Among the Pre-Adamites

Scattered in settlements throughout the former Yugoslavia, and with small colonies in many other countries throughout the world, there is an obscure and peculiar folk who go by many names. Their two proper endonyms, in their own language, are an archaic term meaning “All of us,” and one that means “Those who speak our language.” One exonym is the “Illyricans,” signifying that they are primordial inhabitants of the Roman province of Illyricum, but distinct from the autochthonous Illyrians, who were subsequently overwhelmed, and either absorbed or driven into remote fastnesses, by the Slavs. They are most commonly known (more by others than by themselves) as Pre-Adamites, for reasons that shall become clear as this brief account proceeds.

Like the Illyrians, whose extant remnant is the Albanians, they are a branch of the Indo-European peoples: which is to say, they speak an Indo-European language, though their blood has been mingled with European peoples who preceded them on the Continent, whose only extant people are the Basques. However, their tongue is a separate branch of that arbor linguarum, which has no direct relation to either Slavs or Illyrians, or indeed any other, except for two small groups deep in Central Asia: those who migrated towards the rising sun, when the ancestors of the Illyricans migrated towards the setting sun, from their long-lost common homeland.

This race first emerged into history when the Roman Empire was divided into West and East, when they straddled the borderline between the two, and gradually adopted the Christian religion that had percolated through the region, was established by Constantine, and finally enforced upon the whole population of the Empire by Theodosius. Those in the West became, perforce, Roman Catholic; those in the East, Greek Orthodox. Either way, the new religion was never more than a superficial imposition upon their stubbornly resilient ancestral culture.

When the easterners were conquered by the Turks, they promptly but perfunctorily adopted Islam: practicing only the Five Pillars (though few took the pilgrimage to Mecca) and writing their language in a form of Arabic script. With the recession of the Tourkokratia, they just as promptly adopted Serbian Orthodoxy, and wrote in a form of Cyrillic script.

The legendary culture-heroes of the race were two brothers. The elder was a champion of superhuman courage, strength, agility, and endurance; the younger, a trickster of superhuman wisdom and cleverness, endowed with the power of shape-shifting. The former was the forefather of all princes and warriors, the latter of all wise men: magicians, astronomers, scribes and scholars (formerly masters of lore preserved by memorized verses), singers of songs of high and far-off things, and such-like. The common people are still called ‘landsmen’, even when they happen to be townsmen. (In olden times, landsmen were mustered in time of need as spearmen and archers, led by swordsmen; in modern times, warriors are officers, landsmen are soldiers.) Warriors and wise men were traditionally wanderers, holding the scattered tribes together.

Judgments according to the customary law are made by triads, formed (by general consent) with one man of each caste. As the customs are known equally to all, and so is the common sense of equity, there has never been any need for professional lawyers and judges. The wise men are acknowledged to have greater ken of historic precedents, while the warriors and landsmen (each in their own way) have greater ken of practical experience. Within each local community, an informal triad of triads governs matters of general concern, particularly dealings with those outside the folk.

The wise men more or less adopted the outward forms of Christian clergy, just as the folk as a whole submitted nominally to foreign rule; but among themselves, they stuck as far as possible to their own ways. Most, but not all, took holy orders, and practiced the rites of their respective churches, but for little more than Sunday services, and such forms as seemed magically proficient (the sign of the cross, the sprinkling of holy water, etc.). When the Roman church decreed priestly celibacy, the clergy in the west forewent marriage according to canon or civil law, but continued to marry according to their customary law. The most drastic innovation was that parish priests relinquished their old itinerant tradition, and remained attached to their native villages. Their most important function is to teach youngsters the ancestral lore in the vernacular.

As with the religious overlay, the western Pre-Adamite language was overlaid with Latinisms and the eastern with Hellenisms. Never having developed a script of their own, the westerners adapted the Roman, the easterners the Greek. But though divided into two religions and two dialects, the common folk-culture was sustained. Only three Christian Scriptures were readily translated into, and amalgamated with, their folk-religion: the Book of Enoch, the Diatesseron, and the Acts of the Apostles. Many other sacred books (canonical, apocryphal, and heretical alike) did circulate among them: all in Koinh Greek, except for the Vulgate Bible.

Their old, pagan religion was basically the usual sort of nature-worship. Primarily they worshipped the Sky-Father (also called the Welkin-King and the Cloud-Shepherd) and the Earth-Mother (also called the Green Lady and the Queen of Waters, viz. springs and lakes). The Sky-Father had been readily identified with Zeus ~ Jupiter, but the Earth-Mother was less easily shoehorned into Classical categories, much less Christianity. (Mary FeotokoV has been assimilated as a heroine rather than demigoddess. For them, the Moon-goddess is still Queen of the Stars [each of whom is an “angelic” demigoddess in her own right] and Empress of Heaven. Mary Magdalene has been assimilated as the equivalent of Aphrodite ~ Venus.) Mother Earth is personified as a little girl in springtime, a nubile maiden in summer, a heavily-pregnant matron in autumn, and a withered crone in winter.

They also worship the Indo-Aryan god Mithras, who was transmogrified into Mithrael, the Angel of Truth, whose main function is to see that lies are found out, and that breaches of contract are punished appropriately. He is portrayed as an archer, and “the arrow of Mithrael” is the expression used when deceivers and cheaters get exposed.

Now, given the amount of subterfuge involved in preserving their language and customs from outsiders, this stringent code of honesty may seem paradoxical, if not hypocritical. The seeming contradiction is reconciled by the fact that, as a people so often oppressed from outside, such resistance is entirely justified. Their proverb says: “Truth is not owed to liars, nor peace to lawbreakers.” Outsiders who trade with them honestly are reciprocated in kind, as a matter of honor, which gives them a wide reputation as fair dealers. Like our own Quaker merchants of old, they are famous for refusing to haggle: they offer a fair price for their wares, take it or leave it. But wrong them, and their vengeance may be slow and devious, but always strict and fitting: of which more shall be said.

They have some peculiar cosmological myths, which were also Christianized. For instance, they say that when Satan fell from Heaven, he hit and bounced off the Moon: the stars are sparks broken away from her radiant face, and the black marks are her scars. They say that all comets are only one comet, which they consider the eighth planet, who is sent forth occasionally by Grandfather-beyond-the-Sky (also called the Emperor of Heaven, and now identified with the Christian God) to check up on things. Accordingly, their week has eight days, though the Day of the Comet only falls in leap years, in their peculiar adaptation of the Julian-Gregorian calendar.

In their traditional calendar, which is still used for all but civic purposes, the year begins on the first new moon after the winter solstice. It is divided into quarters by the two solstices and equinoxes. The months are governed strictly by the cycles of the Moon, which (rather like the ancient Roman calendar) are similarly divided into quarters, though the months are only numbered, not named, and so cycle freely through the years.

Part of retaining their old beliefs was to elaborate and re-interpret the Biblical account of Genesis. Their wise men were quick to ask: “If God created the world, then who created God?” Hence they continue to believe in creations before the Biblical creation, and hold that their own revered ancestors were survivors of the previous creation: and this is why they call themselves, and are called by others, Pre-Adamites. As is often the case with those ignorant of philology, they were (until modern times) also complacently convinced that theirs was the original language of all mankind, from which all others are derived.

As they cling as strongly to their customary law as to their language, the two reinforce each other. Until modern times, they never taught their language to foreigners at all, and they are still reluctant to do so. Though they have always had perforce to use the languages of the outside populations surrounding them, and were not uninfluenced by them, their ancestral tongue has been protected by a strict division of labor between the sexes. Practically all men, dealing as they do with outward affairs, became fluent in Latin, or Greek, or (in time) Serbo-Croatian; but practically all women deal only with hearth and home and neighborhood, and so never learn any other language. In this way, their own tongue has remained (quite literally) the mother-tongue, the language of the cradle, in which all members of the ethnic community are raised.

Lest this all seem too patriarchal for modern sensibilities, it must be said that, though women do have their own prescribed roles, those are far from inconsiderable. “Woe betide the man who incurs the wrath of the household matriarch!” as their saying goes.

According to one of their best-loved folk-tales, a beautiful maiden was kidnapped and taken away by a Turk for his harem. Patiently she bore her captivity, degradation, and a son to him. But secretly she raised her son to speak the tongue of her own folk and be true to their ways; and when he grew to manhood, he assassinated the Turk and escaped with her to her own people.

Wise women are nuns, witches, and healers in their own right, particularly as midwives: it would be inconceivable for any man to take charge of any woman’s health, especially at childbirth. Also, it is believed that only women can have the second sight or the evil eye. (Perhaps needless to say, the latter is considered benevolent, not evil, when directed against those outside the folk.) Nevertheless, in the community at large, especially in its dealings with outsiders, only men may take the lead; and it is just as inconceivable that any woman may take up arms, except in the most dire and immediate emergency.

Their race is divided into tribes, then clans, then families. To this day, each member of the race has five names: the given name (since the conversion, always a Christian name), the family name, the clan name, the tribe name, and a chosen name (always a name in their native tongue). Each is known to the family by the given name; to the clan, by the given and family name; to the tribe, by the given, family, and clan name. The chosen name is known only to friends: the very word for ‘friend’ means literally ‘one known by chosen name’.

Just as they have, at once, a firm and constant sense of their own unity as a people, and a series of fine distinctions within this people, their attitude towards outsiders is at once absolute and finely graded. Foreigners (by which they mean those outside the folk: mere political boundaries are basically meaningless to them, just like all foreign laws) are foreigners, viz., fundamentally ‘other’; but they do make fine distinctions among them, considering each foreign nation to have its own peculiar character.

The Romans and Greeks they have always held in a kind of awe, with an undercurrent of fear for the former, and envy for the latter. The Slavs they regard with contempt, either condescending or purely disdainful, depending on circumstances. The Germans they both fear and envy. They regard Jews with a suspicion tempered by grudging respect. The Gypsies they regard as embodying the absolute opposite of all the virtues of truth and probity they so highly esteem, and so loath them with peculiar intensity.

During the Second World War, they volunteered to form militia units to collaborate with the Ustaše and SS, for the sole purpose of systematically exterminating the Gypsies. During the Wars of the Yugoslavian Succession, they just kept their heads down, and only fought to defend their own communities, from whomever dared attack them: and then they fought fiercely, neither asking nor giving quarter … but also without any of the wanton cruelty of the Slavs.