GROSSWARDEIN.
It is nightfall at Grosswardein and the fires of sunset have faded
into cold grey ashes. All along the river Kőrős the stealthy vapours,
following its leaden course, are slowly rising. Shadows deepen on the
plains. The gilded steeples no longer glisten in the evening light, but
stand out black and sullen, like huge sentinels, against the pale green
sky. Everything in nature is sad and gloomy. Within the town, however,
“high carnival” is nightly kept.
The Magyars, as we have seen, possess a tinge of melancholy even
in their most joyous moments. This, however, cannot be said of the
Wallachs. There surely never was such a gay and pleasure-loving people;
whilst in their love of dancing they far exceed even the Magyars
themselves.
Hark to the sound of music! the rhythmic beat accompanied by the rapid
and hollow throb of steps. Let us follow its inviting strains, away
through the broad streets to the great square.
Not only here, however, is there music and dancing, but in many of
the one-storied houses also. In the cafés too the _Czigánok_ are
fiddling away for dear life. Inside, persons, sitting before small
tables, sip their coffee and smoke like chimneys. They applaud and sip
and smoke, and then smoke and sip and applaud again; whilst the streets
are crowded with promenaders and cheerful with the laugh of girls.
Here and there, like moths amongst the butterflies, may be seen a group
of middle-aged Wallachs or grave Magyars talking earnestly together,
whispering of political complications between Russia and England, the
result of the “Danube Commission,” or the rising of the bed of the
river Theiss. The beauty of the Wallachs is the same as when last
we were here four years ago: the delicate and refined features, the
pouting lips, the broad, low forehead, the lithe figures of the women,
and the deeply sunken eyes, long hair, and aquiline noses of the male
descendants of the Dacians, all are the same; but the ancient costumes
of the people and their characteristic traits are fast departing under
the facilities which, in these modern days, are afforded for travel.
The railways, extending their iron arms into the very centre of
Transylvania, are gradually weaving this former _terra incognita_
into the duller web of Western civilisation, and the beautiful and
graceful costumes, which so delighted us once, are day by day becoming
absorbed and replaced by those Gallic abominations invented to conceal
and render hideous the human form.
That monstrous article of female attire, the crinoline, which until
recently was exploded by the fair sex of Western Europe, has been
adopted by their Eastern sisters, and we recognise it not only
beneath the skirts of the gaily dressed Jewess as her long train
sweeps the streets, but under those of the Wallach lady also; whilst
one peasant girl--though still dressed in her graceful, homespun
garments--emulating her superiors--had her narrow but classical
_katrincza_ distended to the condition of a sausage by the
adoption of this hideous contrivance. We saw, I am thankful to say,
only one who had thus travestied the lovely and pictorial costume
of her race, but it was sufficient to demonstrate the silent march
of--in this case misnamed--“civilisation,” which threatens ere long to
obliterate all the distinctive external characteristics of nations and
render every country alike.
Off the beaten track the Wallachs still retain the customs of their
ancestors both in dress and manner of living, and after our visit
to this place is ended we shall be travelling in the interior of
Transylvania--of which Grosswardein is the frontier--where we shall
see the Wallachs in all their delightful simplicity. It is here that
the traveller is first introduced to this people in their own home, of
whom, concentrated in the eastern portion of Hungary, there are almost
two millions and a half. The Wallachs of Transylvania, however, must
not be confounded with the dwellers in the Wallachian or Roumanian
Principality, although they are off-shoots of the same race, having
been in olden times the overflow of the inhabitants occupying that
province. Both races now form a distinct people, although they are
alike descendants of the ancient Dacians, originally a Thracian people
subjugated by Trajan in his conquests already alluded to in the
chapters on the Lower Danube.
The term Wallach is said to be a German version of the appellations
“_Welsh_,” “_Welsch_,” “_Wallon_,” etc., given by the Teutonic
conquerors to the provincials or subjects of the Roman Empire, whether
in Britain, Italy, or Gaul; _Welsh_ being the word still used by
the Germans in the present day to denote strangers or foreigners of
whatever nation.
Naturally preferring to trace their origin to the conquering, rather
than to a vanquished people, the Wallachs affect to be the descendants
of the Roman colonists introduced by Trajan after his subjugation of
the province, and call themselves, though incorrectly, _Roumans_,
or _Rummanyi_, and their country Roumania.
The language spoken by the Wallachs, which greatly resembles in its
pronunciation the Italian of to-day, is soft, rich, and melodious,
and composed chiefly of Latin, with a considerable admixture of Slav,
Turkish, and Greek words. That there should be such a marked Latin
element in their language is certainly a singular fact, seeing that the
dominion of the Romans over the Dacians extended for a period of 170
years only; a circumstance tending to foster the idea that the Wallachs
_have_ some grounds for their pride of ancestry. There are,
however, peculiarities about their language which prove that the origin
of this people is more Dacian than Roman.
A considerable Roman element was doubtless infused into the primitive
inhabitants of Dacia by inter-marriage with the numerous Roman subjects
who remained behind after the Emperor Aurelian relinquished Dacia in
the middle of the third century, and this would account in a great
measure for the resemblance between the Wallachian and Latin languages.
Until the time of Alexander, the Dacians scarcely figured in history,
and their original language is consequently not accurately determined.
It is, however, believed to have been Slávic, not only from the number
of Sláv words mingled with their corrupt Latin, but also from the
number of Slavonic names given to the rivers and mountains of Wallachia
and Transylvania.
In the fifth century the Wallachs peopled Thessaly, whilst the Thracian
dialect of that period is said to have borne a strong resemblance
to the Neo-Latin spoken alike by the Wallach tribes of the Pindus
Mountains--the remnants of the former inhabitants of Thrace--and by the
so-called Roumanian people at present occupying the province of ancient
Dacia.
So much does their pronunciation resemble Italian that we experienced
no difficulty in understanding, or even conversing with them,
particularly after having ascertained that they place the definite
article at the end of their nouns, joining in fact both noun and
article together. This singular construction is also found in the
Bulgarian language, but, strange to say, in no other Slavonic dialect
whatever, from which circumstance it is supposed that both the
Bulgarians and Wallachians--whose countries join each other--must
have derived this peculiarity from the same source, viz., from their
north-eastern neighbours, the Dacians, whose language is believed to
have been neither Neo-latin nor strictly Slavonic.
In ancient time the province of Dacia comprised a district of 1300
miles in circumference, and was bounded on the north by the Niester, on
the west by the Theiss or Tibiscus, and on the south and east by the
Lower Danube and Black Sea; comprising not only the mountainous country
of the Eastern Carpathians, but Bukovina and the district of Banát. The
population of Moldavia and Bessarabia is likewise almost exclusively of
Dacian origin.
On Trajan’s Column in Rome is sculptured the history of this first
campaign of the young and ambitious Emperor, and the forms, cast of
features, and dress of the Dacians, as there minutely represented,
correspond, strange as it may seem after the lapse of sixteen
centuries, in almost every particular with those of the Wallachs of the
present day.
Grosswardein, or Nagy-varád, as it is called in Hungarian, is a
fortified town of Bihar, the largest county in Hungary. It contains
36,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom are Wallachs, and is, in spite
of its gaiety, one of the most ecclesiastical places in Hungary, full
of churches and convents. At present there are thirty of the former,
whilst at one period it boasted of no fewer than seventy. It is also
the see, alike of a Catholic bishop and one of the Greek rite. The
suburbs of the town are very pretty, each house being surrounded by a
garden and orchard, and shut in behind high walls.
[Illustration]
Like Temesvár, the town of Grosswardein is exceedingly pretty with
long streets and numerous marketplaces. From the bridge which crosses
the Kőrős, a good view is obtained of the town with its glittering
steeples of black and gold, together with that of the new Catholic
Church which, standing by the dome of the Jewish Synagogue, looks like
a huge coronet of gems. On the river long rafts of pine logs from the
Transylvanian forests are leisurely floating down stream, whilst women
with skirts tucked up wade in the water and wash their linen, thumping
away at it with a big stone, and with a vigour and perseverance as if
every blow were aimed at a Turk’s or Austrian’s head.
We were walking through one of the suburbs of the town when we heard
the distant sounds of bitter wailing, and a little crowd of people soon
approached, in the centre of which was an old Wallach woman who, with
tears rolling down her shrivelled cheeks, was evidently telling her
wrongs to the group of sympathisers following in her wake. On inquiring
the cause of this unusual manifestation of grief, she clasped her hands
and giving vent to renewed wailings cried,
“Only a Jew, gentle lady, only for killing a Jew.”
The meaning of which unintelligible sentence the bystanders--who
appeared to take no small interest in the case--explained by informing
us that her husband had in a street quarrel accidentally killed one of
those despised children of Israel, and that the Judge, having taken
a somewhat different view from herself of the value of human life as
exhibited in that particular type of humanity, had just sentenced him
to condign punishment the extent of which however did not transpire.
As in all other towns in Hungary, Grosswardein is pervaded by the usual
Hebrew element, and although Jews are no longer taxed as being such,
but are permitted to enjoy all the rights and privileges common to the
Gentile, they often find it difficult to hold their own even here
against the antipathy so universally entertained against them.
All is bright and clean in this prettiest of towns save in the
Hebraic quarter, which is full of marine stores where every kind of
_bric-à-brac_ is to be met with, even crucifixes, in dark dens
which one would fear to enter. The Jew is the same here as elsewhere,
the same miserable-looking, down-trodden outcast he has continued to
be ever since Pompey the Great entered the Holy City and struck the
first blow at the Israelitish nation. How, even to the letter, has the
prophetic curse been fulfilled in this once “chosen people”!
The _spécialité_ of the Hungarian Jew in this quarter, as in all
others devoted entirely to the class, is “ole clo,” and inside their
hovels are found not only dirt and muddle, but pictorial rags, whilst
over the doorways are seen such names as the following, Löwenstein
Jukab, Kohn Mozesne, Fűred Jőzsef, and Szép Ábrahám, and on the walls
sentences are written in Hebrew characters.
The type of Hebrew physiognomy is more marked here than in other
parts of Hungary, a consequence possibly of there having been less
inter-marriage with the Christian community than elsewhere. Wherever
we look we observe the long aquiline nose curving into the moustache,
which only partially conceals the protruding lips. Now and then a fair
young Miriam may be seen crossing the road and picking up a dirty
little Moses who is wallowing in the mud; neither are Hagars and
Ishmaels wanting, nor old Sarahs, fat, ugly, and repulsive-looking in
their grease-begrimed garments.
Turning now to the Christian quarter, we see how the Gentiles flourish
like a green bay-tree. Yonder stands the princely palace of the Roman
Catholic bishop, whose income is 300,000 gulden, or £25,000 a year,
whilst that of his Lordship of Erlan in the East of Hungary is twice
that amount, and that of the Prince Primate £60,000, the revenues being
derived in each case from landed estates. Surrounding the palace are
beautiful gardens laid out in broad straight walks and long avenues of
chestnuts, under the shade of which at eventide the Dom Herren may be
seen sauntering in the cool still air. Near the palace are the houses
of the residentiary canons, and opposite, the grand church built by
Maria Theresa, a building so vast in its proportions that, as the doors
are thrown open to admit us and we stand beneath its lofty roof, rising
one hundred and twenty feet above, we almost lose our breath.
The church although built in the Doric style is cruciform, and its roof
a succession of arches culminating in an immense central dome; the
whole a gorgeous blaze of splendid colour, very rich and harmonious,
but not adapted to inspire devotion. The Hungarian disposition is not
suited to the “dim religious.” They are a people who dislike mysticism
of every sort, and with a very few exceptions their churches, garish
and sensuous, are better fitted for the gorgeous worship of some
heathen goddess or their Pagan _Magyarok Isten_ (ancient Magyar
deity) than for the pure and simple worship of Christians.
As we returned to our hotel, the sun just setting was gilding with
impartial glory alike the temples of the Christian and the Jew.