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[Illustration: OLD TOWN GATE AT HERMANSTADT (ELIZABETH THOR).]
THE
LAND BEYOND THE FOREST
FACTS, FIGURES, AND FANCIES
FROM
TRANSYLVANIA
BY E. GERARD
AUTHOR OF
“REATA” “THE WATERS OF HERCULES” “BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOR” ETC.
_WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS_
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1888
PREFACE.
In the spring of 1883 my husband was appointed to the command of the
cavalry brigade in Transylvania, composed of two hussar regiments,
stationed respectively at Hermanstadt and Kronstadt—a very welcome
nomination, as gratifying a long-cherished wish of mine to visit that
part of the Austrian empire known as the Land beyond the Forest.
The two years spent in Transylvania were among the most agreeable of
sixteen years’ acquaintance with Austrian military life; and I shall
always look back to this time as to something quaint and exceptional,
totally different from all previous and subsequent experiences.
Much interested in the wild beauty of the country, the strange
admixture of races by which it is peopled, and their curious and varied
folk-lore, I recorded some of my impressions in short, independent
papers, of which three were published in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, one in
the _Nineteenth Century_, and one in the _Contemporary Review_. It was
only after I had left the country that, being desirous of preserving
these sketches in more convenient form, I began rearranging the matter
for publication; but the task of retracing my Transylvanian experiences
was so pleasant that it led me on far beyond my original intention.
One reminiscence awoke another, one chapter gave rise to a second; and
so, instead of a small volume, as had been at first contemplated, my
manuscript almost unconsciously developed to its present dimensions.
When the work was completed, the idea of illustrating it occurred to
me: but this was a far more difficult matter; for, though offering a
perfect treasure-mine to artists, Transylvania has not as yet received
from them the attention it deserves; and had it not been for obliging
assistance from several quarters, I should have been debarred the
satisfaction of elucidating some of my descriptions by appropriate
sketches.
In this matter my thanks are greatly due to Herr Emil Sigerus, who was
good enough to place at my disposal the blocks of engravings designed
by himself, and belonging to the Transylvania Carpathian Society, of
which he is the secretary. Likewise to Madame Kamilla Asboth, for
permission to copy her life-like and characteristic photographs of
Saxons, Roumanians, and gypsies.
I would also at this place acknowledge the extreme courtesy with which
every question of mine regarding Transylvania people and customs has
been responded to by various kind acquaintances, and if some parts of
my work do not meet with their entire approval, let them here take the
assurance that my remarks were prompted by no unfriendly spirit, and
that in each and every case I have endeavored to judge impartially
according to my lights.
EMILY DE LASZOWSKA-GERARD.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. HISTORICAL 6
III. POLITICAL 11
IV. ARRIVAL IN TRANSYLVANIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS 14
V. SAXON HISTORICAL FEAST—LEGEND 25
VI. THE SAXONS: CHARACTER—EDUCATION—RELIGION 31
VII. SAXON VILLAGES 39
VIII. SAXON INTERIORS—CHARACTER 50
IX. SAXON CHURCHES AND SIEGES 62
X. THE SAXON VILLAGE PASTOR 71
XI. THE SAXON BROTHERHOODS—NEIGHBORHOODS AND VILLAGE HANN 79
XII. THE SAXONS: DRESS—SPINNING AND DANCING 85
XIII. THE SAXONS: BETROTHAL 94
XIV. THE SAXONS: MARRIAGE 101
XV. THE SAXONS: BIRTH AND INFANCY 111
XVI. THE SAXONS: DEATH AND BURIAL 117
XVII. THE ROUMANIANS: THEIR ORIGIN 122
XVIII. THE ROUMANIANS: THEIR RELIGION, POPAS, AND CHURCHES 125
XIX. THE ROUMANIANS: THEIR CHARACTER 132
XX. ROUMANIAN LIFE 139
XXI. ROUMANIAN MARRIAGE AND MORALITY 146
XXII. THE ROUMANIANS: DANCING, SONGS, MUSIC, STORIES,
AND PROVERBS 151
XXIII. ROUMANIAN POETRY 158
XXIV. THE ROUMANIANS: NATIONALITY AND ATROCITIES 173
XXV. THE ROUMANIANS: DEATH AND BURIAL—VAMPIRES AND WERE-WOLVES 180
XXVI. ROUMANIAN SUPERSTITION: DAYS AND HOURS 188
XXVII. ROUMANIAN SUPERSTITION—CONTINUED: ANIMALS, WEATHER,
MIXED SUPERSTITIONS, SPIRITS, SHADOWS, ETC. 196
XXVIII. SAXON SUPERSTITION: REMEDIES, WITCHES, WEATHER-MAKERS 207
XXIX. SAXON SUPERSTITION—CONTINUED: ANIMALS, PLANTS, DAYS 212
XXX. SAXON CUSTOMS AND DRAMAS 218
XXXI. BURIED TREASURES 229
XXXII. THE TZIGANES: LISZT AND LENAU 236
XXXIII. THE TZIGANES: THEIR LIFE AND OCCUPATIONS 242
XXXIV. THE TZIGANES: HUMOR, PROVERBS, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 253
XXXV. THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER 260
XXXVI. THE TZIGANE MUSICIAN 265
XXXVII. GYPSY POETRY 273
XXXVIII. THE SZEKLERS AND ARMENIANS 279
XXXIX. FRONTIER REGIMENTS 288
XL. WOLVES, BEARS, AND OTHER ANIMALS 292
XLI. A ROUMANIAN VILLAGE 299
XLII. A GYPSY CAMP 306
XLIII. THE BRUCKENTHALS 309
XLIV. STILL-LIFE AT HERMANSTADT—A TRANSYLVANIAN CRANFORD 317
XLV. FIRE AND BLOOD—THE HERMANSTADT MURDER 326
XLVI. THE KLAUSENBURG CARNIVAL 331
XLVII. JOURNEY FROM HERMANSTADT TO KRONSTADT 339
XLVIII. KRONSTADT 348
XLIX. SINAÏA 357
L. UP THE MOUNTAINS 364
LI. THE BULEA SEE 372
LII. THE WIENERWALD—A DIGRESSION 377
LIII. A WEEK IN THE PINE REGION 380
LIV. LA DUS AND BISTRA 388
LV. A NIGHT IN THE STINA 394
LVI. FAREWELL TO TRANSYLVANIA—THE ENCHANTED GARDEN 399
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Old Town Gate at Hermanstadt (Elisabeth Thor) _Frontispiece_
Saxon Burgher in Olden Times 9
The Thorda Spalt 19
Old Fortress-tower on the Ramparts at Hermanstadt 23
Mounted Peasants, from the Historical Procession 28
Saxon Peasant House 40
Old Town Gate at Hermanstadt (on the Heltau side) 43
Michelsberg 47
Saxon Peasant at Home 51
Saxon Embroidery 53
Saxon Embroidery and Pottery 55
Fortified Saxon Church 63
Ruined Abbey of Kerz 70
Saxon Pastor in Full Dress 73
Saxon Peasant going to Work 84
Dressing for the Dance 93
Saxon Betrothed Couple 97
Archbishop Schaguna 131
Roumanian Costumes 141
Roumanian Women 143
Saxon Girl in Full Dress 221
Gypsy Type 237
A Gypsy Tinker 245
Basket-maker 247
Bear-driver 249
Gypsy Girl 258
Gypsy Mother and Child 261
Gypsy Musicians 269
Szekler Peasant 279
The Rothenthurm Pass 291
The Bruckenthal Palace 310
Baron Samuel Bruckenthal 315
Street at Hermanstadt 319
Schässburg 341
Castle of Törzburg 347
King Matthias Corvinus 355
Castle Pelesch at Sinaïa 359
The Negoi 365
The Pine Valley 381
The Cavern Convent, Skit la Jalomitza 399
Castle Vajda Hunyad before its restoration 401
MAP OF TRANSYLVANIA _At end_
THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Leaving Transylvania after a two years’ residence, I felt somewhat
like Robinson Crusoe unexpectedly restored to the world from his
desert island. Despite the evidence of my own senses, and in flat
contradiction to the atlas, I cannot wholly divest myself of the idea
that it is in truth an island I have left behind me—an island peopled
with strange and incongruous companions, from whom I part with a
mixture of regret and relief difficult to explain even to myself.
Just as Robinson Crusoe, getting attached to his parrots and his
palm-trees, his gourds and his goats, continued to yearn for them after
his return to Europe, so I found myself gradually succumbing to the
indolent charm and the drowsy poetry of this secluded land. A very few
years more of unbroken residence here would no doubt suffice to efface
all memory of the world we had left behind and the century in which we
live.
I remember reading in some fairy tale, long ago, of a youthful
princess who, stolen by the gnomes and carried off into gnomeland, was
restored to her parents after a lapse of years. Their joy was great at
recovering their child, but it turned to grief when they discovered
that she had grown estranged from them, and had lost all interest in
the actual world. The sun was too bright, she said, it hurt her eyes,
and the voices of men were too loud, they scorched her ears; and
she could never feel at home again amid the restless glitter of her
surroundings.
I do not recollect how the story concludes—whether the young lady
became in time reconciled to her father’s brilliant court, or whether
she ran away and married a gnome; but this tale somehow reminded me of
my own experiences, and I caught myself wondering whether a few years
hence, perhaps, the summons to return to the world might not have come
too late.
Parrots and palm-trees are all very well, no doubt, to fill up the life
of a stranded mariner, but it is questionable whether it be wise to
let such things absorb the mind to the extent of destroying all taste
for wider interests. Life in an island is apt to consist too entirely
of foreground—the breadth of a panorama and the comprehensiveness of
a bird’s-eye view, only gained by constant friction with the bustling,
pushing outer world, being mostly here wanting.
Luckily, or unluckily, as one may choose to view it, the spirit of
the nineteenth century is a ghost very difficult to be laid. A steady
course of narcotics may lull it to rest for a time; but the spirit is
but stupefied, not dead; its vitality is great, and it will start up
again to life at the first trumpet-blast which reaches from without,
eager to exchange a peaceful dream for the movement of the arena and
the renewed clank of arms.
Some such feelings were mine as I beheld the signal waving from the
ship which was to carry me back to a world I had almost forgotten; and
though I heaved a sigh of regret, and possibly may have dropped a tear
or two in secret for the peaceful and familiar scenes I was leaving,
yet I would not have steered round the vessel to return to my island.
* * * * *
Not the mere distance which separates Transylvania from Western Europe
gives to it this feeling of strange isolation. Other countries as far
or farther off are infinitely more familiar even to those who have
never visited them. We know all about Turkey, and Greece is no more
strange to us than Italy or Switzerland. But no one ever comes to
Transylvania in cold blood, unless it be some very rabid sportsman
eager for the embrace of a shaggy bear; and as for those rushing
travellers, bound for the Black Sea, who sometimes traverse the country
in hot-headed haste, they mostly resemble the superficial swallow which
skims the surface of a placid lake, without guessing the secrets of the
blue depths below.
Situated by nature within a formidable rampart of snow-tipped
mountains, and shielded by heavy curtains of shrouding forests
against the noise and turmoil of the outer world, the very name of
Transylvania tells us that it was formerly regarded as something
apart, something out of reach, whose existence even for a time was
enveloped in mystery. In olden times these gloomy forest gorges were
tenanted only by the solitary bear or packs of famished wolves,
while the mistrustful lynx looked down from the giddy heights, and
the chamois leaped unchecked from rock to rock. The people who lived
westward of this mountain rampart, knowing but little or nothing of the
country on the other side, designated it as Transylvania, or the land
beyond the forest, just as we sometimes talk of the “land beyond the
clouds.”
Nothing, however, can remain undiscovered on the face of our globe.
That enterprising creature man, who is even now attempting, with some
show of success, to probe the country beyond the clouds, has likewise
discovered the way to this secluded nook. The dense forests, once
forming such impenetrable barriers against the outer world, have in
great part disappeared; another voice is heard besides that of the
wild beasts of the wood; another breath comes mingled along with the
mountain vapors—it is the breath of that nineteenth-century monster,
the steam-engine.
This benefactor of the age, this harbinger of civilization, which
is as truly the destroyer of romance, and poetry’s deadly foe, will
undoubtedly succeed in robbing this country of the old-world charm
which yet lingers about it. Transylvania will in time become as
civilized and cultivated, and likewise as stereotyped and conventional,
as the best known parts of our first European States—it will
even one day cease to be an island; but as yet the advent of the
nineteenth-century monster is of too recent a date to have tainted the
atmosphere by its breath, and the old-world charm still lingers around
and about many things. It is floating everywhere and anywhere—in
the forests and on the mountains, in mediæval churches and ruined
watch-towers, in mysterious caverns and in ancient gold-mines, in the
songs of the people and the legends they tell. Like a subtle perfume
evaporating under the rays of a burning sun, it is growing daily
fainter and fainter, and all lovers of the past should hasten to
collect this fleeting fragrance ere it be gone forever. This is what I
have endeavored to do, to some small extent, since fate for a time cast
my lines in those parts.
And first and foremost let me here explain that my intentions in
compiling this work are nowise of an ambitious or lofty nature. I
desire to instruct no one, to influence no one, to enlist no one’s
sympathies in favor of any particular social question or political
doctrine. Even had such been my intention, I have been therein amply
forestalled by others; nor do I delude myself into the belief that it
is my proud vocation to correct the errors of all former writers by
giving to the world the only correct and trustworthy description of
Transylvania which has yet appeared. I have not lived long enough in
the country to feel myself justified in taking up the gauntlet against
the assertions of older inhabitants of the soil, but have lived there
too long to rival that admirable self-possession which induces the
average tourist to classify, condemn, ticket, and tie up every fact
which comes within his notice, never demeaning himself to grovel or
analyze, nor being disturbed by any doubts of the reliability of his
own unerring judgment.
Whoever wishes to study the history of Transylvania in its past,
present, and future aspects, who wants to understand its geological
formation or system of agriculture, who would thoroughly penetrate into
the inextricable net-work of conflicting political interests which
divide its interior, must seek his information elsewhere.
Do you wish, for instance, to see Transylvania as it was some forty
years ago? If so, I can confidently advise you to read the valuable
work of Mr. Paget and the spirited descriptions of Monsieur de Gérando.
Do you want to gain insight into the geological resources of the
country, or the farming system of the Saxon peasant? Then take up
Charles Boner’s comprehensive work on Transylvania. And would you
see these Saxons as they love to behold themselves, then turn to Dr.
Teutsch’s learned work on “Die Siebenbürger Sachsen;” while if politics
be your special hobby, you cannot better indulge it than by selecting
Mr. Patterson’s most interesting work on Hungary and Transylvania.
If, moreover, you care to study the country “contrariwise,” and would
know what the Roumanians are utterly unlike, read the description of
them in the aforementioned book of Mr. Boner; while for generally
incorrect information on almost every available subject connected with
the country, I am told that the German work of Rudolf Bergner cannot be
too highly recommended.
Recognizing, therefore, the superiority of the many learned
predecessors who each in their respective lines have so thoroughly
worked out the subject in hand, I would merely forewarn the reader
that no such completeness of outline can be looked for here. Neither
is my book intended to be of the guide-book species—no sort of
ornamental Bradshaw or idealized Murray. I fail to see the use of
minutely describing several scores of towns and villages which the
English reader is never likely to set eyes upon. If you think of
travelling this way, good and well, then buy the genuine article for
yourself—Murray or Bradshaw—unadulterated by me; or, better still,
the excellent German hand-book of Professor Bielz; while if you stay
at home, can you really care to know if such and such a town have five
churches or fifty? or whether the proportion of carbonate of magnesia
exceed that of chloride of potassium in some particular spring of whose
waters you will never taste?
All that I have attempted here to do is to seize the general color
and atmosphere of the land, and to fix—as much for my own private
satisfaction as for any other reason—certain impressions of people
and places I should be loath to forget. I have written only of those
things which happened to excite my interest, and have described figures
and scenery, such as they appeared to me. For some of the details
contained in these pages I am indebted to the following writers: Liszt,
Slavici, Fronius, Müller, and Schwicker—all competent authorities
well acquainted with their subject. Some things have found no place
here because I did not consider myself competent to speak of them,
others because they did not chance to be congenial; and although not
absolutely scorning serious information whenever it has come in my
way, I have taken more pleasure in chronicling fancies than facts, and
superstitions rather than statistics.
More than one error has doubtless crept unawares into this work; so
in order to place myself quite on the safe side with regard to stern
critics, I had better hasten to say that I decline to pledge my word
for the veracity of anything contained in these pages. I only lay
claim to having used my eyes and ears to the best of my ability; and
where I have failed to see or hear aright, the fault must be set down
to some inherent color-blindness, or radical defect in my tympanum.
Nor do I pretend to have seen everything, even in a small country like
Transylvania, and every spot I have failed to visit, from lack of time
or opportunity, is not only to me a source of poignant regret, but
likewise a chapter missing from this book.