grove, a turn at the mill and at the water: according to the place.

SECTION EIGHTY — The Paid Messenger.

§ 485. “He travels the road, he takes a wage. – A hired horse has its hide on the beam.” [The second proverb is obscure.]

§ 486. A messenger is the one who travels the road for a wage on another’s business.

§ 487. The messenger does not go under the protection of the one who sends him; he is under his own protection.

§ 488. If some harm befalls the messenger on the road, the one who sent him does not have a guest violated.

§ 489. The messenger, like the matchmaker, travels the road for “shoes” and with his own bread; therefore they are under no one’s protection.

§ 490. If the messenger set out straight from his own house, and someone killed him, there is no violation of a guest, either for the house that sent him on the errand or for the house to which he is sent.

§ 491. If the messenger set out from the house that sends him, or from the house to which he was sent, and if some harm befalls him with their bread, they have a guest violated, according to the Kanun.

SECTION EIGHTY-ONE.

§ 492. The ancient kanun – and in many cases that of more recent times too – did not know prices in money, and obligations were paid with “goods for goods”.

§ 494. If someone has done damage with his livestock in a field, a garden, a vineyard or a meadow, the owner of the livestock shall make it good to the one who suffered the damage with crop for crop damaged.

§ 495. If someone has incurred a fine of the village or of the Banner, the fine is paid in livestock: with cows, oxen and rams, and not with a price in money.

§ 496. If someone has killed someone, the blood is paid with “goods for goods”: with livestock, with land and with weapons. Although in these more recent times the killer would pay money for blood, he would also pay weapons.

§ 497. The fine for a killing is paid with “goods for goods”, as is the fine for grave offences against the village or the Banner, such as treachery, the violation of a guest and the like.

§ 498. The lowest fine goes down to one ram, and the highest may not exceed a hundred rams.

BOOK SIX — GIFTS

SECTION EIGHTY-TWO — The Loan.

§ 499. The kanun of the mountains does not recognise loans with an addition of gain (interest).

§ 500. The kanun recognises the simple loan: as much as you gave me, so much I have to give you back.

§ 501. To make the business of the loan secure and to remove every suspicion of bad faith over a loan given, a pledge may be taken.

§ 502. The pledge consists of an object that is worth either as much as the loan given, or even more.

§ 503. The pledge that is taken for a loan given may be held as a “forfeitable pledge”.

§ 504. A pledge is held to be forfeitable when the one who takes the loan binds himself to the lender either to bring the loan on the fixed day, or to let the pledge be lost.

§ 506. If the loan was not brought on the fixed day and the borrower did not come to see the lender, the latter has the right to sell the pledge and to recover his loan.

§ 507. The fixed day lasts until sunset, and the lender shall wait for the debtor until sunset; if he has not come, the pledge is sold.

§ 508. Whatever is left over beyond the lender’s loan from the sale of the pledge, he shall hand over to the owner of the pledge.

Note.

According to the principles mentioned and to the account of the old men, the Albanians of earlier times in our Mountains did not know how either to give or to take loans with an addition of gain; this evil vice must have come in very late.

SECTION EIGHTY-THREE — The Term.

§ 509. The term of loans is a fixed time within which the debtor shall bring the loan he has taken to its owner.

§ 510. A loan may be given on one’s word of honour and manliness, with a surety, or also simply by securing it with a pledge. On pledges see Book IV, Section LXXXII, “The Loan”, [§] 56. [The cross-reference is garbled in the source; “The Loan” is Section Eighty-Two of this book.]

CHAPTER SIXTEEN — THE PROMISED REWARD, THE GIFT

SECTION EIGHTY-FOUR — The Promised Reward.

§ 511. The promised reward is the promise of something which one person makes to another for some labour that he is to undertake.

§ 512. The promised reward is promised: for an arbitration, for a journey or an errand, for the reconciliation of a blood feud, for matchmaking or to a healer.

§ 513. The promised reward consists of a price which may reach up to 500 grosh.

§ 514. The promised reward is also promised without the price being fixed in money, e.g.: You will have a pair of thin sandals, if you bring off this or that matter for me. Thin sandals have a price of 10, 20, up to 25 grosh. Thick sandals from 50, 100 up to 500 grosh. An oka of coffee from 50 up to 500 grosh. An oka of coffee beans is reckoned as fixed at 9 grosh.

§ 515. If the elder, the messenger, the matchmaker, etc. has not settled the matter, the promised reward is not given, nor does the kanun hear his complaint over work not completed.

§ 516. Once he has settled the matter, whatever anyone has promised to another he shall give him, because “The promised reward is at the bottom of the purse”.

SECTION EIGHTY-FIVE — The Gift.

§ 517. If you have told someone that you want to give him this or that thing, and afterwards you have eaten your word, with “I gave it, I did not give it to you”, the kanun does not trouble you with pledge and elder.

§ 519. The kanun says: The sullied face, whether you wash it or blacken it even more [the paragraph breaks off at the end of the book in the source].

BOOK SEVEN — THE SPOKEN WORD

SECTION EIGHTY-SIX — The Word.

“A word does not make a death.” – “Witches do not fall into blood.” – “The mouth puts no one into blood.”

§ 521. The word of my mouth enters another’s ear, and a third uses it for someone’s ruin; I sit back and laugh.

§ 522. Should my word cause a killing that must be answered for, I sit back and grin, and no one can hold me for the evil deeds that my mouth caused.

§ 523. He who goes about sowing and spreading evil and troublemaking words, now about one, now about another, is called in the language of the kanun “a bad labourer”. – “No one calls him to work, no one gives him wages.”

§ 524. Whether I spoke or did not speak, the mouth seals nothing. – The kanun pays no heed to the words of mischief-makers.

Note:

The meaning and the force of the word spoken in the heat of a killing, and what “The word is a pledge” means, will be set out in time.

SECTION EIGHTY-SEVEN — Denial.

§ 525. A denier is the one who does not submit to an accusation or a slander, whether over some damage, a theft, a killing, etc.

§ 526. The kanun does not admit snarls and threats made on a mere guess. – The denier cannot be forced to pay, willy-nilly, for every accusation and slander.

§ 528. The accuser and the slanderer bring the denier to reason with Elders and a pledge.

SECTION EIGHTY-EIGHT — The Oath.

§ 529. The oath is a religious act by means of which a person who wishes to clear himself of a grave accusation touches with his hand a sign of the faith, calling upon the name of God as witness of the truth.

§ 530. This form of oath is accepted by the kanun of the Mountains of Albania both for clearing oneself of accusations and for binding a besa [a sworn word or truce].

§ 531. An oath by word of mouth alone the kanun neither accepts nor approves, and to clear oneself of accusations it is absolutely required that the oath be taken upon a sign of the faith and that it be touched with the hand.

§ 532. The oath of the Albanian has two things in view: a) it calls God to witness the truth; b) it submits to the weight of eternal punishment and of the temporal fine of the kanun.

SECTION EIGHTY-NINE — The Oath on the “Stone” and the Oath on the Cross and on the Gospel.

§ 533. The oath of the Mountains of Albania is of two kinds: a) the oath on the “stone”, by the Kanun (3) [an unexplained note mark in the source]; b) the oath on the Cross or on the Gospel.

§ 534. The oath on the “stone” is, in the eyes of the kanun, among the heaviest and most fearsome oaths that the Albanian of the Mountains knows.

§ 535. It is kanun that, if the denier wishes to clear himself of an accusation, he shall swear either on the “stone” or on the Cross and Gospel.

§ 536. Of the oath-takers or jurors, some are counted as the “hand of the oath”, who shall touch the Gospel, and some others are left to listen to the oath in the Church. (Dukagjin.)

SECTION NINETY — Who Shall Take the Oath.

§ 541. The oath is not given to the accuser and does not fall to him, even though he may perhaps have seen the wrongdoer with his own eyes stealing or killing.

§ 542. The reason of the kanun is that the oath should not be given to the one who complains, because, if he did not shrink from the accusation, he would not shrink from the oath either, if only to come out with a gain.

§ 544. The Kanun says: “The oath does not take” and “The oath does not fall to the one who takes”.

§ 545. But since, according to the principle of the kanun, “The thief carries the oath on his shoulder”, both to reassure the owner of the lost goods and to rein in the suspect, the kanun has allowed the oath to be recognised only with jurors.

§ 546. The oath is neither given to nor heard from the one who wishes to clear himself without jurors, because

§ 547. The principle of the kanun is: “To clear oneself by one’s own oath and answer to no one” [is not allowed].

SECTION NINETY-ONE.

§ 548. There are few cases in which the kanun has seen fit to let “the oath take”.

§ 549. For a lost thing with a mark on it, found in someone’s hand, where others too can bear witness that it belongs to the one who claims it.

§ 550. Even if the one in whose hand the marked thing was found denies it, the kanun does not recognise his denial and the oath is not given to him.

§ 551. If he has refused to give the thing to its owner, the owner shall swear that the thing is his, and the thing shall be given to him.

§ 552. If someone has claimed some debt or loan against a dead man, of which the dead man’s family do not know, or which they do not want to lose, and they deny it, the principle of the kanun is: “The kanun does not recognise denial on behalf of the dead.”

§ 553. In this case too “The oath takes”, that is, the accuser shall take the oath.

§ 554. For every claim that is made against a dead man, the oath shall be taken upon his grave.

§ 555. On the appointed day both the accuser and the family of the dead man shall be at the grave of the dead man against whom the loan or the debt is claimed.

§ 556. The accuser shall take stones and earth from the grave of the dead man, shall put them on his shoulder and shall go around the grave of the dead man three times, speaking these words fixed for oaths of this kind:

“I … claim such and such a loan or debt from this dead man, and if I am accusing him falsely, may I carry it in this life and in the next, with the stone and with every place where his foot trod while he was alive.”

§ 557. Once the accuser has taken this oath, the dead man’s family shall pay the loan or the debt that he claims from the dead man.

SECTION NINETY-TWO.

§ 558. The kanun has left the way open for the oath to be given for a whole house.

§ 559. In the oath for the house, the head of the house shall swear in his own name and in the name of the people of the house.

§ 560. With the oath for the house, the owner of the lost goods has no right to put the people of the house to the oath as well, once the head of the house has sworn in their name.

§ 562. He who gives the oath for the house has the right to leave to the oath with the jury that house which his heart most suspects.

§ 563. If the owner of the lost goods has singled out one house to give the oath with the jury, he shall also single out as many other houses in the village as he will need as jurors, because he may not put anyone to two oaths.

§ 564. In the oath that is given for the house too, the oath shall be taken for oneself, for the people of the house, and “with sedije”.

SECTION NINETY-THREE.

§ 565. The oath that is taken on the heads of one’s sons is counted among the heavy oaths, and it is lawful in the eyes of the kanun.

§ 566. If someone is asked for the oath on the heads of his sons, he shall take it and shall set the accuser’s heart at rest.

§ 567. Once they have fixed the day of the oath, the accuser shall go to the suspect’s house, and the latter gathers together as many male sons as he has under his roof, brings their heads close, rests his hands on their heads and swears the oath: “By the heads of my sons, I did not do you that wrong of which you suspect me, nor do I know who did it to you!”

§ 568. Beyond this oath the accuser has no right to press the suspect with other oaths.

SECTION NINETY-FOUR.

§ 572. The sedija is a means that the kanun has set as a principle, to rein in the village, so that no one becomes an accomplice in the theft of the goods of the community or of anyone at all.

§ 574. For even though the one who takes the oath did not steal or kill, perhaps he has heard, or even knows, that his brother or his cousin or someone else stole or killed.

§ 575. When the oath is taken, he shall say: “Neither I myself nor anyone of my house, and I do not know who stole from you or killed [your man].”

§ 576. That is why the kanun has set up the jury: so that, with all those people going to the oath, perhaps one or another or a third may know something, whether from hearing or from seeing some sign, and may not sell his soul by clearing a man with a false oath.

§ 577. Once the oath “with sedije” has been taken, no one has the right to suspect anyone any more over that theft or lost blood, neither the suspect nor the jury. One must go elsewhere to search for the lost goods or blood. “The kanun does not allow oath upon oath.”

§ 578. If someone could not take the oath “with sedije”, he shall not go to the oath, bearing in mind that he is being weighed before God, and that a false oath, besides bearing its punishment for the soul, brings punishment and a black face after it, if it is found out.

§ 579. He shall speak with one of the Elders, so that he stops the jury from going to the oath, and he will tell them who the wrongdoer is, so that they put the owner of the lost goods or blood on his trail.

§ 580. The owner of the goods or of the blood, after further enquiries, shall demand an account from them according to the kanun.

§ 581. If [the culprit] will not submit, the owner of the goods or the blood has the right to put him to the oath, or, if an informer has come forward, he shall answer for the obligation and for the informer’s fee.

§ 583. The kanun does not allow refusal of the oath; if someone has refused to take the oath with sedije, the kanun holds him to be guilty; so, either the oath with sedije, or pay for the goods, or reveal the wrongdoer, if he himself had no hand in that theft or killing.

§ 584. The principle of the kanun does not move: “The crown of the oath is the sedija”, and “The sedija brings out the goods”.

§ 585. “Whatever is taken by oath remains with the one who took it.” “After the oath, hang a bell on it (the sheep); after the oath, drive it (the ox) into the field.”

§ 586. These are the words of the kanun, not because it likes them, but because there is no way to put a hook into him once he has been cleared by oath.

§ 587. The kanun is left helpless in these cases, and so the saying has remained: “May God not let you meet a perjurer!”

§ 588. To avoid every suspicion of a false oath, the Elders of the court shall keep their eyes open, choosing honourable men as named jurors, on whom a just oath depends.

SECTION NINETY-FIVE — The Fine for a False Oath.

§ 589. If some bold-hearted man comes forward and leads the owner to his goods after a false oath, the perjurer shall pay for the goods twofold and the fine for the false oath, and on top of this the kanun sets on them the seal of infamy, generation after generation, unto seven generations.

§ 590. If an informer comes forward after the oath, the Elders shall examine the matter well and weigh it without haste.

§ 591. Once the informer has proved to be good and truthful, and with sure signs, the Elders, the Village, the Jurors and the Informer gather at the door of the thief or the murderer, and apply the kanun to that perjurer.

c) he shall pay 100 rams and an ox, if the oath was with 24 jurors, and 500 grosh to the House of Gjomarku. – If the oath was with fewer than 24 jurors, the village takes the fine;

d) he shall go to the Church, with all the jurors, to be absolved from the false oath;

e) he shall pay 500 grosh for each Juror, because he led them into a false oath, violating the Church. – The thief shall lay this money on the altar for the Church.

BOOK EIGHT — HONOUR

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN — PERSONAL HONOUR.

§ 593. The Kanun of the Mountains of Albania does not distinguish one person from another. “Soul for soul, for it is God who grants looks.”

§ 594. The good man and the bad man have one price: the Kanun holds them both as men: “The good comes out of the bad, and the bad out of the good.” “On his own scales each weighs four hundred drams.”

§ 595. If someone touches another’s honour, there is no pledge or elder for honour taken; the Kanun says: if you wish, forgive it; if you want, wash your sullied brow.

§ 596. Each man holds his honour for himself, and no one may interfere on another’s behalf, nor surround it with pledges and Elders. Two fingers’ breadth of honour on the flower of our brow the Great God set for us.

§ 598. “Honour taken is not redeemed with goods, but either with the spilling of blood, or with a magnanimous pardon (after the mediation of good well-wishers).”

§ 599. The dishonoured man has the door open as regards his honour: he lays down no pledge, takes no Elders, seeks no court, takes no fine. – The strong man takes the fine himself.

§ 600. He whose honour has been taken is held to be dead in the eyes of the kanun.

b) If someone spits on him, raises a hand against him, pushes him or strikes him;

g) If someone breaks into his house, his fold, his crib or his dairy store in the yard;

j) If someone cuts the kashata before the guest – the guest’s honour is taken. [Kashata is uncertain; perhaps a round of cheese or of bread.]

k) If the head of the house shames his table before the guest’s eyes, as when he scrapes the bottom of the pot or licks the bowl.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN — SOCIAL HONOUR.

SECTION NINETY-SIX — The Guest.

§ 604. When the guest calls out, the head of the house or someone of the house answers him and goes out to meet him.

§ 605. He greets the guest, takes his weapon from him and leads him into the house.

§ 606. He hangs the weapon on the hook, and takes the guest to the place of honour by the hearth.

§ 609. Bread and salt and a heart, fire and a log, and some bedding to lie on, shall be ready for a guest at every hour of the night and of the day.

§ 610. A weary guest shall be attended with an honourable welcome. The guest’s feet are washed.

§ 612. For a good guest there must be coffee, raki, and bread laid out with something more.

§ 613. For a guest of the heart there must be tobacco, sweet coffee, raki, and bread and meat. – “To a guest of the heart the house is handed over.”

§ 614. “Mind: once he has entered the house, you shall keep the guest’s weapon.”

a) a sign of manliness and honour, and that you are glad that the guest has come;

b) a sign of guardianship, because by saying “Welcome”, he shall stay without fear, and you are ready to stand up for him against every danger;

c) a sign of prudence for yourself, because once you have taken his weapon, even if the guest had some evil intention, there is nothing he can do once you have disarmed him.

§ 617. The guest is given the place of honour whether he is in a house or in an assembly of men, but in the assembly he has no voice.

§ 618. The guest is given the place of honour both as an honour, and so that he is more in view and conspicuous, and also so that he does not mingle with the members of the household.

§ 620. If a guest has entered your house, even if you have a blood feud with him, you shall say to him: “Welcome!”

§ 622. “The guest, even though he takes the place of honour in the house or anywhere, never leads; you shall lead him.”

§ 623. The guest may be escorted even by a child, whether boy or girl, just as by a man or a woman.

§ 624. Once you have escorted the guest as far as he himself wished to go, and turned your back to go about your business, and a gun cracks at that moment and kills him, you do not have a guest violated.

§ 625. For the guest’s sake you shall lose days of work, and spend your bread, so as not to be wiped out and not to be disgraced.

§ 626. “Once you lead the guest, every violence that he does to anyone is demanded of you.”

§ 627. Do not lead the guest; or, once you lead him, you shall keep your eyes open so that he does no violence or evil deed to anyone.

§ 628. The kanun orders that the guest be escorted, both so that no evil befalls him and so that he does no harm to anyone with your bread.

§ 629. If the guest has done some evil deed with your bread, the account is demanded of you.

§ 630. The one who was violated and harmed is not bound to pursue the one who violated and harmed him, but knocks at the door of the one who kept him in his house and gave him bread.

§ 632. It is kanun, therefore, that the guest be led, because he is held not to know the road and not to know whether he will meet a friend or an enemy.

§ 633. You shall lead him, because you are the guest’s guardian, both to keep danger away from him and to hold him back from evil deeds.

§ 634. “The bread honours you, but it also puts you to trouble.” (The bread turned out to be a devil, someone once said.)

§ 635. If the guest has violated your bread, you shall answer under the kanun for house and fold broken into, for flock carried off and for other raids.

§ 636. You shall pay for the damage done by your guest, whether by hanging the bell of your flock on the beam, or by giving up your plough ox, or by selling your turn of water.

§ 637. You shall share the honour and the violation with your guest, and you shall make good the one who was harmed.

§ 638. You shall pay, and if you can get something out of the guest, you keep it for yourself; otherwise you are left in the lurch: “You had it and you gave it”, says the kanun.

§ 639. Just as you are bound to demand satisfaction for a violated guest, so you are bound to answer for it if the guest harms someone with your bread.

SECTION NINETY-SEVEN — The Violation of the Guest.

§ 641. “If someone asks at your door for no more than an ember to light his pipe, and you gave it to him, and someone harms him, you have a guest violated.”

§ 642. If someone places himself under your protection, even by merely using your name: “I am the guest of so-and-so”, and even without ever having been at your door, if someone harms him, he is a guest at your door and your face is sullied.

§ 643. If someone has mocked or insulted your guest, you shall restore the guest’s honour at the risk of your own life.

§ 644. If someone’s guest has been violated, the kanun has left him two roads: either to be wiped out, or to be disgraced.

§ 645. To the one whose guest has been violated, everything shall be handed with the left hand and from under the knee, until he has paid for the guest.

§ 646. The left hand is held by the kanun to be dishonourable; it takes and does not give, and one does not greet guests with it. Only the faithless man greets the faithless with it.

§ 647. Under the early kanun, the court drove the faithless man out on a stake, and did not let him into the assembly of men. [The punishment is unclear.]

§ 648. The faithless man who himself kills someone, or betrays someone under a besa, is executed by the whole village and his blood goes unavenged.

§ 649. In the words of the kanun: a father, a brother and even cousins, to the extinction of the line, may be forgiven, but a guest is not forgiven (except through the mediation of well-wishers of the heart).

§ 650. For a violated guest a besa is rarely given; mediation is given so that they can come to terms, if the matter moves towards a settlement.

a) when one fellow villager turns aside to another, and, on leaving the latter’s house, is killed either by another fellow villager or by anyone else;

b) even though [the host is only] a fellow villager or a cousin of the slain man, the violated guest, his duty is to demand satisfaction for the slain companion-guest;

c) if he has not demanded satisfaction for the slain guest, then, though a fellow villager, he has no business going to the assembly of men, for he remains disgraced and shamed for ever, for the rest of his life.

§ 652. If two companions meet on the highway, and, after they have gone some way, a gun cracks and one of them is killed, the other does not have a guest violated.

Note:

It is true that he does not have a guest violated, but he remains disgraced if he does not fire at the killer. The Albanian, even though he falls into blood without owing any, paying for it by killing for his violated guest, does not take that matter lightly; he will be wiped out, root and branch, but he will not accept shame.

SECTION NINETY-EIGHT — The Conduct of the Head of the House with Guests in the House.

§ 653. The guest takes the place of honour at the table, and from then on he is under protection.

§ 654. To a Standard-bearer who is a guest falls the ram’s head, and to the [other] guest the shoulder.

§ 655. If no Standard-bearer happens to be present, but the Head of a Banner, the shoulder falls to him and the ram’s head to the guest.

§ 656. The guest shall drink the raki [compare § 662, where the head of the house drinks the first glass], and he shall be the first to put his hands to the food on the table.

§ 657. If someone of the Gjomarkaj and a guest from far away happen to be at the table, the Standard-bearer shares the ram’s head in half with the man of the Gjomarkaj, and the shoulder goes to the guest.

§ 658. The Standard-bearer shall break the ram’s head with his fist, and the guest, once he has the shoulder, shall break its knob.

§ 659. If a man of Ohëri (of Kthella) comes as a guest to Mirdita or to the Highlands of Lezha, and someone of the Gjomarkaj also happens to be there, the man of Ohëri takes the place of honour, and then the man of the Gjomarkaj. (No one contests this, out of respect.)

Note:

These customs look like play, but they have caused killings for which men had to answer, right at the table.

§ 661. At the table the head of the house washes his hands first, then the guest.

§ 662. The first glass of raki is drunk by the head of the house, and the second by the guest.

§ 663. The guest cuts the kashata first, then the head of the house. [Kashata is uncertain.]

§ 664. A head of the house who cut the kashata before the guest used to pay a fine of 500 grosh.

§ 665. A head of the house who shamed his own table before the guest’s eyes used to pay a fine of 500 grosh.

SECTION NINETY-NINE — Mediation.

§ 667. The mediator, like the messenger, commits no offence and is not held answerable.

§ 668. A mediator is the one who comes in to break off evil words or to avert a brawl, from which a killing or some other ruin may result.

§ 669. A mediator may be a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, or even the Priest.

§ 670. A mediator may come in between house and house, between village and village, between Banner and Banner.

§ 671. If the mediation of an individual house is violated, the house itself demands satisfaction for its guest.

§ 672. If the mediation of a village is violated, the whole village demands satisfaction for its guest.

§ 673. If the mediation of a Banner is violated, the whole Banner demands satisfaction for its guest.

§ 674. If the mediation of the Priest is violated, satisfaction for his guest is demanded by the Parish in which he is, or else by the Banner, if he came in between in the name of the Banner.

§ 675. The Priest, in order to put an end to trouble, comes in between not in his own name, but either in the name of the Parish or in the name of the Banner; but only when the force of the religious word does not work.

§ 676. If the force of the religious word has not been heeded, then the Priest comes in between like any other citizen; but since his office bears neither sword nor rope, if his mediation is set at nought like that of any citizen, the village or the Banner shall restore his honour by demanding satisfaction for the violated guest.

§ 677. Even if a hundred men have been killed on one side and none on the other, once someone comes in between, the gun shall stop and the fire shall be put out.

§ 678. If the mediator’s word should be scorned, the side that begins firing has violated the mediator’s guest. (If the gun and the quarrelsome words do not stop after the mediation, the tangle becomes frightful, guns cross, and men are killed on the spot.)

§ 679. The customary words of mediation are: “Leave off your words, lads, I am in between! – Stop your guns, men, I am in between until we come to terms. – Stop your guns, for the village … , the Banner … , is in between!”

§ 680. The mediator takes the pledges of both sides, fixing for them the day when and the place where they shall gather in assembly to come to terms.

§ 681. If the mediator has not been able to settle them, he hands over the pledges of both sides to wise men, and he is then released and leaves the mediation.

§ 682. Mediation always ends either at sunrise or at sunset (at the rising or the setting of the sun).

SECTION ONE HUNDRED — Suretyship.

§ 683. A surety is the one who binds himself to someone to answer for a debt which, if the debtor has not paid it by the fixed term, he himself becomes the one who pays.

§ 684. The lender, once he has a surety, has no need to go to the debtor’s door; the surety shall answer for him: “Surety means payer”, says the kanun.

§ 685. Even if the debtor dies, the lender loses nothing; for the debt that the debtor owed him, the surety shall answer: “If the debtor dies, may the surety live”, says the kanun.

§ 686. If the surety has second thoughts and wants to get out of the suretyship, the kanun does not let him, because: “The surety does not come in to remember, but to pay.”

§ 687. The surety comes in out of goodwill, and therefore he has no right to ask for “shoes” either from the debtor or from the lender: “No one becomes a surety or a guarantor of the besa for money.”

§ 688. When the debtor asks someone to be his surety, and the latter agrees to come in, the surety tells him before men: “I will stand surety for you, but look: if you have no intention of having the money ready by the fixed term, tell me now, so that I can get ready to pay for you. Know that I do not put up with disgrace!”

§ 689. If the debtor has not answered to the surety, and leaves him bound to pay the debt out of his own means, the surety shall give the lender the pledge.

§ 690. The lender has the right to hand over that pledge to anyone, in order to recover his debt.

§ 691. The surety has the right to complain to the village against the bad debtor, and the village shall compel the debtor to redeem the surety’s pledge and to hand it back to its owner.

§ 692. If the debtor did not get the money ready purely out of violence and obstinacy, the village fines him according to the gravity of the offence [a few words unclear in the source].

§ 693. If the debtor has got the money ready by the fixed term, before he hands it over to the owner he shall inform the surety.

§ 694. If it was the case that the debtor could not get the money ready by the fixed term purely out of poverty, the surety shall be ready to pay for him, and he must expect this, for “A dry hand has no blessing”, and he has no reason to bring him before the village, for his complaint will not be heard: he should have measured himself before he became a surety.

CHAPTER NINETEEN — BLOOD AND KIN, SWORN BROTHERHOOD AND GODPARENTHOOD IN THE KANUN OF THE MOUNTAINS.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND ONE — Blood, Kin and the Generations of Albanians.

§ 695. For the Albanian of the mountains, the line of the generations of blood and of kin goes on without end.

§ 696. He holds as brother and clan all those from whom his forefathers separated, early or late.

§ 697. Even if he is separated from them by four hundred hearths, the Albanian neither takes nor gives, that is, he does not intermarry.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWO — The Tree of Blood, the Tree of Milk, the Nephew of the Trunk and the Nephew of the Daughter.

§ 699. The generations of blood flow from the father’s side; the generations of kin flow from the mother’s side.

§ 700. The descent of the generations on the father’s side is called “the Tree of Blood”.

§ 701. The descent of the generations on the mother’s side is called “the Tree of Milk”.

§ 702. “Nephew of the trunk” or “niece of the trunk” is the name for the line of males or females that flows from the father’s household.

§ 703. Nephew or niece of the daughters is the name for the line of males or females that flows from the married daughters.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THREE — Sworn Brotherhood.

§ 704. Sworn brotherhood, which is made by drinking blood, forbids marriage for ever between those who have become brothers, their houses and their hearths.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR — Godparenthood (the Kinship of Saint John).

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE — The Godparenthood of Baptism.

§ 707. The godparenthood of Baptism forbids marriage, generation after generation, not only between the one baptised, the parents of the one baptised and those who “weigh” him at the door of the Church, but also between all the members that the houses of the one side and of the other may have, and their whole hearth.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND SIX — The Godparenthood of the Crown.

§ 708. The godparenthood of the Crown forbids marriage between the members of the house of the godparents and of the house of the groom; and if the godparenthood of the Crown becomes rooted between two brotherhoods and extends to their hearths as well, this matter goes as with the godparenthood of Baptism.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN — The Godparenthood of the Hair.

§ 709. The godparenthood and co-motherhood that is made at the shaving and cutting of the hair enters into a bond of the kanun that nothing moves.

§ 710. The godparenthood of the hair forbids marriage, generation after generation, between the house, the brotherhood and the hearth of the godfather and of the co-mother.

§ 711. The co-mother is like a bride: as the bride goes to her parents at times fixed by the kanun, so the co-mother goes to the godfather at a fixed time.

§ 712. The time of the co-mother’s visit fixed by the kanun is one month before Shrovetide.

§ 713. The co-mother’s visit may not be extended beyond five days: the days of the co-mother’s stay at the godfather’s shall always be odd and never even, three or five.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT — The Customs of the Kanun at the Cutting of the Hair.

§ 715. Co-mother or nunë is the name for the mother of the boy or the girl whose hair is cut.

§ 716. Godson or goddaughter is the name for the boy or the girl whose hair is cut.

§ 717. The Nun and the co-mother are like brother and sister, and are not set apart from the people of the house.

§ 719. If the child dies without having had its hair cut, it shall not be laid in the ground [until it has]; the godfather who was named shall be called; if the godfather is far away, someone else shall cut its hair, who shall not be of the brotherhood or the clan of the child.

§ 720. For the cutting of a boy’s hair there must be a man, and a woman for a girl.

§ 721. The parents of the boy or the girl whose hair is cut shall prepare the meal as well as they can, to honour the godfather.

§ 723. Some three or four fellow villagers are invited to take part in the joy of the house.

§ 724. When they have drunk coffee, the place where the Nun will sit is made ready, and the tools for cutting the hair shall be there.

§ 725. There is needed: a chair, on which the Nun will sit; a bowl of water, into which the Nun will drop a silver asper; a towel, which will be spread to catch the hair; scissors or a razor, for clipping or shaving the godson or goddaughter.

§ 726. When the Nun has sat down on the chair, a boy of the clan places the godson or goddaughter on the Nun’s lap.

§ 727. The Nun shall cut the hair in this order: a) a tuft at the forehead, b) a tuft at each temple, c) a tuft at the back of the head.

§ 728. When the hair has been cut, the Nun taps the forehead of the godson or goddaughter three times with the scissors, saying: “With health and long life!”, and kisses the godson or goddaughter and, lifting the child from his lap, gives it to its mother – the co-mother – who also takes the bowl with the silver asper.

§ 730. The tufts of hair are taken by the mother, and she keeps them in her chest.

§ 731. The co-mother shall give the godfather: a jacket, trousers and a sleeved waistcoat, and to the people of the godfather’s house – however many they are – she shall send to some a towel, to others stockings or socks.

§ 732. Before the child’s hair has been cut, the scissors shall not touch its head; if its hair grows too long, it is singed with the flame of a pine torch.

§ 733. When the child’s hair has been cut, the godfather spends that night in the house of the godson or goddaughter, and the next day he rises and takes the co-mother and the godson with him to his own house, where they stay three or five days, according to the kanun.

§ 734. Neither funeral nor wedding nor feast is celebrated without the co-mother and the godfather, without the godson and the goddaughter.

BOOK NINE — DAMAGES

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND NINE — The Determination of Damages.

§ 736. Damage is paid according to the valuation of the Elders or of two fellow villagers.

§ 737. If a woman has been found stealing wood on another’s mountain, she is not touched with the hand, but her billhook and her rope are taken from her, and the wood she has cut stays there.

§ 738. The billhook and the rope that are taken are held as compensation for the damage, and she has no further duty.

§ 740. For every damage, the damage is paid to the one who suffered it, whether it be to a field or a meadow, to a garden or a vineyard.

§ 742. If an ox or a cow, a horse, a mule or a donkey, a sheep or a goat has been found doing damage, they may not be killed, but the damage done by them shall be valued.

§ 743. If someone has killed an ox, a cow, a horse, a mule, a donkey, a goat or a sheep that was doing damage, he pays for the animal.

§ 744. An animal found doing damage is either caught and taken to its owner’s door, telling him that you found it doing damage and that he should come and see; or you drive it before you and take it to your house and shut it in the pound, and, once the damage has been arbitrated, you return the animal to him.

§ 745. “One goat dries up a winter pasture.” – The goat is an evil breath; whatever it touches with its mouth, it dries up.

§ 746. If a goat has been found doing damage in a vineyard, for as many vine stocks as it has blinded, the kanun has fixed these damages:

b) one vine stock bears grapes enough for two oka of wine and for one oka of raki a year;

c) a vine blinded by a goat therefore carries six oka of wine and three oka of raki as damages.

§ 747. As for damage to a field, the price of the kanun is: “A hundred ears of maize: one babune of grain.” (For a hundred ears or plants damaged, the owner of the livestock shall pay one babune of grain.)

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TEN — The Pig Doing Damage.

§ 748. “A pig doing damage gets the gun. – If you find a pig doing damage, shoot it.”

§ 749. If a pig has been found doing damage without a yoke-collar on its neck, it is killed.

§ 750. With one shot or one blow, however many pigs are killed, the loss is the owner’s of the pigs.

§ 752. As soon as someone has killed a pig that was doing damage, he shall send word to its owner to come and take it, because he eats its meat.

§ 753. If you have killed a pig doing damage and did not inform its owner at once, so that he could go and take it, and the pig stayed there until it began to rot, you shall pay for the pig.

§ 754. Once the pig has been killed while doing damage, it has paid for the damage done with its head, and the one who suffered the damage has nothing more to ask, for his complaint is not heard under the kanun.

§ 755. If the pig went into the damage with its yoke-collar on, it is liable for the damage and not for the gun. If you killed it, you pay for the pig.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN — The Trap or the Snare Set in a Garden.

§ 756. “In my own garden I have set a trap or a snare; no one can stop me.”

§ 757. In a well-fenced garden, if someone has set a trap or a snare, he is not bound to answer for the damage.

§ 758. If someone has set a trap in an unfenced garden and an animal has fallen into it, he pays for the animal.

§ 759. In the village and around it – as far as the animals are taken to graze – if someone has set a trap, and some head of stock has fallen into it, the owner of the trap pays for the animal.

§ 760. The trap is set at sunset, and is sprung, or taken up, or well covered at sunrise.

§ 761. An animal that has strayed and has been left on the mountain at night, but has fallen into a trap: the risk is the owner’s of the animal; the owner of the trap pays nothing.

§ 762. If the trap has been left set during the day, the owner of the trap shall answer for the damage to anything that falls into it.

§ 763. If a dog or a cat falls into a trap at night, they go unpaid, because they are out after the sheep.

§ 764. A trap set on the mountain, but along the paths where the animals pass: if some head of stock falls into it, the shepherd has the right to break the trap to pieces, and its owner cannot call him to account.

§ 765. If someone has set a trap in the surroundings of other people’s houses, and an animal of the owner of the place has fallen into it and has been left with a broken leg or has even died in the trap, the owner of the trap shall pay two for one.

BOOK TEN — THE KANUN AGAINST WRONGDOING

CHAPTER TWENTY — COMPLICITY.

§ 766. An accomplice is the one who, by wicked intermediation and in an underhand way, gives help to another to commit some ruin or some other black-faced deed in his own village.

a) for the abduction of women, falls into blood and shall pay the village a fine of 500 grosh;

c) for theft, and for anything that is stolen in the village with the bread, the guidance and the instruction of the accomplice, once it has been discovered, he shall pay for the goods according to the kanun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE — THEFT.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE — The Determination of Theft.

a) The thief; and he is the one who steals with his own hand something belonging to another [kafshë, in old Gheg ‘thing’].

b) The accomplices, who are those who give help and a hand to the thief in a theft or in any wrongdoing, and in the end, if the theft is discovered, they shall pay for the other’s goods according to the kanun and according to the share that they took.

c) The “bread” is a household where thieves with stolen animals eat bread, or take bread with them, and are escorted with the stolen animals. “The thief and the giver of bread are one.”

d) The receiver; and he is the one who hides the stolen goods. – “Equal the thief, equal the receiver.”

e) Even if the receiver took no part in the theft, he becomes as guilty as the thief himself, because he becomes a den of thieves and of thefts.

f) The track is the trail that the animal leaves, along which the owner of the stolen animal goes, following the track: either into the boundary of a village or of a quarter, or into the precinct of a house, a yard or a fold. – “The track brought in, the animal found.”

g) Children, bracat and biramelat. [Apparently minors and the simple-minded; see § 775.]

h) The robber; and he is the one who openly and by force takes something from someone on account of some debt.

§ 769. If the track has been lost on the mountain of the owner of the stolen animal, he cannot hold either the neighbouring village or the Banner liable; but if he suspects that village, he may press it to clear itself by oath.

§ 770. If the track has been brought into the village and he has not been able to discover the thief, the owner of the animal demands it from the village, and the village shall answer to him.

§ 771. If the track has been brought into a quarter of the village and the thief has not been discovered, that quarter shall pay the owner for the animal.

§ 772. If the track has been brought into the precinct of a house, a yard or a fold, that house shall pay the owner for the animal.

§ 774. Every damage, theft and pilfering done by children, bracat and biramelat, if discovered, shall be paid for by the house to which they belong.

§ 775. The principle of the kanun is: “What the feeble-minded do, the men of the house shall pay for.”

§ 776. Children, bracat and biramelat, even if they are found with the stolen things in their hands, may not be touched (may not be struck) by another’s hand, but their parents shall be informed, and they shall answer for them.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN — Robbery.

§ 778. The kanun does not allow anyone to be molested on his way. The highway owes no one anything.

§ 779. If someone has a debt owed him by another, and the latter does not settle it, the lender shall make his complaint to the village, and the village will bring the debtor to his senses.

§ 780. If someone has gone and broken the highway, stopping a traveller’s horse, mule, donkey or some head of stock – if they did not kill each other on the spot – the robber incurs the fine of the village according to the gravity of the offence, and shall return the robbed goods to their owner.

§ 781. If someone has gone, merely on suspicion, and robbed someone of a horse, a mule or a donkey, and in the end the one who was robbed turns out to owe nothing, the robber incurs the fine of the village for breaking the highway, and shall return the animal to its owner and the price of the days lost.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN — The Raid (Plundering).

§ 783. To raid, to plunder, to carry off plunder means to take or to round up a herd of animals on the mountain, in the winter pasture or even in the fold.

§ 784. A raid is most often caused when one side will not come to reason with the other.

§ 785. A raid is not made good in any other way than with another raid or with the gun.

§ 786. A raid happens either village against village, or Banner against Banner, or also between individual houses.

§ 787. A raid is caused either over the boundaries of a mountain or a high pasture, or over grazing, or over some other violence by which a village, a Banner or even an individual house is offended.

§ 788. A raid made on the mountain carries the return of the animals to their owner, and nothing else.

§ 789. A raid made in the fold carries the return of the animals to their owner and a fine of 600 [elsewhere 500] grosh for the honour of the fold.

§ 790. An unjustified raid carries the return of the animals to their owner and a fine of 500 grosh. After the mediation of well-wishers and of the men of the land, the fine is forgiven.

§ 791. If a herd belonging to others has been raided with just cause, on the mountain or in the high pasture, over a boundary, then both the village and the Banner support the raider.

§ 792. If an unjustified raid was made and the village and the Banner supported it, the mediation takes pledges from them and they shall be weighed by the Elders according to the kanun.

§ 793. According to the gravity of the offence, the fine shall be paid and the animals returned to their owner.

§ 794. If the village and the Banner have supported the raider, the one who was raided has the right to raid whomever he can in that village or Banner, to restore his honour and to recover his goods.

§ 795. The one who was raided may not raid either the village or the Banner once it has proclaimed the raider and left the matter house against house. – The Kanun says: “Either the owner’s animals, or the road left free.”

§ 796. Animals raided on the mountain or in the high pasture do not carry two for one, but only the return of the animals to their owner.

§ 798. If the bellwether’s bell has been carried off as plunder on the mountain or in the fold, it carries the honour of the whole herd taken and of the whole fold; the raider shall pay a fine of 500 grosh for the honour, even if he took no head of stock at all.

§ 799. The bellwether, the hànor and the vergan [kinds of favoured animal; uncertain] and the chained dog may not be taken as plunder, even for a debt.

§ 800. “A raid is not made for a debt.” If this should happen, the village and the Banner proclaim the raider, if he has refused to return the animals.

§ 801. If the raider has used up the animals he raided, on the day of payment he shall return them to their owner head for head, even letting him choose from his own herd.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN — The Shameful Offence.

§ 802. Whoever robs the house and the bag of the guest [Shpin, ‘the house’, as in § 838], the kanun has fixed as his fine “the black face”, and he is cast out of the assembly and of the court.

§ 803. If someone else’s hand has robbed the guest of a house, the violated guest and the broken house are demanded from the house of the other.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN — Two for One.

§ 804. In all the places where the kanun is kept, every stolen thing carries two for one: “Two for one, as long as they walk on legs.”

§ 805. Two for one shall be given not only for large livestock, but also for small livestock, and for stolen objects.

§ 806. Two for one shall also be made good for a violent burning of a house, a hut, a summer hut, a rick of hay or straw, of leaf fodder, and of a fence.

§ 807. A garden, a vineyard and a field that have been stolen from carry two for one.

§ 808. A rooster (the singer, the cock) that has been stolen or killed has a fixed judgment: 500 grosh to its owner, for the reason that: “The rooster is the poor man’s clock.”

§ 809. A pig kept at home that has been stolen or killed (unless it was found doing damage) carries 500 grosh, for the reason that: “A fed pig is the mainstay of a house.”

§ 810. The two animals mentioned do not carry two for one, nor a rooster for a rooster, nor a pig for a pig, but 500 grosh in cash.

§ 811. For the tools of husbandry, e.g. for a plough that has been stolen, the thief, once discovered, shall pay the owner as many workers as days that were lost to him, and a plough for the plough.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN — The Right of the Owner of Stolen Goods.

§ 813. According to this principle the owner of the stolen goods is not bound to bargain, because, wherever he discovers and finds his property, he has the right to take it.

§ 814. If the animal was stolen by means of the “bread”, the “bread” shall pay for it.

§ 815. If the animal was stolen by means of the receiver, the receiver shall pay for it.

§ 816. If it was followed by its track, wherever the track is, the owner of the animal stands firm, and the account shall be given to him on the spot.

§ 817. If someone has bought a stolen animal, even without knowing that it was stolen, the owner of the animal has the right to take it, and the seller (the thief) shall return to the buyer, down to the last coin, the price he took for that animal sold, and to the owner of the animal two for one.

§ 818. Except for theft committed in the Church and in the Presbytery, the thief owes no fine either to the village or to the Banner.

§ 819. If the animal was stolen in the fold, the thief shall pay two for one and a fine of 500 grosh for the broken fold.

§ 820. If the animal was stolen on the mountain, the thief shall pay two for one.

§ 821. If the thing was stolen in the house, the thief shall pay two for one and 500 grosh for the broken house.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO — KILLING.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN — The Ambush.

§ 822. The ambush is a practice by which, in the mountains and the plains of Albania, those who owe blood, or anyone who intends to kill, lie in wait. (To go out in ambush; to lie in ambush, to set an ambush, to fall into an ambush.)

§ 824. Within his own Banner no one may take companions to lie in ambush for anyone, and, if anyone has done so and they have killed someone of the Banner, they all fall into blood.

§ 825. Outside his own Banner, if someone has gone out in ambush to kill someone of another Banner, the leader falls into blood and not the accomplices. “The one who leads takes the blood upon himself.”

§ 827. Someone gathered companions and well-wishers and lay in ambush for someone, telling them: all the shots that are fired are mine; if someone is killed, the leader takes the blood upon himself.

§ 828. “The gun brings the blood home.” – “The gun puts you into blood.”

§ 829. If someone has borrowed another’s gun and, without the knowledge of the owner of the gun, has gone and lain in ambush for someone and killed the man, the borrower falls into blood and not the owner of the gun.

§ 830. If someone has taken another’s gun, telling its owner that he has it in mind to go out in ambush and to kill the man, and has killed him, the owner of the gun falls into blood, because: “The gun brings the blood home.”

§ 832. If someone has gathered companions and well-wishers and lain in ambush for someone, with whom he had neither blood nor wound, and killed him, the leader together with all the accomplices fall into blood.

§ 833. If someone has gone out in ambush to kill the man who owes him blood, with however many companions and well-wishers he may be, he takes his own blood and they do not fall into blood.

§ 834. If a band of men has gone out in ambush, and a gun cracked from the side of the ambushers but killed no one, and at that moment a gun also cracked from the side of those who fell into the ambush, and in the confusion one of those who fell into the ambush is killed, but not by the gun of the ambushers, the latter fall into blood according to the kanun, because they began the firing.

§ 835. The ambush shall open fire on men and not on women, children, houses or livestock.

§ 836. If the ambush has fired on women, children, a house or livestock, it acts against the kanun, and if the Banner of the ambushers has not taken care to punish this violence according to the kanun, then the gun will go from house to house, then clan against clan, village against village, and finally Banner against Banner.

§ 837. He who decides to go out in ambush shall take bread with him for himself and also for the accomplices.

§ 838. If they have gone in somewhere, before taking up their position in the ambush, and drunk coffee, or eaten bread, or taken bread with them in some other house, and have gone into the ambush and killed the man, the house of the slain man demands blood from the house that gave them bread.

§ 839. “The gun and the bread given with knowledge of the killing bring the blood upon the one who gives them.”

§ 840. If someone has gone to lie in ambush for his own fellow villager and gathers his fellows as accomplices, if they have killed someone, both the leader and the accomplices fall into blood with that house, if they were seen.

§ 841. If someone from Mirdita has gone to set an ambush for someone in Thkella or in the Highlands of Lezha or elsewhere, and takes as accomplices companions and others from the Banners mentioned, the one who led them falls into blood.

§ 842. If someone told another to lie in ambush for someone and to kill him, giving him his besa that on the day of the reconciliation for that blood he would pay the price of the blood, and the other, on the strength of the besa given, went and killed that very man whom he had told him to, and in the end he leaves him in the lurch and does not answer for it with money, the killer remains in blood, and the house of the one who put him up to it is burned for the breach [of his besa] he committed against him, with a fine of 100 rams and an ox. [Literally ‘for the cut he made him’.]

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN — The Killer.

§ 844. The killer, as soon as he has killed the man, shall send word that it was he who killed him, so that the family of the slain man is not led astray.

§ 846. The killer, if he can turn the slain man over himself, well and good; otherwise, whoever he meets, he shall tell him to go and turn him over and to lean his weapon against his head.

§ 847. The killer does not dare to take the weapon of the slain man; if he has done this black-faced deed, he falls into two bloods.

§ 848. The killer of his own parent is executed by the clan or by the whole village.

§ 849. The killer may move about at night; wherever the daylight finds him, he shall hide.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY — The Accomplice.

§ 850. An accomplice is the one who gives a hand to the killer, helping him either in a killing, or in a theft, or in the carrying out of any other wrongdoing.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE — The Guarantor of the Besa.

§ 851. Guarantors of the besa are those who go to the family and the cousins of the slain man to obtain a besa for the killer and for his house; they are the protectors of the killer and of his house, so that nothing befalls them within the term of the besa.

§ 853. Since it is a need that everyone shares in turn, the kanun does not want those who stand surety, nor those who obtain a besa for someone, to take “sandals”.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO — The Besa.

§ 854. The besa is a term of freedom and security which the house of the slain man gives to the killer and to the members of his household, not pursuing them for blood for a time, until a fixed term.

§ 855. To send people for a besa is kanun; to give a besa is a duty and an act of manliness.

§ 856. If the house of the slain man has given the killer a besa, he, although he killed him, shall go to the funeral and the lament, escort the slain man to his burial and stay for the funeral meal. – This besa lasts 24 hours.

§ 857. If the killer has not gone to the lament and the funeral meal after the besa was given, it is not held a dishonour for the house of the slain man, even if it gives him no further besa, since the killer has added violence upon violence.

§ 858. After the slain man has been laid in the ground, the village has the right, according to the kanun, to obtain a besa for the killer and the members of his household.

§ 860. If the house of the slain man has refused and would not give the village a besa, the killer, with all the members of his household and the cousins of separate hearths, shall stay shut in.

§ 861. No one else may come to obtain a besa for the killer, and the house of the slain man may not give a besa to anyone, without first coming to terms with its own village.

§ 862. Once the house of the slain man has come to terms with its own village, then the way is opened for friends and well-wishers to ask for a besa for the killer.

§ 863. If the house of the slain man has opened the besa of the clan, it shall give a besa to as many clans as there are in its village, neither fewer nor more.

§ 864. If a friend has gone to the house of the slain man for a besa, and the house sends him off with “Do not come to me any more”, and has not given him a besa, he has no reason to go to it again.

§ 865. If another friend has gone to the house of the slain man for a besa, and the house sends him off with “For now I will not give you a besa, for I do not see the way to it”, the very first besa that it decides to give shall be given to him, setting aside friends and well-wishers of the heart.

§ 866. If the house of the killer has a besa, its members shall stay sensible and decent in their own affairs; both the men and the women shall take care, and cause no damage or disturbance, if they are near the house of the slain man, and shall not show off their pride.

§ 867. If the house of the killer has behaved badly towards the house of the slain man, the village together with the guarantors shall rebuke it and, if need be, it shall be punished with a fine and its besa shall be broken off.

§ 868. It is a kanun of manliness, and also of duty, that no one be scorned in the house of the slain man, even though it be wretched and bereft of its men.

§ 869. Let no one make so bold as to lead the man who owes the blood about and to parade him through the village of the house of the slain man; the kanun says: “Guard the man who owes the blood, and do not parade him in front of the members of the slain man’s house.” “The man who owes the blood may move about at night, and wherever the daylight finds him, let him hide.” – “Once a man has fallen into blood, he has the duty to flee and to hide.”

§ 870. “One of a separate hearth, after 24 hours, no longer has to guard himself against the blood.”

§ 871. The cousins of separate hearths from the killer shall guard themselves within the 24 hours after the killing, because, if the house of the slain man has killed them, it takes its blood.

§ 872. If they have escaped without being killed after 24 hours, they shall be guaranteed by sureties with the house of the slain man, and shall be free in their affairs.

§ 873. If the house of the slain man has killed one of the cousins of separate hearth after the 24 hours have passed, it does not take its blood, but falls into blood.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE — The Besa of the Livestock and the Shepherd.

§ 874. The besa of the livestock and the shepherd is that which two or more Banners set among themselves by the consent of one and the other.

§ 875. In setting this besa, the Standard-bearers with the Chiefs and the young men fix the road for the traveller, for the messenger, and also for the shepherd with his animals.

§ 876. The traveller and the messenger of one Banner, who have business in another Banner, may not cross the limits set by the two Banners in the binding of the besa of the livestock and the shepherd.

§ 877. The traveller and the messenger, besides not being allowed to leave the road, may not enter any other house once they have set foot in the other Banner, but shall go straight to the house of the Standard-bearer of the place.

§ 878. If the traveller has his own business to finish, or the messenger the business of the Banner, they may not go about the other Banner alone, but shall be escorted either by the Standard-bearer of the place or by some man whom the Standard-bearer himself gives them.

§ 879. Both going and returning, the traveller and the messenger shall travel by the highway, without crossing the limits divided by the Banners under the besa of the livestock and the shepherd.

§ 880. If harm befalls the traveller, the messenger or the shepherd before they have left the other Banner, or while grazing the animals in the parcels that were divided, they have been struck down under the besa of the livestock and the shepherd.

§ 881. A killing under the besa of the livestock and the shepherd carries these punishments and fines:

b) the Banner of the killer burns three of the killer’s towers; if the killer did not have three towers of his own, there shall be burned the killer’s tower and two other towers of the killer’s close cousins; if he had no close cousins, their towers shall be burned even if they are a hundred generations removed.

§ 882. The Banner of the killer lays waste the killer’s property, crops and land, livestock and everything he has.

§ 883. If the traveller or the messenger left the road, or the shepherd crossed the limits with his animals, and someone killed them, it is not the besa of the livestock and the shepherd whose guest is violated, but the house from which they set out, and the killer falls into blood with their house according to the kanun.

§ 884. If someone has touched a herd of animals on the mountain within the marked limits, the thief incurs the punishments and fines mentioned, because he has broken the besa of the livestock and the shepherd.

§ 885. The guarantors of the besa of the livestock and the shepherd are the Standard-bearers, the Chiefs and the Young Men of the Banners bound by this besa.

Note:

According to the stories that are told by the people of the Mountains of Albania (which we leave aside for now in setting out the various stories), it is clearly evident that “the besa of the livestock and the shepherd” is very old, and that it must have been kept before the slender-muzzled one (the gun) began to spit flame.

In some places the besa of the livestock and the shepherd is kept even today; e.g. in the Mountains of Gjakova: Nikaj, Mërtur, Gash, Krasniqe and elsewhere. In the Mountains of Dukagjin: Shala, Shosh, Kir, Gjaj, Plan and Toplana. In the Mountains of Puka, of Mirdita, of Thkella, of the Highlands of Lezha and towards Kurbin, although this kind of besa is no longer kept today, according to the stories that the Elders of these places have told us, in earlier times these districts too were covered by the besa of the livestock and the shepherd.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR — Blood.

§ 886. In the kanun of the Mountains of Albania, all the sons that are born are counted as good, and are not distinguished one from another.

§ 887. The price of a man’s life is one and the same, for the good man as for the bad.

§ 888. Each man holds himself to be good and says of himself: “I am a man”, and others say to him: “You are a man!”

§ 889. If there were a distinction between bloods, the kanun would not have known how to find a handle for the matter through arbitrations and pledges in weighing the good and the bad, since each man holds himself to be a full four hundred drams on his own oka.

§ 890. Had it left open the way to distinguishing between bloods, they would have killed the man who was poor in looks or of humble birth even without cause, and killings would have multiplied, since no one would have come forward to demand an account for the killing of the poor and the humble.

§ 891. Therefore “Lekë made bloods equal: the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good.” – “Soul for soul, for it is God who grants looks.”

§ 892. Whoever kills a person, therefore, whether man or woman, boy or girl, or even an infant in the cradle, handsome or ugly in looks, a chief, an Elder or a Senior Elder [or ‘an old man or a very old man’], rich or poor, noble or of humble birth, the punishment is of one kind: for the killing of a male, 6 purses, and a fine of 100 rams and half an ox.

§ 893. Whoever wounds a person, the price mentioned in 892 is halved, for a male as for a female.

§ 894. “A wound goes by its measure [kerçik], or as the healer fixes it” (the price of the treatment, as the healer fixes it).

§ 895. The reconciliation of a blood or of a wound that is made with the chiefs and the young men has nothing else beyond 6 purses for a blood and 3 purses for a wound. In a reconciliation of a blood or of a wound that is made through the mediation of well-wishers, they also ask, beyond the 6 or 3 purses, for the costs of the treatments.

§ 896. On falling into blood, if the killing took place in the village, the killer with the males of his house, even an infant in the cradle if there is one, shall get ready and leave the village and go among friends, to avoid the danger of being killed.

§ 897. The house of the slain man has no business with the women of the killer, because “A woman and a priest do not fall into blood.”

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE.

§ 898. In the old kanun of the Mountains of Albania only the killer fell into blood, that is, the one who drew, cocked and fired the gun or any weapon against the man.

§ 899. The house of the slain man could not pursue or kill anyone else among the brothers, nephews or cousins of the man who owed the blood, except the finger – the killer.

§ 900. The later kanun includes the males of the killer’s house, down to the infant in the cradle, and the close cousins and nephews, even if they are separated, but for 24 hours, in the heat of the blood; and after 24 hours the house of the slain man would give them sureties.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX.

§ 901. When two men who quarrel kill one another, and both fall dead, they stay head for head, or blood for blood.

§ 902. The houses of the slain men may not dispute, nor may one side ask compensation from the other. – They shall give each other sureties according to the kanun.

§ 903. If one was left dead and the other wounded, then the wounded man shall return the remainder of the price of the blood of the slain man.

§ 904. If someone has killed my brother, and I went and shot at one of the killer’s house, wounding him once and up to twenty times, and in the end turned my gun and killed this man’s brother, or the very man who killed my brother, all the wounds shall be arbitrated and paid for, and the slain man stays head for head with my slain brother.

§ 905. If I have killed the same man whom I had wounded twenty times, the wounds are lost, and he stays blood for blood with the slain man.

§ 906. If I fired at someone and only grazed him on the head, I owe him 3 purses for the wound.

§ 908. A wound from the belt upwards carries 3 purses, from the belt downwards 750 grosh.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN.

§ 909. For every offence that an Albanian commits against an Albanian, the latter has the right to pursue him with elders and pledges, but he may not kill him, because “Blood is not for an offence.”

§ 911. If someone came to set fire to my house, or my hut, or my summer hut, and I caught him and killed him, I owe him his blood.

§ 912. If someone came to steal from you, and you see him breaking down your door, and you killed him, you owe him his blood.

§ 913. If someone came to clean out your fold, and you see him driving your herd of animals before him, and you rush to get your animals back and he does not think of letting them go, if you killed him, you fall into blood.

§ 914. If someone aimed at you or struck you, and you killed him, you fall into blood.

§ 915. If someone climbed on your neck, even though it is two hands for one head, if you killed him, you owe him his blood.

Note:

914 and 915 are weighed according to the gravity of the offence.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT.

§ 918. For every offence that the house of the slain man commits against the house of the killer, they shall be judged and arbitrated, even with pledges, if need be; for an offence is always an offence, and the house of the slain man shall make amends to the house of the killer as the elders see fit.

§ 919. For every fine that the house of the slain man incurs, it pays the fine as a fine, but its blood cannot be lost or turned into a fine, even if it be a wretched and forsaken house.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE — Blood for a Wicked Deed.

§ 920. “Those who share body and dishonour together, if they are both killed in the wicked deed, go with their blood unavenged.”

§ 921. The principle “Blood is not for an offence” loses its force in the violation of women.

§ 922. “The violated guest, arms and the violated wife the kanun does not touch.”

§ 923. The dishonoured man and the dishonoured woman go with their blood unavenged only when they are killed in the act and in the wicked manner, and with one gun.

§ 924. The parents of the dishonoured cannot claim them for blood, but shall give the killer the spent cartridge, with “Blessed be your hand!”

§ 925. They shall provide sureties that they will never claim the bloods of the dishonoured.

§ 926. If the heart of the parents of the slain tells them that the killer did not kill them in the violent deed, the court assigns the oath according to the kanun.

§ 927. If the jury finds against him (literally ‘leaves him in’), the killer is in two bloods and under the fine according to the kanun.

§ 928. If one of the parties escaped without being killed and fled, the killer who found them in the wicked deed may not kill that one afterwards, because he falls into blood, and he shall pay the blood to the party that was slain [i.e. its family; compare § 923: only when both are killed together does the blood go unavenged].

§ 929. If a woman, or a girl or maiden, has gone off in shame [with a man], and they escaped without being killed – fled – to a distant land, the Banner proclaims them outlaws for life.

§ 930. If the one who dishonoured them was discovered, and they surrounded both him and the dishonoured, the clan, the village and the Banner execute both of them, turning their blood into a fine.

§ 931. A widow or a maiden who went astray in shame used to be burned alive on a heap of manure. – Or they would put her between two burning piles of wood and make her name her accomplice, or they would let her melt away in terror between two fires. – If they managed to get from her who it was that dishonoured her, they would then surround the accomplice too, and execute them together.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY — Unintentional Killing.

§ 932. An unintentional killing is not pursued with the gun. – The killer pays for the blood and is given sureties.

§ 933. In that hot blood, the killer shall withdraw and stay hidden until the matter has been well understood.

§ 934. Wise people come in, and once it has been verified that the killing that took place was truly unintentional, the killer pays the price of the blood and is given sureties.

§ 935. If someone kills – even unintentionally – a pregnant woman, besides the 3 purses for the woman’s blood, they also fix 3 purses for the pregnancy.

§ 936. If the killer disputes the 3 purses for the pregnancy, the kanun allows the slain woman to be opened, to see whether she was carrying a boy or a girl.

§ 937. If she was carrying a boy, the killer shall pay 3 purses for the woman’s blood and 6 purses for the boy’s blood; if she was carrying a girl, besides the 3 purses for the slain woman, he shall also pay 3 purses for the girl.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE — Killing Under Guarantee.

§ 939. If the house of the killer and the house of the slain man should quarrel between themselves after the blood has been reconciled, the guarantors must enter the flames and not allow their name and their guarantee to be violated.

§ 940. If a gun has cracked between them, the Guarantors shall demand satisfaction for their violated guest from the side that started the firing. “Blood goes for blood.”

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO — The Gun Pursues the One Who Owes Blood.

§ 941. “The gun that starts carries a fine.” – “The first gun carries a fine.”

§ 943. If two men quarrel, and one turns his gun on the other and pulls the trigger, but it does not fire, if they did not kill each other in that heat, the first, who pulled the trigger, incurs the punishment of the fine.

§ 944. If the first pulled the trigger and it did not fire, and the second stood ready and killed him, the latter falls into blood, but not into the punishment of the fine, because “The last gun is not the same as the first.”

§ 945. If a gun goes off accidentally, the owner of the gun falls into blood, if it has killed or wounded someone.

§ 946. If someone has entered another’s house and, just as he hangs his gun on the hook, the strap breaks, the gun goes off and kills someone of the house or anyone else, the owner of the gun falls into blood.

§ 947. If the guest has left his gun cocked and it went off and killed someone, the owner of the gun falls into blood.

§ 948. If the guest has put his gun on the hook, and the hook broke and the gun fell to the ground, went off and killed someone, the owner of the hook falls into blood.

§ 949. Pegs and hooks are put up for hanging guns on, so the owner of the hook or the peg shall keep his mind on them and not let them be eaten through by woodworm.

§ 950. If someone was killed and left dead on one side, and on the other two men were wounded, they stay blood for blood – one blood, two wounds.

§ 951. If someone has killed a pregnant woman, the kanun allows her to be opened, and, if she was carrying a boy, the killer, besides the woman’s blood, shall pay 6 purses for the boy’s blood; if she was carrying a girl, he shall pay 3 purses for the child and 3 purses for the mother.

§ 952. A gun fired for a violated guest puts you into blood, but not into a fine.

§ 953. A gun fired for a violated woman or girl carries neither blood nor fine.

§ 955. A gun that kills unintentionally carries the blood as a blood, but carries neither fine nor pursuit.

§ 957. For every killing: 6 purses for the blood, a fine of 100 rams and 1 ox to the Banner, and 500 grosh to the House of Gjomarku of Orosh (for Mirdita).

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE — Whoever Kills Himself Goes with His Blood Unavenged.

§ 959. The house of the man who killed himself incurs a fine [the reason given suggests the source has lost a ‘not’: ‘does not incur a fine’], for it fines itself with the loss of a person and with the costs of the funeral meals.

§ 960. If a brother has killed his brother, his blood goes unavenged, but they shall pay the fine of the Banner according to the kanun.

§ 961. If a son has killed his father, no one pursues him for blood, but the son, the killer, is executed either by the clan or by the whole village.

§ 962. If a son kills his mother, he falls into blood with his mother’s family.

§ 963. If a husband kills his wife, he falls into blood with his wife’s family.

§ 964. If a wife kills her husband, her family fall into blood. (It has happened that the family have executed their daughter who committed this horror.)

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR — Mediating a Blood.

§ 965. A mediator of a blood is the one who exerts himself with the house of the slain man to reconcile the killer with it.

§ 966. The mediator of a blood, if he has brought the matter to an end, has a right to “shoes”.

§ 968. The shoes of the mediator of a blood are paid by the house of the killer.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE — The Reconciliation of a Blood.

§ 969. The reconciliation of a blood is made in two ways: a) through the intervention of well-wishers of the house of the slain man and of the Parish Priest; b) through the coming forward of the Chiefs, of the House of Gjomarku and of the young men of the Banner. – In this case, for every killing the House of Gjomarku of Orosh used to take 500 grosh.

§ 971. The owner of the blood, besides the price fixed for the blood, has the right to ask for a huta (Martini rifle) from the shoulder of anyone on whom he sets his eye, and the killer is bound to bring it to him there.

§ 972. Until the matter of the blood has been settled, the required Guarantors have come in, and the terms of the blood money have been fixed, the tables of the meal are not laid and the bread is not eaten.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX — The Guarantors of the Blood.

§ 974. The guarantors of the blood are those who come in to keep away every renewal of hatred and of the fire that might flare up between the house of the slain man and the house of the killer.

§ 976. The guarantors of the blood have the right to keep in check those for whom they came in, and, if friendly counsel and rebukes do not avail, they have the right to rein them in, even with threats, if they stir.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN — The Guarantors of the Blood Money.

§ 977. The guarantors of the blood money are chosen by the house of the slain man.

§ 978. The terms for the blood money are fixed by the Elders and the wise men who happen to be present.

§ 980. If the killer should take leave of his senses and begin to play games with the Guarantors of the blood money and to put them off from today to tomorrow, they shall bring the money to the owner of the blood on the fixed term and shall denounce the debtor before the village, which shall compel the bad fellow to answer for the debt and, if reason requires it, may fine him.

§ 981. The blood money shall be given to the house of the slain man through the hands of the guarantors, and never directly by the killer.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT — The Bread of the Blood.

§ 982. The bread of the blood is when the mediators of the reconciliation of the blood, with some of the kin, the companions and the well-wishers of the owner of the blood, go to the killer’s door for the reconciliation of the blood and eat the bread of the reconciled blood.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE — The Cross on the Door.

§ 983. It is kanun, once the reconciliation of the blood is on its way and the meal has been eaten, and the Guarantors both of the blood and of the money have come in, that a cross be made on the killer’s door by the owner of the blood.

§ 985. The cross is cut in the stone of the upper lintel of the house door, or in the posts on either side of the door.

§ 986. The cross on the door shall be cut by the hand of the owner of the blood.

§ 987. The iron – the adze – with which the cross was cut, it is kanun to throw onto the roof of the killer’s house.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY — Sworn Brotherhood (Drinking Blood).

§ 988. When the hearts of the house of the killer and of the house of the slain man have been reconciled, they drink each other’s blood.

§ 989. They take two small glasses and fill them half with water or with raki; one of the well-wishers rises and ties their two little fingers, they prick them with a needle, letting one drop fall separately into each of the two glasses.

§ 990. After they have mixed the blood, or after they have shaken it well, they exchange the glasses and, with their hands crossed, they hand them to one another, drinking each other’s blood. – Amid congratulations they fire guns, and they become like new brothers of one mother and one father.

BOOK ELEVEN — THE KANUN OF THE ELDERS

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE — The Right and Duty of the Elders.

§ 991. The Elder of the pledge may not ask for the gifts and the fees fixed by the kanun without having settled the matter.

§ 992. The Elders are either the heads of the brotherhoods or the Chiefs of the clans, whose office rests on the foundation of the right of the kanun.

§ 993. Without them no new kanun can be made, nor any trial or arbitration that will concern a brotherhood, a clan, or even a village and a Banner.

§ 994. Elders is also the name for men renowned for their wisdom and who are experienced in trials and arbitrations.

§ 995. For individual matters and for particular disputes, the men just mentioned may also be taken as Elders of the pledges, and the judgment given by them is recognised by the kanun, provided they arbitrate according to it.

§ 996. The Elders of the Kanun have the right to avert every brawl and every threat of damage and killing, now by wisdom, now by force together with the village, and in very grave threats they shall ask for the support of the Chiefs and of the young men of the Banner, to bring the one who has lost his senses back to them.

§ 997. The Elders have the right to convene the village when someone will not abide by the judgment pronounced according to the kanun and without partiality.

§ 998. For small arbitrations, the Elders in the village shall be taken according to the brotherhood and the clan.

§ 999. The Elders taken to carry out some arbitration, there and then, once the parties to the dispute have given them their consent, have the right to hold the trial and to carry it through to its end.

§ 1000. Not only the Elders or the Chiefs of the Kanun have this right, but also the Elders of particular cases, once someone has chosen them as elders, have the right mentioned.

§ 1001. Once the pledge of consent has been given into the hands of the Elders, even if the parties to the dispute should repent, they cannot take their pledge back, nor can they change those Elders.

§ 1002. The principle of the kanun is: “Elder over Elder, court over court and oath over oath the kanun does not allow.”

§ 1003. Grave matters, which sully the honour of the village or of the Banner, shall be weighed by the Elders of the village and by the Chiefs of the Banner.

§ 1004. The Elders and the Chiefs of the Banner may not conclude any trial, and may not fine anyone in the village, without having with them the Elders and the Senior Elders of the village in which the offender is.

§ 1005. If it should happen that a whole village with all its Elders and commons has lost its senses, then the Chiefs of the Banner rise, with the Elders and the Senior Elders of the brotherhoods and the clans and with all the commons, and bring the village that has got out of hand back to its senses.

§ 1006. If some village has risen to make war on the Chiefs, the Elders, the Senior Elders and the commons of the Banner in which it is, then the House of Gjomarku shall be informed, and at its call the other Banners too shall rise, and under the leadership of this House the village that has got out of hand shall be attacked and brought back to its senses with punishments of fines, with expulsion from the land, or even with execution by the whole village, if someone has committed an offence that calls for execution.

§ 1007. The procedures and punishments mentioned also apply to a whole Banner when it gets out of hand, with the difference that a whole Banner cannot be driven out of the land, but is proclaimed by the other Banners until it lays down its pledge.

§ 1008. The kanuns that a village sets for itself with its Elders and commons, e.g. on complicity, treachery, killing or robbery, neither the Banner nor the House of Gjomarku may alter, provided no new things are invented that run against the vital decisions of the kanun of the Mountains.

§ 1009. In trials and arbitrations that concern a whole village or a Banner, individual Elders have no right to take them in hand. – These shall be weighed by the Elders and the Chiefs of the kanun of the Village and of the Banner.

§ 1010. If an Elder of the village has committed an offence, he shall lay down his pledge in the hands of the commons.

§ 1011. If he has refused to lay down his pledge, the commons call the Chiefs of the Banner, and together they bring him to reason.

§ 1012. If someone of the House of Gjomarku has committed an offence, the trial shall be held by the Chiefs and the commons of all the Banners.

§ 1013. If one of the Standard-bearers has committed an offence, he shall be weighed by the Chiefs and the commons; and a Head of a Banner who is at fault shall be weighed by the Standard-bearer, by the other Chiefs of the Banner and by the commons.

§ 1014. Even though he be an Elder, or a Head, or of the House of Gjomarku, he shall lay down his pledge in the hands of the Elders and the commons, if someone has made a complaint against him.

§ 1015. The Elders shall judge without partiality and without being swayed by bribes or by promises from one side or the other.

§ 1016. If some Elder has been found out to have given his judgment with partiality and against the kanun, merely because he was swayed by the bribes of the opposing side, besides the black face, no one takes him as an Elder any more.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO — Pledges.

§ 1018. The pledge is a material token, which is given into the hands of the judging Elders, with the right for them to judge the complaints of the two adversaries.

§ 1019. The pledge is called “the pledge of consent”, or of zabuka, which means that, by giving the pledge into the hands of the judging Elders, the parties are ready to abide by the trial and the arbitration.

§ 1020. An arbitration or trial held without pledges has no validity before the kanun.

§ 1021. Before the trial begins, the pledges shall be in the hands of the Elders, and the parties to the suit, besides being no longer able to go back, are also bound to pay the sandals, or the arbitration fee fixed by the kanun.

§ 1022. As a pledge there are held a weapon, a cartridge, a watch or even a tobacco box, until pledges are brought that correspond to the value for which they are disputing.

§ 1023. In arbitrations of complaints, accusations or slanders, the spoken word is not accepted as a pledge; a token is required.

§ 1024. The word is a pledge only when someone promises another so much and so much if he settles a matter for him.

§ 1025. If he has settled the matter for him, he owes the promised reward to the other man.

§ 1026. If the Elders of the pledges dig in, the one on his own opinion and the other on his, they shall turn to other Elders, but they may not burden the parties to the dispute (the owners of the pledges) with the costs.

§ 1027. The sandals of the Elders shall be paid by the owners of the pledges, as much by the one as by the other.

§ 1028. The sandals of the Elders are paid not according to the wishes of the Elders, but according to the gravity of the arbitration: “The sandals go by the pledge.” – “The sandals go by the goods.”

§ 1029. An arbitration of one morning carries five grosh. – (In earlier times arbitrations were not held in the afternoon.)

§ 1030. For arbitrations divided “with the stone”, the parties to the suit used to pay 10 grosh each per arbitration. [The phrase “divided with the stone” is unclear; perhaps boundary cases, settled by the stone oath of § 244–249.]

§ 1031. Before the Elders enter upon the trial, they shall take this oath: “By this good thing of God (upon a sign of the faith), and as I act so may it help me, I shall not conduct the trial with cunning and with partiality, and, as far as my mind and my soul can grasp, I shall not bend the kanun and the just judgment!”

§ 1033. If someone has gone to ask for Elders in the Banner under which he is, he shall take as Elder one of the Chiefs and not one of the commons.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE — Adding Elders.

§ 1035. “If you do not like the judgment, it is at Saint Paul’s.” – “If you do not like the judgment, it is at the Gorge of Orosh.” – “The House of Gjomarku is the foundation of the kanun.”

§ 1036. If you have handed over your pledge to the Elder, and he has given you his judgment, you have no reason to ask for any more Elders or trials.

§ 1037. If the judgment of the Elders, whom you chose and approved, has not satisfied you, you have no right to take your pledge back nor to choose other Elders.

§ 1038. If the owners of the pledges think that the judgment was given improperly and with partiality, they have the right not to abide by the arbitration.

§ 1039. The first Elders do not release the pledges, but they are bound to clear themselves, handing over their own pledges into the hands of second Elders chosen by them, and, after they have set before them the judgment given, it shall be weighed by the second Elders.

§ 1040. If the second Elders find the judgment of the first Elders bad, they take the pledges of the parties to the dispute, and the first Elders, besides being left without sandals, shall pay the sandals of the second Elders.

§ 1041. Elders may be added up to three sets: if these do not conclude the trial, then they shall go to the Chiefs, up to the House of Gjomarku, which is the foundation of the kanun. Beyond this House there is nothing.

§ 1042. If the judgment of the first Elders has proved good, the owners of the first pledges shall pay two sets of sandals: to the first Elders and to the second.

§ 1043. If grave trials or arbitrations arise, their resolution shall be sought at the House of Gjomarku.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR — The Jury.

§ 1044. Porota or jurors, in the language of the kanun, is the name for those persons who are pointed out by the court to swear an oath and to clear someone.

b) who bear no grudge, either against the side that swears the oath or against the side that receives it;

c) who are not greedy people, who hang their soul on a hook for a morsel of bread;

d) who, if not by guesswork, may know something of the matter, or can find it out more easily;

§ 1047. The principle of the kanun is: “The oath has the jury; the jury has the labour of the enquiries and of the binding.”

§ 1048. The priest is not put to the oath; but if it should happen that the oath is asked of him, either to clear himself or as a juror, he is reckoned as 24 persons.

§ 1049. A head of a Banner, if he has been called to an oath of 24 persons, the court names 12 for him, and he himself stands for the 12 not named.

§ 1050. The one who leads the jurors in the oath is not counted as a juror. The principle of the kanun is: “A hundred jurors, but the principal is not counted.”

§ 1051. “The jury does not go to the oath unless the principal of the oath has bound himself.”

§ 1052. The one who leads the oath shall bind himself to the jury that, if the oath turns out to be false, he will pay the fine of the Church for the violation of the false oath, the fine of the Banner or of the village according to the number of the jurors, and two for one to the owner.

§ 1053. The court shall name as jurors people from the brotherhood and from the village of the one who will lead the oath.

§ 1054. The principal of the oath shall go to the doors of the named jurors, to inform them that the court has named them as oath-takers.

§ 1055. The jurors not named, whom the principal of the oath finds himself, he shall declare name by name in court and before the Elders, just as the named ones were declared to him.

§ 1056. To the unnamed jurors too the principal of the oath shall go to their doors, to tell them that he has chosen them as oath-takers.

§ 1057. Half the jurors are named by the court, and the other half are found by the principal of the oath.

§ 1058. The Elders, after they have named the jury, shall tell the principal of the oath that, if he has any suspicion about any of the named jurors, that he would leave him bound out of some ill-feeling or grudge, he should say so there.

§ 1059. Once the principal of the oath shows solid reasons against one or another of the named jurors, the Elders of the court are bound to change them.

§ 1061. The day of the oath is fixed for the jury, and the principal of the oath is bound to gather it.

§ 1062. The jury, before it goes to the oath, shall try to make enquiries wherever it can, and to examine the principal of the oath, so as not to go to a false oath.

§ 1063. The jury has the right to make its own enquiries and, if the matter of the suit is very tangled, it has the right to postpone the oath for up to six months, while continuing the enquiries.

§ 1064. For very grave and far-reaching tangles, the jury has the right to postpone the oath even for years.

§ 1065. Once the jury has made its enquiries and has settled what it will say, whether to clear the accused by oath or to leave him bound, there is no reason to squeeze it; it will tell the principal of the oath one thing or the other.

§ 1066. Even if one of the jurors refuses to take the oath, the principal of the oath remains bound.

§ 1067. It is kanun that a juror, or even more, who does not want to take the oath, shall set the heart of the principal of the oath at rest, even with an oath if he asks for it, that they do not leave him bound out of some grudge or hatred, but only out of fear and doubt lest they go to a false oath.

§ 1069. If the jury has gathered and eaten the bread of the oath, the principal of the oath comes out innocent; nothing is left for the jury but to go to the oath.

§ 1070. If the jury leaves the bread uneaten, the principal of the oath remains at fault.

§ 1071. If the accuser has refused to come on the fixed day to receive the oath, the accused may sleep in peace, for with the bread eaten by the jury he has come out innocent.

§ 1072. The jury shall tell the accuser either to come and receive the oath, or to produce the informer.

§ 1073. The accuser, even if he delays for some days, in the end will either go and receive the oath, or produce the informer.

§ 1074. The jury, if it has gathered to take the oath outside the fixed day, has no other meal, but goes to the oath, and each man disperses to his own business.

§ 1075. On the day on which the oath is to be taken, the Elders who held the trial shall also be present.

§ 1077. The words of the oath shall be pronounced without change, and as the court of Elders fixed and set them out.

§ 1078. All the jurors, however many they are, shall take the oath, resting their hand on the sign of the faith, unless the owner of the goods himself excuses or exempts someone out of respect.

Note:

In Dukagjin, in the Highlands of Gjakova and in some other districts, they count some of the jury as the “hand of the oath” in the Church, and leave some others “to hear the oath”.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE — The Informer.

§ 1079. An informer is the one who reveals someone’s offence, as for example some hidden theft, or some killing whose author is lost, after the enquiries that he makes.

§ 1080. The informer in general does not show his face, though it happens that he comes forward openly as well.

§ 1081. The informer shall have his “shoes” according to the promises of the owner of the stolen goods or of the lost blood.

§ 1082. The owner of the stolen goods or of the lost blood, before he promises shoes to the informer, shall go to the suspect’s village, shall take two of the latter’s fellow villagers, and together with them shall go to his door, to demand an account from him.

§ 1083. If the suspect will not submit in any way, the owner of the goods shall tell him that he will promise the informer a reward at the suspect’s expense.

§ 1084. If the suspect has told him that he is free to promise the informer as much as he likes, if he turns out to be guilty, he shall pay the shoes promised to the informer.

§ 1085. If someone has promised shoes to the informer without informing the suspect, even if the latter turns out guilty, they shall pay the shoes promised by the owner of the goods in half.

§ 1086. The informer’s shoes are “with the hand on the oath”, so that the suspect is not burdened with excessive promises, even if he turns out guilty.

§ 1087. The general kanun is that the informer’s shoes may not exceed the price of the lost goods.

§ 1089. The informer’s fee in earlier times, with the hand on the oath, was 50 up to 500 grosh.

§ 1090. An informer found to be lying used to pay for the other’s goods in place of the thief. (Dukagjin)

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX — The Payment of the Informer.

§ 1092. “The informer takes away the oath.” If an honourable man has come forward as informer, the oath is not given to the suspect; he shall give an account.

§ 1093. “The informer brings out the lost goods.” Once the informer has been approved by the examiners, the suspect remains at fault, and shall return the goods to their owner according to the kanun.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN — The Examiners of the Informer.

§ 1094. The examiners are those whose office is to carry out rigorous enquiries, pressing the informer with frequent questions, watching whether he twists in his statements and whether he is accusing someone falsely.

§ 1095. The examiners shall be honourable, wise and shrewd men, experienced in examinations and enquiries.

§ 1096. The examiners shall be from among those whom the court has named as jurors.

§ 1097. Just as it is not kanun for the informer to come forward openly, so the informer has the right to ask by name for some of the jurors whom he trusts most not to expose him.

§ 1098. Before they begin to make enquiries, the examiners shall put the informer to the oath, that he will tell the truth, without partiality and without a grudge.

§ 1100. Every time the examiners speak with the informer, they shall speak in secret.

§ 1101. If the informer has said that the stolen animal has been sold, the examiners shall send people to make enquiries.

§ 1102. If the informer has said that the stolen animal has been slaughtered, the examiners shall ask him for a token, e.g. a piece of the hide, the horns, or some other part.

§ 1103. Once the informer’s statements have been approved by the examiners, no one may stop the denials of the thief or of the murderer, even though they are false, up to the oath; but the jury has the right to stay his hand and not let him go to a false oath.

§ 1104. If the informer who was suspected has come forward before the examiners, being in the right, and has even come forward and seized the thief or the murderer by the arm, his shoes are fixed at 500 up to 1500 grosh.

§ 1105. The examiners shall swear not to reveal the informer during his lifetime, unless he himself wishes to come forward.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-EIGHT — The Men of the Mountains of Albania in Assembly.

§ 1106. The assembly is a gathering of a clan or of clans, with the Chiefs, the Elders, the Senior Elders and the commons or the young men of the land, whose purpose is to debate some question or to bind some besa.

§ 1108. Partial assemblies are those of the villages, in which the Elders, the Senior Elders and the commons of a village take part.

§ 1109. Partial is also the name for those assemblies in which all the Elders, the Senior Elders and the commons of different clans that are ruled by one Chief come together.

§ 1110. General assemblies are those in which the Elders, the Senior Elders and the commons come together with the Chiefs and with the House of Gjomarku.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE — The Places of Assemblies.

§ 1112. Gatherings of assemblies are held either in the courtyards of Churches, or among the old ruins of places of worship, or in the heart of the land.

§ 1113. The men gathered in assembly sit in a half circle, so that they can see one another, and so that, if someone is called, he has room to show himself among the Chiefs and the Elders.

§ 1115. As long as the men of the land are in assembly, no outsider has the right to mingle among them.

§ 1116. In trials and weighings the Chiefs and the Elders sit by themselves and the commons by themselves.

§ 1117. The Chiefs and the Elders sit in the assembly according to precedence and right.

§ 1118. In the assembly, while one man speaks, the others shall listen and keep silent.

§ 1119. Small questions and disputes that fellow villagers have with one another, the Elders of the village together with the Senior Elders and the commons have the right to dispose of.

§ 1120. Grave questions that concern a whole clan shall be weighed and arbitrated by the Chiefs of the clan together with the Elders, the Senior Elders and the commons.

§ 1121. Questions that concern a whole district – or the state – shall be weighed in general assemblies: “a man per house”.

§ 1123. The kanun does not allow anyone to be insulted in the assembly; if anyone has done so, he shall be fined up to 5 rams.

§ 1124. If someone has told another that he lies, in the assembly, he shall be fined up to 500 grosh.

§ 1125. If someone has fired his weapon at another in the assembly, his house is burned, and the one who turned the weapon is executed by the whole assembly and his blood goes unavenged.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY — The House of Gjon Marku.

§ 1132. It has the right to gather the Chiefs and the commons in the case of general assemblies.

§ 1133. Whenever the need requires, it has the right to send out criers to summon the land, “a man per house”, and to gather them at Saint Paul’s.

§ 1136. It has the right to condemn to death: “The executioners are of the clans, the head belongs to Gjomarku.”

§ 1137. It has the right to take away the leadership or the headship from the one who is held to be guilty of complicity and of treason against the land. – But it cannot give it to anyone outside the brotherhood, since it is a hereditary right attached to the estate.

§ 1140. Before it goes out with the Chiefs and the commons of the clans to apply the penal kanuns, it shall lay down its pledge, and if it is found at fault in anything, it shall answer according to the kanun.

§ 1142. When it goes out for the reconciliation of the land, it has the right to the “Razogj” (two meals of bread).

§ 1143. If anyone of this House has been asked to be a juror, he is reckoned as 12 unnamed jurors.

§ 1145. For offences that call for the firebrand, the lima also belongs to this House (just to make a mark). [The word lima and the sense are uncertain.]

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE — The Chiefs of the Clans.

§ 1148. Each Chief has rights over his own clan: “The executioners are of the clans, the head belongs to Gjomarku.”

§ 1149. In trials and arbitrations within the circle of one Chief, the Chiefs of other clans may not interfere.

§ 1150. The Chief of the clan, together with the Elders and the commons of the brotherhoods, has the right to hold assemblies, to bind a besa, to hold trials, to fine and to proclaim.

§ 1151. The Chief of a clan cannot be sued before the Chiefs of other clans, and no one can call him to account for the trials and arbitrations he has carried out.

§ 1152. The Chief of a clan may not make decisions or arbitrations above the decisions of the kanun.

§ 1153. If someone has made a complaint against the Chiefs, they shall be weighed by the Elders and the commons of the place, or else by the House of Gjomarku.

§ 1154. The Chief of a clan has no right to burn, to lay waste, to execute or to drive out of the land. The House of Gjomarku is required, with the Chiefs and the commons of the other clans.

§ 1155. For fining and proclaiming a Chief, the Elders, the Senior Elders and the commons of the clan are enough.

§ 1156. If someone of the commons rises and kills one of the Chiefs or of the Gjomarkaj, he falls into blood as for the killing of any person.

§ 1157. The Chief of a clan, like any person of the commons, can be fined, can be burned, can be proclaimed, can be laid waste, can be executed and can be driven out of the land.

§ 1158. As regards estates and property, whether on the plain, in the high pasture or in the winter pasture, the estate right of each shall be respected.

§ 1159. Neither the House of Gjomarku, nor the Chiefs of the clans, nor the Elders of the villages can have any right over the goods and the property of others.

§ 1160. The commons of the clans owe neither the Chief nor the House of Gjomarku the tithe or tribute.

Note:

The Chiefs (Standard-bearers) of the Highlands of Gjakova – Nikaj, Mërtur, Gash and Krasniqe – have the right to one turn of water from the commons, besides the one that they have like every house.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO — The Elders of the Villages.

§ 1162. The Elders of the village have the right to gather the village in assembly.

§ 1163. The Elders of the village have no right to fine or to proclaim anyone without the consent of the Senior Elders and of the commons.

§ 1164. The Elders of the village are not exempt from the duties of the village, nor from forced labour and the common works.

§ 1166. If the Elder of the village has committed an offence, he shall lay down his pledge before the Senior Elders and the commons.

§ 1167. If the village with its Elders has oppressed some clan, the Elder of the oppressed clan has the right to defend it, even with [the help of] the Chiefs of other clans.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE — The Senior Elders.

§ 1169. The Senior Elders have the right to raise their voice when they see that the commons are being burdened with trials and arbitrations against the kanun.

§ 1170. The Senior Elder, together with the commons or the young men of the clans, are the fine-collectors.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR — The Fine-Collectors.

§ 1171. Fine-collectors is the name for those who, in the name of the whole assembly, go into the livestock fold of the man who has been fined, to take so many head of rams or oxen, according to the sentence of the court of the Chiefs, the Elders and the commons.

§ 1172. The owner of the fold does not dare to stop the fine-collectors from entering his fold.

§ 1173. If he has done so, the men of the assembly all rush in and swarm at his door.

§ 1174. If the owner of the animals has said any word at all, they have the right to increase his fine.

§ 1175. The fine-collectors themselves choose the rams and the oxen for the fine, and the owner of the animals cannot stop them.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE — The Voice of the Commons in Trials.

§ 1176. If the commons do not like the decisions of the Chiefs and the Elders, they have the right not to abide by them.

§ 1178. If the commons have approved the judgment of the Chiefs and the Elders, it is kanun that they cry out with one voice: “The foreign leg, our heads.” [The sense of the formula is obscure.]

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX — Proclamation.

§ 1179. To proclaim, in the language of the kanun, means to separate, to leave behind and to cut off a house, taking away from it every right, favour and honour, both in the village and in the Banner.

§ 1180. The village has the right to proclaim, but not to drive out of the land.

§ 1181. [In place of § 1181 the source repeats § 1081 on the informer’s shoes.]

§ 1182. Neither the village without the Banner, nor the Banner without the village, has the right to burn, to lay waste or to execute.

a) When someone refuses to bind himself by a besa with the village or the Banner;

c) when someone defies a trial or a decision pronounced in assembly by the village or the Banner;

d) when someone commits some violent offence in the village, in the Banner or outside them and does not submit to the trial;

e) for violence done outside the village or the Banner, if the offender has refused to lay down his pledge in his own village and Banner, these wash their hands of him, leaving the way open to all those who have a complaint against him to do what they like with him.

§ 1184. If the village has dug in and has stayed the hand of the Banner in the burning or the laying waste of a shameless man, who sullied the village or the Banner with some exceedingly ugly violence, the Banner has the right either to proclaim that village or to gather the other Banners to bring it to its senses.

§ 1185. If it leaves it at proclamation only, it neither takes nor gives with it until it submits to the trial and the fine.

§ 1186. Once the defiant village has laid down its pledge to the Banner, the Banner fines it according to the weighing of the offence.

§ 1187. They burn the offender’s house, lay it waste with its crops and its land, and the one who caused the violent offence they execute by the whole assembly with his blood unavenged, and they drive his household out of the land.

§ 1188. If the wrongdoing was exceedingly violent and hideous, besides the burning, the laying waste, the execution and the driving out of the land, the Banner also cuts down his house.

§ 1189. The cutting down of a house is when they tear out the stones of the four corners of the house down to the foundation. – This is done after the house has been burned.

§ 1190. The cutting down of the house in the kanun signifies that the people of that house are driven out of the land with everything they have and for ever, and in the eyes of the Banner they are held to be extinct.

§ 1191. Their movable property becomes a fine, and the immovable property shall lie fallow, for the grazing of the Banner.

§ 1192. No one of the village may take or give with the proclaimed man; and if anyone has taken or given with him, he too remains proclaimed and incurs the same punishments as the proclaimed man.

§ 1193. The formula of proclamation is this: “To cut someone off in death and in life.” [per mort e per gjellë; gjellë may also mean “food”.] – “To proclaim someone from funeral and wedding and the loan of flour.”

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SEVEN — Burning, Laying Waste and Execution.

§ 1194. There is burned, laid waste, executed by the whole village and driven out of the land with everything he has:

a) the one who slanders the Priest in a grave matter, or lays a hand on or kills the Priest;

b) whoever kills a guest under a besa is executed, fined, burned and driven out of the land;

c) whoever kills on behalf of the clan is burned, fined and driven out of the land;

d) whoever kills after the reconciliation of a blood is burned, fined and driven out of the land;

e) whoever kills by “kill and vanish” is burned, fined and driven out of the land;

f) whoever kills the man who owes him blood while the latter is under his besa is executed, burned, fined and driven out of the land;

g) whoever kills his cousin, to become master of his property, is executed, burned, fined and driven out of the land;

h) whoever harbours the offenders of the Banner is burned, fined and driven out;

i) the clan that does not take the lead against the offenders is fined and proclaimed.

§ 1195. If someone has fallen into any of these offences, he is executed by the whole village, fined, burned, his fruit trees are cut down, his garden and vineyard are laid waste, and he is driven out of the land with everything he has.

§ 1196. For a slain Priest, the murderer is driven out of the land for ever; and for the other offences mentioned, he is driven out for 5–15 years.

§ 1197. No one may put the firebrand and the axe to work (neither the village, nor the Banner, nor the House of Gjomarku) except by the hand of the head of the house that has committed the offence.

§ 1198. The hand of the offender shall make the mark in the burning and the laying waste, pronouncing the customary words: “May I take upon myself the evils of the village and the Banner.”

§ 1199. If he has refused to make the mark with fire, and no one else of the offender’s house will do so, the Elder of the clan shall tell someone who is closest to the offender, and his duty is to take the firebrand and the axe and to lead the village and the Banner in the destruction, after which the whole village and Banner shall set their hand to that destruction.

Note

The burning of the house for every killing did not exist: this matter came into practice late. – The Turkish government put it into practice, and the arrogance of some powerful houses eagerly welcomed this matter. – The seeking of the blood from the whole house of the killer did not exist; this is borne out by the word of the kanun “Blood follows the finger”; but, to take the blood more easily, they included all the males of the house, down to those of separate hearths, in those 24 hours. In some places they also put into practice the “PROCLAMATION” of the blood, taking in the whole brotherhood. For every killing the house of the killer used to pay a fine, give bread to the young men of the Banner, and in Mirdita the killer used to pay 500 grosh to the House of Gjomarku.

The greed for money of some Chiefs and young men of the Banner, in the company of the Elders, increased and enlarged some matters, just to fill their purse and their belly.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT — The Messenger.

§ 1204. The messenger takes no responsibility upon himself, either towards the side that sends him or towards the side to which he is sent; he is the bearer of the words entrusted to him.

§ 1206. The word that he has spoken is not held against the messenger as an offence, because he speaks in the name of the one who sends him.

§ 1207. The messenger is the guest of the sender, and, if harm befalls him while he is in this office, the sender has a guest violated.

§ 1208. If the messenger of a house is killed, the killer falls into blood with the house that sends him.

§ 1209. If the messenger of a village is killed, the killer falls into blood with the village.

§ 1210. If the messenger of a Banner is killed, the killer falls into blood with the Banner that sends him.

§ 1211. If the messenger is killed at the word of another Banner, Banner falls into blood with Banner.

§ 1212. If someone of his own village kills the messenger, the killer is executed by the whole village.

SECTION ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-NINE — The Crier.

§ 1213. A crier or announcer is the one who makes known and proclaims the orders of the Chief of the clan, either from door to door, or from a calling-place fixed by the Chief, the Elders and the commons.

§ 1215. The crier of the clan shall send out the call of summons to the whole clan from the fixed calling-place.

§ 1216. The criers of the villages shall go from door to door when “a man per house” is required.

§ 1217. In every danger or threat, the crier shall be ready to give the clan the call to arms.

§ 1219. The crier may not keep away from the common works and duties of his own village.

§ 1220. Even if the crier happens to be busy with the offices of the clan or of the village, the people of his house shall go out to the work of the village.

BOOK TWELVE — RELEASES AND EXEMPTIONS

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE — Those Who Share in the Exemptions.

§ 1221. The Kanun of the Mountains of Albania releases and exempts: I. The Church:

c) if he has killed someone, he is not pursued for blood; his family falls into blood,

If one of the great Elders is asked to be a juror, his person is reckoned as 12 unnamed jurors.

§ 1226. – VI. The poor man – an only son, on whose head the house and his mother have been left –: he is exempt from war service.

§ 1228. – VIII. The Virgins (women who dress as men): They are not distinguished from other women, except that they are free to sit among men, but without the right to a voice in the assembly.

Those who have a death in the house are exempted from all work, both for the village and for the Banner, and also from the channelling of the water of the mills. They have this right from the kanun for one week of days in a row. – When the week is completed, they shall answer for their duties both towards the village and towards the Banner, even if they are a Head or of the House of Gjomarku.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR — Death.

§ 1230. The Kanun of the Mountains does not allow trouble upon trouble to be caused to anyone.

§ 1231. When someone of a house in the village dies, for one week of days in a row – after the death – no one may call at the door for any work that the place has to do as a whole village.

§ 1232. He is exempted, with all the people of his house, from every forced labour both for the village and for the Banner, and also from the channels of the fields and of the mill.

§ 1233. If someone wishes to wait beyond the week to receive condolences, let him wait; but at the end of eight days the kanun requires his worker of him, even if he is of the House of Gjomarku.

§ 1234. When someone dies, messengers shall be sent to call people to the funeral.

§ 1237. As soon as the friends set foot in the village of the dead man, they shall put the collars of their jackets over their heads.

§ 1238. It is kanun to lament over the dead three times, repeating the words “Woe is me!” nine times.

§ 1239. The men do not cry out over women, except a son over his mother and a brother over his sister.

§ 1240. When someone sets off to go to a funeral, he does not say “Farewell”, nor does anyone say to him “A good road to you”.

§ 1241. When passing by the graves, one does not say “Good work!” to the workers who are digging the grave.

§ 1242. If they are friends from outside, they offer them condolences (“healthy heads”); if they are fellow villagers, they say to them: “Are you tired, lads?”

§ 1243. Both the fellow villagers of the dead man and the in-laws, when they have drunk their coffee, set the cup down on the ground, saying: “May God give you strength!” – “For good” is not said.

§ 1244. On the third day after the death, whoever comes to offer condolences says, both after the coffee and after the meal: “May God give you strength! For good from this day on!” – One does not say: “May your table be spread for good!” [the usual thanks to a host after a meal, which would wish for more such meals].

§ 1246. “Those who escort the dead may not pass by anyone’s door, unless it is the highway or the village road.”

§ 1247. On returning from the graves, no one shall stop on the road, but shall go straight to the house of the dead man.

§ 1248. When they arrive in the yard, the fellows of the dead man’s house come out to meet them, hold their weapons, pour water over their hands before they enter the house and lead them to the tables, to eat the funeral meal.

§ 1250. When they rise from the meal, they shall all go outside and wash their hands before the door of the house in a pail, which shall be full of water.

§ 1251. The friends who scratch their faces at a friend’s death shall not wash their bloodied cheeks, either in the house, or in the village of the dead man, or on the road, but only when they reach their own house.

§ 1252. Mourning for the dead of the house (for men, but not for women) shall be kept for one year.

§ 1254. Mourning is put off either for some feast that is celebrated with friends, or for some day of the year.

§ 1256. A woman with a husband may not cook for the funeral meal, nor pour water over the hands, nor serve raki, nor break bread.

§ 1257. If a woman whose husband is living has had to cook for a funeral meal, she may not cook at a wedding.

§ 1258. A widow may not cook at a wedding, nor pour water over the hands, nor serve raki, nor break bread, nor dress the bride or come near her.

§ 1259. If a married daughter comes to her parents’ house on a visit and dies there at that time, the parents shall hold the funeral meals. The costs of the funeral meals shall be borne by the parents’ house and not by the husband’s.

§ 1260. If the in-law’s house has given some help, this is held by the kanun to be an honour, but not a duty.

§ 1261. If the parents should rise and carry the dead body of their daughter to her husband’s house, the village fines them for that inhuman conduct.

§ 1262. If the parents have not the means to lay their daughter in the ground, the brotherhood and the clan shall lend to them.

§ 1263. The costs and the loans of the funeral meals shall be paid at the end of the month, once the dead person has been laid in the ground, and cannot be put off beyond that.

Glossary

The fixed renderings used in the English translation for the customary terms of the Kanun. “Uncertain” marks a rendering that could not be confirmed.

Albanian	English	Note
Flamur / Bajrak	Banner	territorial, judicial and military unit of several clans
Bajraktar / Flamurtar	Standard-bearer	leader of a Banner
hija (e kishës)	precinct	literally the “shade” of the church
ndore	protection	guarantee of safety extended by a host or patron
gjak	blood	the blood feud, or the blood owed
gjakhupës	his blood goes unavenged / is lost
giobë	fine
grosh, okë	grosh, oka	coin; weight of about 1.3 kg
famulli, famulltar	parish, parish priest
tym	hearth	literally “smoke”, one household
kujri	commons	common land of a village or Banner
vllazni	brotherhood	group of related households, includes cousins in the male line
gjini	kin-group	uncertain
fis	clan
Kom	Nation	uncertain
krenë, vogjli	chiefs, common people
pleq	Elders	arbitrators
peng	pledge	security deposited before arbitration
be, poronik	oath, juror
rrogtar	servant
i zoti i shpis, e zoja e shpis	head of the house, mistress of the house
gjindja e shpis	people of the house
shkues	matchmaker
shej	token	the betrothal ring and ten grosh
kunorë	crown	the church wedding, the marriage bond
krushq, krushka	wedding escorts, woman escort
krushkapar	chief escort
krushq miq / krushq shokë	escorts who are friends [from outside] / fellow villagers
mik	guest; in §56 “in-law” (the bride’s father)
mik i prem	violation / betrayal of a guest
bjeshkë, vrri	high pasture, winter pasture
tbanë	summer hut	uncertain
xanë / ograjë, prozhëm, zabel	enclosure, woodlot, grove	“woodlot” uncertain
për pushkë, për vlla, për gojë	per gun, per brother, per mouth	ways of dividing property
terkuzë	measuring rope
pashtrak	grazing penalty	animal surrendered when a flock trespasses
kryegjâja	principal stock	stock whose number is kept constant
gjâja për gjymës	livestock on halves
kau më hu	ox for hire
ogiç	bellwether
qeni i hekurave, stel	chained dog, post
muranë	cairn	raised where a man was killed
i daluni fare	the man whose line has died out	uncertain
vlla i shpifun	half-brother	uncertain
bulk / bulg	tenant farmer	“farmhand” in §59 (a son counted si bulg); “ploughman” in §24 and §191–198 (the one who drives or hires the oxen)
zotni	landlord, master
barrtor	customer [at the mill]	literally “load-bringer”
ujem	miller’s toll
vi, vada	channel, irrigation
plangçore	estate channel	channel bought with its bed and estate
dasa	dams
rendtar	turn-holder
kapàr	earnest money
qyshk(e)	conditions
udhtar	messenger	literally “traveller”
shengjeta	shengjeta (the hunter’s portion)	kept in Albanian
shitoj (shpêzin)	wound [the game]
zagar, langoj	hound, greyhound
kofen, kosh	weir trap, basket	fish traps
bàr	poison	for fishing
gjâ çdo gjâ	goods for goods	payment in kind
perbûjtore	inn
uhà, uhas, detyrs	loan, lender, debtor
fajde, shtojca fitimesh	interest, addition of gain
peng hupës	forfeitable pledge
vadë	term	of a loan
e folmja	promised reward	a fee promised for a service
e falmja	gift
mjek	healer	§512
mohues	denier	the accused who denies (§525)
zhgarkues, shpifës	accuser, slanderer
sedija (“s’e dija”)	sedija (“I did not know”)	the clause of the oath disclaiming knowledge of the culprit; kept in Albanian
porotë, poronik	jury, juror
i zoti i bés	principal of the oath
kapucar	informer
pritëtarët (e kapucarit)	examiners [of the informer]
bestar	guarantor of the besa
besa	besa	sworn word, truce; kept in Albanian
dorëras	killer	literally “the one whose hand struck”
simahor	accomplice
hjekës, hjeksi	accomplice, complicity	the inside helper (§766)
kjor	receiver	of stolen goods
“buka”	the “bread”	a household that feeds thieves (§768)
preja, pretoj	raid, to raid
prita	ambush
dypernjahja	two for one
qese	purse	unit of blood money
dorzân (i gjakut / i të hollave)	guarantor (of the blood / of the blood money)
ndermjetës, ndermjetsi	mediator, mediation
dorzân, dorzâni	surety, suretyship
ndrikull, nun	co-mother, godfather (Nun)	at the hair-cutting
famull, famulleshë	godson, goddaughter
lisi i gjakut / lisi i tamblit	tree of blood / tree of milk	father’s and mother’s lines
Sterpleq / Strapleq	Senior Elders
giobtarë	fine-collectors
kasnec	crier
lajmtar	messenger	distinct from udhtar (§486), also “messenger”
leçi, leçitoj	proclamation, to proclaim	a ban cutting a house off from the community
sodumoj	lay waste
grij (katundisht)	execute (by the whole village)
Dera e Gjomarkut	the House of Gjomarku	hereditary lords of Mirdita at Orosh
zija	mourning
krye shndosh	condolences	literally “healthy head”; also as a verb, u shndoshin kryet (§1242)
berr, berret	sheep or goat, small stock	never “lamb” or plain “animal” (§24, §73, §78)
armët e krahit / të brezit	shoulder arms / belt arms	(§20, §62 g, §601 e)
strapleqni	senior eldership	the office of the Senior Elders (§63 e)
plyrë	wound	(Section 28, §61 d)
pendë (dheu)	pendë of land	a yoke of oxen; as a land measure, a day’s ploughing for one yoke (§319, §484)
pash	fathom	(§267, §484)
vjetull(ë)	badger	variant of vjedull (§422)
shaterkazi	hoe and pick	read as shat e kazmë; uncertain (§292)
kelbazë	liver rot (liver fluke)	probable reading (§483)
njye (pres. nyjen)	cut	§601 j, §663–664; not the noun “joint”
hjek rakin	drink the raki	§656
kafshë	thing	old Gheg sense, not “animal” (§768 a)
Shpin (capitalised)	the house	Gheg accusative; resolves §802 (compare §838, §867)
cubni / grabitje	theft / robbery	(§767 c, Section 113)
dhunë	violence; sexual dishonour in §920–931
prîndja, prîndët	family (of birth)	“parents” only where the sense requires it (§962–964)
i kjau / i kjafët zêmra	he suspects	(§562, §769, §926)
gjellë	life	dated; possibly “food” (§1193)
kasnecija	obstinacy, arrogance	§692 and the note after §1199; distinct from kasnec, crier
me të zi	eagerly	the source of modern mezi (note after §1199)
me të rame (ràm) të diellit / me të mârrun (marrmet) të diellit	at sunrise / at sunset	settled by the source’s own gloss in §682 (§382, §682, §760)
Terms left in Albanian because I could not identify them:
- babune: a measure of wheat (§45), and of the miller’s toll (§387).
- strufulleca: a role at the wedding (§46 and §49).
- koshiq: a measure of grain, perhaps a small basket (from kosh) (§319).
- perzivoj and kariqe: kinds of fish trap (§437).
- rrjell: apparently something used to stun fish (§444–446).
- huta: the Martini rifle (§484).
- kashata: perhaps a round of cheese or of bread (§601 j, §663–664). In §663 nyjen is the verb “cuts”, not a second item.
- bracat and biramelat: apparently minors and the simple-minded (§768, §774–776).
- hànor and vergan: kinds of favoured animal that may not be raided (§799).
- Razogj: the “two meals of bread” owed to the House of Gjomarku (§1142).
- lima: something belonging to the House of Gjomarku in house-burnings (§1145).

The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini

Collected and arranged by Shtjefën Gjeçovi (Shkodër, 1933)

Introduction

Notes from the web editor

BOOK ONE — THE CHURCH

Article One — CIVIL PART

CHAPTER ONE — The Precinct of the Church, the Graves, the Estates and Property of the Church, the Parish Priest, the Servant, the Workers of the Church

SECTION ONE — The Precinct of the Church.

SECTION TWO — The Graves.

SECTION THREE — The Estates and Property of the Church.

SECTION FOUR — The Priest of the Parish, or Parish Priest.

SECTION FIVE — The Servant of the Church.

SECTION SIX — The Workers of the Church.

Article Two — PENAL PART

SECTION SEVEN — The Nature of Punishments.

SECTION EIGHT — The Fixing of the Punishment According to the Kind of Offence.

BOOK TWO — THE FAMILY

CHAPTER TWO — THE STRUCTURE OF THE FAMILY.

SECTION NINE — The Family Considered in Itself.

SECTION TEN — The Family Considered in the Village and in the Banner.

BOOK THREE — MARRIAGE

SECTION ELEVEN — The Definition and the Kinds of Marriage.

SECTION TWELVE — The Right of the Young Man and of the Girl.

SECTION THIRTEEN — The Duties of the Husband and of the Wife.

SECTION FOURTEEN — The Right of the Widower and of the Widow.

CHAPTER THREE — MATCHMAKING. BETROTHAL

SECTION FIFTEEN — Matchmaking.

SECTION SIXTEEN — Betrothal

SECTION SEVENTEEN — The Token.

SECTION EIGHTEEN.

SECTION NINETEEN — The Price that Was Given and Is Given for Women.

SECTION TWENTY — The Inheritance of the Albanian Woman.

CHAPTER FOUR — THE WEDDING

SECTION TWENTY-ONE — The Preparation of the Wedding in the Kanun.

SECTION TWENTY-TWO — The Leadership of the Wedding Escorts.

SECTION TWENTY-THREE

SECTION TWENTY-FOUR.

SECTION TWENTY-FIVE.

CHAPTER FIVE — THE KANUN OF THE BRIDEGROOM.

SECTION TWENTY-SIX.

SECTION TWENTY-SEVEN — The Death of the Bride.

SECTION TWENTY-EIGHT.

SECTION TWENTY-NINE.

SECTION THIRTY — The Widow.

SECTION THIRTY-ONE — The Cut Fringe.

SECTION THIRTY-TWO — The Woman Without the Crown.

CHAPTER SIX — PARENTS. (Father – Mother – Sons)

SECTION THIRTY-THREE — The Father – the Husband.

SECTION THIRTY-FOUR — The Mother – the Wife.

SECTION THIRTY-FIVE — The Sons.

CHAPTER SEVEN — THE DIVISION [OF THE HOUSEHOLD].

CHAPTER EIGHT — INHERITANCE.

SECTION THIRTY-SIX — The Right of Inheritance in the Kanun.

SECTION THIRTY-EIGHT — The Half-Brother.

CHAPTER NINE — BEQUESTS.

SECTION THIRTY-NINE — The Definition of Wills.

SECTION FORTY — Kinds of Bequests.

SECTION FORTY-ONE — The Right of the Man Whose Line Has Died Out.

SECTION FORTY-TWO — The Right of the Cousins.

SECTION FORTY-THREE — The Servant.

BOOK FOUR — HOUSE, LIVESTOCK AND PROPERTY

CHAPTER TEN

SECTION FORTY-FOUR.

CHAPTER ELEVEN — LIVESTOCK.

SECTION FORTY-FIVE — The Shepherd.

SECTION FORTY-SIX — The Bell-Goat or Bell-Ram (the Bellwether).

SECTION FORTY-SEVEN — Livestock on Halves.

SECTION FORTY-EIGHT — The Principal Stock.

SECTION FORTY-NINE — Livestock with Liability.

SECTION FIFTY — The Sow on Halves.

SECTION FIFTY-ONE — The Dog’s Post.

SECTION FIFTY-TWO — The Ox for Hire.

SECTION FIFTY-THREE — The Bees.

CHAPTER TWELVE — PROPERTY.

SECTION FIFTY-FOUR — The Determination of Property.

SECTION FIFTY-FIVE — Making Someone a Brother in the Village.

SECTION FIFTY-SIX — The Commons.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN — THE BOUNDARY.

SECTION FIFTY-SEVEN — The Boundaries of Land Are Not Moved.

SECTION FIFTY-EIGHT.