In the early 1990s the Macedonian village of Vërnik in Southern Albania welcomed several delegations coming from neighbouring or more distant states, claiming that its inhabitants were either Greek, Bulgarian or Romanian, and that they might on that ground benefit from the help of their 'mother state'. In fact no help came to the village whose inhabitants now comment: 'the son of three fathers has no hat on his head'. Starting from this, the paper intends to describe the relations between Vërnik and local Albanians, between Vërnik its three potential fathers, and between Vërnik and the Prespa villages. The argument is that the way people from Vërnik perceive themselves is partly shaped by local conceptions and representations on Christians as opposed to Muslims, and on South as opposed to North.