Vajtim and Gjëmë

[2] The earliest figurative representations of this practice in traditional Albanian-inhabited regions appear on Dardanian funerary stelae of classical antiquity.

[4] In northern Albania Vajtim is performed by women "singing in verse the praises of the deceased, with a heart-breaking and moving voice".

During the ritual, the men strike their chests and scratch their faces, repeating: O i mjeri unë për ty o biri/nipi/miku jem, (Oh poor me, o my son/nephew/friend), depending on the deceased.

Gjâma served the unique purpose of expressing one's grief, but at the same time, to spread the bad news in adjacent regions for others to come and visit the deceased's family.

Today Albanian Catholics of Montenegro no longer perform the Gjâma and hire instead professional mourners called Gjâmatarë, from Northern Albania.

The Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi, visited Gjirokastër, Southern Albania, then part of the Ottoman Empire in 1670, and reported the following account from the city:[11] The people of Gjirokastra mourn their dead relatives for forty or fifty, indeed up to eighty years.

Every Sunday all the relatives of the dead person gather in a jerry-built house, paying professional mourners who weep and wail and keen and lament, raising a great hue and cry.