For over a year I had charge of a Labour Battalion of Turks in the Struma valley in Macedonia. They were chiefly recruited from two villages in the hills west of the river. In the course of conversation with them I naturally discovered a good many items of their beliefs, which I jotted down from time to time; this does not claim, however, to be a scientific record.

Most of the details were supplied to me by a young Turk named Ali Mustafa, from a small village called Cherkess Keui near the Struma. His grandfather, like so many other Circassians, had left the Caucasus after the Russo-Turkish war, and had been planted by the Government in one of the many new villages which were formed for these immigrants. This particular village was very unhealthy, and in consequence there were only three of the original families left.