On the Trail of The Immigrant Part 11

The Wends, Poles, and Bohemians show in speech and life influences of their German neighbours; the Slovak in Hungary has a strong Magyar taint; the Croatian, Servian, Bulgarian, and the Montenegrin come dangerously near the Turk; the Dalmatian on the Adriatic, in spite of his resistance against it, shows influences of Venice, not only in the magnificent architecture of his churches, but also in language and character; while the Slovene of the Alps has received much good from his brave Tyrolese neighbours whom of course he in turn has influenced.

The only Slavic people who present an unbroken surface for observation are the Russians, who, undivided by high mountains or other natural difficulties, have blended their differences to some extent, and have become a vast nation, with a common language, a common faith, and certain characteristics which have become the common possession of all the people. But to generalize even about the Russian is impossible, inasmuch as there are at least two well-defined types, divided geographically, and differing not only in outward appearance, but in nearly everything about which one is sorely tempted to write in general terms.

The Great Russian, who occupies the largest part of his native land, is undoubtedly of mixed blood, the Finnish extraction manifesting itself in the flattened features and the protruding cheek-bones; while his enemies say that you need not scratch him long before you strike the Tartar. He is rather roughly made, his features are anything but delicate, the nose is heavy and inclined to be pugnacious (this may be taken as the general tendency of the Slavic nose), his eyes are brown or pale blue, and friendly, and the face is suffused by a health-betraying glow. The colour of the hair is seldom or never black, and shades all the way from a light brown to a definite red, and from that to a rather indefinite blond.

The other p.r.o.nounced type is that of the Little Russian, who occupies nearly all the southern portion of the country, and differs from his more numerous brothers in physique and habits as the southern people usually differ from the northern. The Little Russians are, generally speaking, smaller, the face more delicately chiselled, complexion and hair darker, their women vivacious and handsome, and they claim to be of purer Slavic blood, although you do not have to scratch them at all to find the Tartar.

The Slav has moved from the Dnieper as far east as the Ural, and has moved beyond it as fast as steam could carry him. He has entered the heart of Europe, is at the doors of the German capital, and has almost supplanted the native Austrian in Vienna. In the Alps, on its southern slopes, he has built his huts within nature's citadels, and faces Italy on the Adriatic. In the Balkans he has a.s.serted himself, has shaken off the yoke of Islam, and is destined to be the master of the Bosphorus; while the Karpathians, which, like a crescent, wind about Hungary, are the stronghold of the ever-increasing Slav.

In a larger measure the other Slavic tribes on non-Russian soil differ one from another; thus, the Dalmatian is the giant among them, and he of the Boche de Cattaro is a veritable Slavic Apollo, measuring, on an average, six feet three inches. He is dark-skinned, and graceful in his movements. But size and beauty decrease as one travels northward through Bulgaria and Servia into Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland.

One despairs of designating as a race, or even as a nation, a people which differs more widely than one can tell within the limits of a chapter; people who have neither a history nor a literature in common, and whose language, although philologically one, varies so that if they undertook to build a tower or an empire, the confusion of the Biblical Babel would find a parallel in modern history.

And yet these differing tribes or nationalities have some things in common, especially in the social life and organism. There is, first of all, a temper which is among all of them impa.s.sive, seldom aroused even under the influence of drink. This explains the ease with which they have been conquered by other races, seldom coming to independence, only the nature of their country having compelled the Russians to make a Russia, which they were a long time in making. This also explains the despotism of the Czar, the patience with which it has been borne, and the long stretches of years without revolution or reformation. But now his wrath is kindled and the oppression of years has aroused his fury.

The Slav is not a builder of empires, because he is not a citizen but a subject--a severe master or a submissive servant. As a rule, he bears oppression patiently, shrinks from overcoming obstacles, is seldom inquisitive enough to climb over the mountains which lock in his native village to see what is beyond them, never cares much for the sea and its perils, the Russian's desire for harbours being a political necessity rather than a natural want. Even a democratic inst.i.tution, such as the "mir" in Russia, which borders strongly upon communism, and is by some scholars urged as an indication of the Slavs' independent spirit, is to me a proof of their lack of that spirit. Any one who has been at a meeting of the "mir" knows that the one or the few never dissent; things go just as they come, and the strong rascal (and there are such among the Slavs) rules "mir" or "bratstvo" at his own pleasure, and no one says, "Why do ye so?"

The family bears among the Slavs strong archaic forms, especially among those of the south, where the bratstvo (brotherhood) is still the unit.

A bratstvo occupies, according to its size, one or more villages; and church, cemetery, meadows, and mills are held in common. Besides these peaceful possessions, they have every quarrel in common, and every member of the bratstvo is most ready to avenge the honour of his people.

These are characteristics visible in their colonies in America. In Montenegro, the Herzegovina, and also in some parts of Dalmatia, blood vengeance is still practiced, and it not seldom happens that, to avenge one life, war is waged until there is not one male member left who can carry a gun; then the quarrels are continued by the next generation. The bratstvo is ruled by an elder, elected by all its male members. He is their justice of the peace, the presiding officer at all meetings, and in case of war is the captain of his company. The members of a bratstvo consider themselves blood relatives, intermarriages were formerly prohibited, and even now are not common. The aristocratic spirit shows itself in the fact that mechanics, especially blacksmiths, are expelled from it and share none of its privileges or responsibilities. The elder of the bratstvo, or household, is an embryo Czar, and the honours shown to him by all its members express the reverence which the Slav always shows to those in authority. He can withhold permission for smoking, dancing, or playing; no one touches the food until he has tasted it, no one is seated in his presence until he has permitted it; he is the one member of the household who has an individual spoon, which may not be used in the cooking; and yet from experience I know that he may sometimes play the Czar too much, and that there is temper enough left in the household, if not in the men at least in the women, to make it decidedly uncomfortable for him, and to remind him of his plebeian origin and his democratic relatives.

The further north one travels, the more the bratstvo decreases, although the large communal households do not entirely disappear even in Russia.

Everywhere the bond of relationship is very strong, and to become the G.o.dfather of a child unites one to its family for weal or woe. There is one relationship common among the southern Slavs which exceeds that of the closest tie of blood; it is that of _probratimtsvo_, or _prosestrimtstvo_, a brotherhood or sisterhood, or close friendship, between two men or two women, or even between a man and a woman, which among orthodox Slavs is still solemnized with the sacraments of the church. Of course this solemn service is followed by a feast, and the following toast shows the spirit of that occasion:

With whom drink I to-day?

With thee, honoured brother, with thee drink I to-day In G.o.d's name.

The Virgin bless thine earthly store; Increase thine honour more and more; Be near thy friend with helpful deed, But never thou his help to need.

G.o.d grant thee much of earthly bliss, And may the saints thy forehead kiss.

May wine for friends abundant flow, And children in thy household grow.

May G.o.d unite our house and land, As we thus grasp each other's hand.

Admirable as is the family tie which binds the Slav, abhorrent even to the strongest "Slavophile" is the position occupied by woman in the family and in the social life among Southern and Eastern Slavs. To escape the charge of prejudice, I shall quote a few proverbs current among the Southern Slavs--a few out of many hundreds:

The man is the head, the woman is gra.s.s.

One man is worth more than ten women.

A man of straw is worth more than a woman of gold.

Let the dog bark, but let the woman keep silent.

He who does not beat his wife is no man.

"What shall I get when I marry?" asks a boy of his father. "For your wife a stick, for your children a switch."

Twice in his life is a man happy: once when he marries, and once when he buries his wife.

And the woman sings in the Russian folk-song, which I have freely translated,

Love me true, and love me quick, Pull my hair, and use the stick.

Although there are love-songs of another kind, in which woman is praised for her charms, she becomes virtually a slave as soon as she marries, and the little poetry of the folk-song does not accompany her even to the marriage altar. She is valued only for the work she can do in a household and for the children she can bear; and should this latter blessing be denied her, her lot becomes doubly pitiable, and she sometimes seeks release by suicide, after which the proverb says of her, "It is better thus; a barren woman is of no use in the world." In Montenegro the proverb says, "My wife is my mule," and she is treated accordingly; and to see her bent double beneath her load of wood, flour, or oil, while her liege lord walks erect by her side, with his a.r.s.enal of weapons in his girdle, is to see the proverb in action. Yet here, where woman's lot is the worst, woman's virtue is regarded most highly, the penalty for adultery being swift death, and the social vice almost unknown.

It would, of course, be unjust to charge every Slav with beating his wife, but, unfortunately, it is the rule rather than the exception among the peasants; and the lot of the Slavic woman grows better only as the Slav is further from Eastern barbarism and nearer to Western civilization. Yet she is wooed with the same ardour as is her more favoured sister, and perhaps she is loved just as much by her husband, only he has a strange way of showing his affection. That the Slavic woman possesses the qualities to make of herself a "new woman" can be plainly seen among the women of the higher cla.s.s in Russia, where there is a second paradise for women; America, by common consent, being the first.

Among all the Slavs music is much loved, and the fields in the busiest harvest-time are melodious from song. The Czech's love for music has become proverbial, although the proverb is not complimentary to him and was invented by his enemies. It is said that when a Czech boy is born, the nurse holds up to him a penny and a violin; if he seizes the penny, he will be a thief; if the violin, he will be a musician. It is true that every Czech village has its band, which often wanders all over Europe, making melody as it goes; and, in nine cases out of ten, the "Leetle Sherman pand" upon which the American bestows his pennies and his jokes does not come from Germany at all, but from some village in Bohemia. Mechanical musical instruments have played havoc with the native genius of these people. Slavic music has a melancholy strain, and this is especially true of the music of the Southern Slav, whose simple musical instruments, the "swirala" and the "gusla," are not capable of giving one joyous note, even at a wedding. They may be truly called Jeremiac instruments. With love of music goes the love of dancing, and the Czechs and Poles invent new dances for every occasion, while the Southern Slavs cling to their monotonous national "kolo," which is a reckless sort of kicking exercise, accompanied by the aforesaid instruments, while some old minstrel sings of the heroic deeds of the past.

Cities among the Slavs are rare; the people usually live in villages, nearly all of which have common characteristics. It seemed strange to find that I could walk through a Russian village near Moscow, and yet could easily think myself among the Slovaks, thousands of miles away, or even among the more picturesque Dalmatians on the Adriatic. The villages all look alike. There is always one street, and just one, in the village; one wood or mud house leans against the other, one thatched roof overlaps the other, and there is never more than one fire at a time in a village like this; for generally the whole business burns down at once. The barns, called "stodoly," are generally built together, a short distance from the village. The church occupies the centre of the village, and near by is a mud-puddle, where geese, pigs, and babies take their daily swim. Put into some convenient place a pump, tie some ox-teams to it, place in the foreground clouds of dust or a sea of mud, and you have a fair picture of Slavic villages.

Of course they differ in degrees of ugliness, the Russian village taking the first prize for unadulterated homeliness, as there is no sign of beauty, not even a primitive attempt at decoration, anywhere. Among the Slovaks in Hungary, and among the neighbouring tribes, there is an attempt at art. Crudely painted houses are the rule, and somewhere about them there will be an indication of decoration, but it requires a vivid imagination to find out just what it is, the art spirit being strong but undeveloped.

Little flower-gardens near or around the houses are seldom or never seen in Russia, but are common among the Czechs and other Western Slavs. The interior of the houses differs among them as to size and arrangement.

The Russian house has two rooms, separated by the main entrance. One is called the cold room and the other the hot room. The hot, or winter room has as its chief possession a brick bake, cook, and heating stove or oven, the top of which is the bedstead in the winter-time; and a very comfortable place it is. The cleanliness in these Slavic homes is also of varied degrees, and is often conspicuous by its absence. Dirt, I am sorry to say, is often in evidence, and certain insects which would annoy us dreadfully exist in these rooms in uncountable numbers, but are treated with silent contempt, which does not tend to their diminution.

The Slavic tribes differ in their costumes, but nearly all of them have retained the sheepskin coat, which they wear summer and winter. The wool is turned inside. The skin is often coloured red, and the legs of the sheep hang over the shoulders. Both men and women wear this coat; but, of course, the woman's coat is decorated in fantastic ways and costs a great deal of money. The rest of the man's attire consists of linen trousers and shirt, home-made from the tough fibre to the coa.r.s.e st.i.tching. A cap is also worn, and in Russia is generally of fur. There are numberless varieties of this dress, but in each village all dress alike, differing only in the fineness of the material used.

"How do the women dress?" Can a man ever describe a woman's dress? And can any mortal describe the Slavic woman's dress, when in nearly every village they have a peculiar style? And, oh! what styles! Colour in everything; red, yellow, silver, and gold, laces and embroideries and what-not, costing sometimes nearly two hundred dollars. But, of course they do not get a new dress every year, just one in a lifetime, or, if they are really good, maybe two. The costliness of the woman's dress is the cause of much suffering, for, although the styles do not change, vanity is a shrewd mistress, and will put a half-inch broader lace upon a woman's cap, thus setting all the feminine hearts on fire from envy; and the next market day the broader lace will be shading every woman's eyes, although perhaps a feather-bed had to be p.a.w.ned, or next winter's pig had to wander to the butcher's ere its time had come.

Among the Slovaks, with whom woman's garb is most costly and most picturesque, there is a great desire to lay it aside and adopt the more fashionable dress of society; for the peasant's costume compels one to be addressed as an inferior--_ti_ (thou)--and putting on the modern garb puts one, at least in the eyes of strangers, upon a higher social level, and _onyi_ (you) is the p.r.o.noun used.

The Slavic peasant lives simply enough at home. His food consists largely of a vegetable diet, and meat on the table is the sign of a holiday, a wedding, or of a fortunate excursion into a neighbour's chicken-coop or pig-sty. Among one large tribe they have only one meal a day, usually at noon. It is cooked in the morning and kept warm under the ashes or under the feather-bed until it is time to eat it.

The main staples of diet among all are, potatoes, black, sour rye bread, cabbage for soups and cakes; _kascha_, or gruel; and, finally _barshtsh_, a concoction made of beets, and not half so bad as it looks.

The Czech has a reputation as an epicure, and the Bohemian girl is generally an excellent cook, in addition to her other good qualities. To mention Slavic cooking and leave out garlic would be "Hamlet with the Prince left out," and I feel sure that travellers in Slavic countries will readily testify to the excessive presence of this fragrant bulb, although they may never have seen it.

The literature of the Slav is abundant, and some of it is no doubt great. That of Bohemia is the oldest, that of Poland the most finished, and that of Russia in modern times the most abundant. The folklorist has here much virgin territory in which to gather material, but it remains to be seen whether it is worth gathering and preserving. Both folk-lore and literature are strongly realistic, being a reflection of the Slavic character, and not a protest or reaction, as with the Germanic people.

The Slav speaks and sings about plain things plainly, but naturally, and not offensively when one understands the source of his song. It never makes sin attractive, and consequently is wholesome. The lyric love-song is made in the hearts of the people, travels from lip to lip, and is simple and beautiful in the original; thus the Czech sings:

If I see thee, kneeling, praying In the church, my dear, I am far from G.o.d and heaven, But to thee am near; If I'd love my G.o.d in heaven As I now love thee, I would saint or very angel In His presence be.

The Slovak sings thus of love:

Whence getteth everybody Love in his very breast?

It grows not on the bushes, It's hatched not in the nest; And were this love abiding On rocks as heaven high, We'd send our hearts to find it, Yes, even if we die.

More poetically, the Croatian sings:

Oh, what is love? a zephyr mild, As gentle as a new-born child, To kiss each blossoming flower.

Oh, what is love? a wild storm-cloud, A roaring, maddening tempest loud, A weeping, drenching shower.

Oh, what is love? a scattered gloom, A thousand glorious flowers in bloom, A glowing, burning fireball, A giant held by chains in thrall, A joyful, chiming wedding bell, A dreadful chasm, a burning h.e.l.l.

Oh, may thy love, thou dearest child, Like spring winds be, so sweet, so mild!

Oh, reach to me thine angel hand, And lead me to that heavenly land!

One of the marked characteristics of the Slav is his deep religious feeling. If you wander through Moscow, you will see at every step evidences of this in the many churches, chapels, and wayside icons before which the faithful cross themselves or lie prostrate in the dust.

Everywhere the Russian manifests his deep allegiance to the Church, and every action of his life is in some way influenced by its teaching. He obeys implicitly all its rules, especially in regard to the many fast or feast days. He venerates the churches and cloisters, has implicit faith in the intercession of the saints, and every year out of every village go forth pious pilgrims over barren wastes and through dense forests to some sacred tomb in some faraway cloister. The height of ambition of every pious mujik is to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and a whole lifetime is spent in self-denying struggle to acc.u.mulate money enough for that purpose.

Common to all the Slavs is the tendency to superst.i.tion; remnants of the old heathenism remain everywhere, startling one by stories and usages which during centuries of winters' nights have grown to grotesque proportions in the dark, uncomfortable izbas of the peasants, and have curiously blended with their Christian faith, so that it is difficult for them to distinguish one from the other. The Slav is usually charitable to the poor, although not always generous to the weak, and he cannot be praised for excessive hospitality. He is too often clannish, is apt to be jealous, and consequently not always faithful or honest.

The Polish and Russian peasants are proverbially thievish; as one of their current sayings has it, "the only things which they will not carry away are hot iron and millstones," a characteristic which they lose completely under better economic conditions.

The Slav is humanity still in the rough, and to that fact are due his faults, his virtues, his weakness, and also his strength.