The Photo Collection of Edith Durham

Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo, 1903 - 1913

ED023_RAI 400.13253 Montenegro. Njeguši. Edith Durham’s guide Krsto Pejović playing a gusle (Alb. lahuta) at Njeguši in Montenegro (Photo: Edith Durham, March 1905). “Njegushi cannot fail to make a most vivid impression on the mind, for it is the entrance to a world that is new and strange. The little stone-paved room of the inn, hung with portraits of the Prince and the Tsar and Tsaritsa of Russia; the row of loaded revolvers in the bar; the blind minstrel who squats by the door and sings his long monotonous chant while he scrapes upon his one-stringed gusle; and the tall, dignified men in their picturesque garb, all belong to an unknown existence, and the world we have always known is left far below at the foot of the mountain. In Njegushi one feels that one has come a long way from England. It is, in fact, easy to travel much farther without being so far off. Yet the Montenegrin love of liberty and fair play and the Montenegrin sense of honour have made me feel more at home in this far corner of Europe than in any other foreign land.” (Edith Durham, Through the Lands of the Serb, 1904).