avas" naturally feel that
they must have a "slava" of their own. It may also have happened in
Macedonia that a traveller has been told by the very adaptable
peasants how Saint Nicholas or Saint Alimpija is their house saint, a
commitment which the holy one has but lately had thrust upon him. One
would therefore do well to look for some other test, and not to follow
those people who roundly assert that the man who honours the "slava,"
and no other man, is a veritable Serb.

WHAT ARE THE MACEDONIAN SLAVS?

If, for example, one wishes to decide whether a given Macedonian Slav
is a Serb or a Bulgar--many thousands have been called and have, quite
happily, called themselves both--we must use a more scientific method.
Some investigators, such as Vateff, have made measurements that are
not without value; others, such as Djeri['c] and Shishmanoff, have
published good monographs on the Serbian and Bulgarian name. We have
had some learned dissertations on the language of Macedonia, as to
whether the Slav dialects approach more nearly the Serbian or the
Bulgarian literary language. But this question remains unanswered,
owing to the imperfect manner in which the grammatical and syntaxical
peculiarities of the Macedonian dialects have, as yet, been examined.
Some people have argued that as the Bulgarian peculiarity of the
postponed article is also found in Macedonia it follows that the
province really is Bulgarian. But as the postponed article is found in
a wide zone, which extends from the Albanian shores to those of the
Black Sea, this argument loses in strength, for how can Roumania be
called Bulgarian? Very possibly before the Slavs arrived that zone was
inhabited by another people who left this characteristic behind them,
though they left no documents. It is a logical hypothesis. And
Barbulescu, the Professor of Slav Philology in the University of
Jassy, said in 1912 that "the Serbs have just as many reasons for
asserting that the Macedonian is a Serbian language as the Bulgars
have to deny it." As it was in the Middle Ages, so it is now; the
mediaeval language used to oscillate between the two, and it is
sometimes impossible to tell whether an old Macedonian Slav document
is Bulgarian or Serbian.... When we come to the ethnologists we find
they have only written books which deal with certain parts of
Macedonia. They have confessed that, generally speaking, it is
impossible to say whether a man is a Serb, a Bulgar or a
Ser