Belgian customs, habits and amusements are strongly rooted in the
soil. Half the population of the country maintains life by tilling the
land. The nation’s prosperity, greatly affected by the discovery and
operation of prolific mines, is nevertheless due in large part to the
activity of peasant proprietors--owners of a few acres that are usually
cultivated with the help of all the family. Grains, grape vines, sugar
beets and vegetables, dairy cows and huge Belgian horses are the chief
products of the fields. The amount of productive land in the kingdom is
about four-fifths of the entire area.
No one that has ever looked over the hedge of a Belgian pasture will
ever forget the sight of black and white cows as large as prize bulls
in other countries, and of awkwardly cavorting colts, taller and
much heavier about the joints than ordinary American farm horses.
On the cobbled roads of Belgium one meets these splendid horses,
moving ponderously, embraced by the shafts of capacious two-wheeled
carts. Equally picturesque are the dogs of burden, hitched single,
or in teams of two or three, drawing wagon-loads of milk, bread or
fuel. Not infrequently, one or more members of the owner’s family are
included in the load the dogs must pull. I once counted a jovial group
of seven persons seated on meal-bags in a cart drawn by a panting
pair of mastiffs. At country cross-roads the sign is frequently
displayed: “Treat the animals with kindness”; but violations of the
laws of humanity are so common as to excite little comment among the
blunt-mannered country-folk of Belgium.
Before low-roofed houses bordering Flemish roads, the pilgrim discovers
rows of lace-makers, comprising the feminine occupants of buff-colored
cottages. Often there are children six or seven years of age perched
on the straight-backed chairs. Their tousled heads barely reach above
the broad “pillow” on which they and their sisters ceaselessly weave
the spindles from dawn to twilight. The pay of a lace-worker averages a
franc a day, or twenty cents for eight to ten hours of skilled labor.
The lace made in these peasant homes is contracted for by buyers from
Brussels or Bruges, who supply the thread. An expert worker, who has
perhaps been trained in a convent school and is familiar with the
delicate patterns of Princess, Cluny, Mechlin, Valenciennes, and
Brussels lace, rarely receives more than fifty cents a day.
Before daybreak, the roads of the Belgian countryside resound with the
rumble of wheels and the clack of wooden shoes. All through the sunlit
hours until nightfall the stooping figures of men and women are seen
in the fields. In Walloon districts the farmers live in settlements
that adjoin the tilled acres. Flemish landowners are wont to build
their homes apart from each other, with perhaps the chateau of a rich
merchant as the pivotal center of the scattered dwellings. Within the
stone or stucco-covered brick cottages of farmer and villager, and in
the rear yard bounded by bake-house, wash-house and animal shed, the
household duties are performed by the mother of the family, or by a
daughter that can be spared from field-work. An intensively cultivated
half-acre plot may yield an income of a hundred and fifty dollars a
year, and on this meager sum a family that raises its own produce often
manages to exist.
If the weekdays of the Belgian peasant are given over to unrelieved
toil, on Sunday, Flemish and Walloon communities burst into gaiety, and
the sound of the automatic piano is in the land. Women in voluminous
skirts and tight basques, men in proper black suits and boots, wend
their way after mass to the nearest tavern, and there whirl the
hours away until closing time. Behind the bar presides the robust
and well-coiffed wife of the proprietor, while her daughters help in
the serving of light beverages and bread and butter sandwiches. The
kirmess, which at some time during the summer occupies the principal
square of every town in Belgium, is especially dear to the hearts
of the natives. Fakirs, magicians, circus performers, freaks, caged
animals, merry-go-rounds and their wheezy calliopes are the lure for
heavy-footed squires, matrons that resemble the rollicking models
of the painters, Jordaens and the younger Teniers, and delighted
apple-cheeked children. On holidays of national importance, pilgrimages
to favorite shrines are organized, or the populace surrenders itself to
the enjoyment of archery contests, games of ball, pigeon-flying, dog
races, smoking competitions, and processions, many of them allegorical
in character and of genuine historic interest. Preceding the War, not a
July in twelve centuries but had seen in “quaint, dull Furnes,” in West
Flanders, the impressive “_Procession de Pénitence_,” in which a great
number of characters in medieval costumes represented scenes from the
Old Testament and the Story of the Passion. Conceive the wire-pulling
among ambitious mothers to insure a place as Mary or Joseph for their
Mitsche or Jan! Imagine the exaltation of a wife whose fame rests at
other times of the year upon the excellence of her raisin bread, or
the spotlessness of her floors, to be chosen to walk in hooded black
cloak near the symbol of the Sacrament! Material as the Belgians are in
thought, and often dour, even loutish in conduct, they are devoted to
form and the tinseled show, to music and the dance, and to emotional
celebrations of every sort.
WRITTEN FOR THE MENTOR BY RUTH KEDZIE WOOD
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 8, No. 3, SERIAL No. 199
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.
[Illustration: GUILD HOUSES OF THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES SURROUND
THIS ANCIENT SQUARE