THE ROUMANIANS: THEIR ORIGIN.
“It is a fine country, but there are dreadfully many Roumanians,” was
the verdict of a respectable Saxon, who accompanied his words with
a deep sigh and a mournful shake of the head. Evidently the worthy
man thought necessary to adopt a deprecatory tone in alluding to
these objectionable people, as though the presence of Roumanians in
a landscape were matter for apology, like the admission of rats in
a stable, or bugs in a bedstead. To an unprejudiced outsider, it is
certainly somewhat amusing to observe the feelings with which the three
principal races inhabiting this country regard each other: thus, to
the Hungarian and the Saxon the Roumanian is but simple, unqualified
vermin; while the Saxon regards the Magyar as a barbarian, which
compliment the latter returns by considering the Saxon a boor; and the
poor Roumanian, even while cringing before his Saxon and Hungarian
masters, is taught by his religion to regard as unclean all those who
stand outside his faith.
Briefly to sum up the respective merits of these three races, it may be
allowable to define them as representing manhood in the past, present,
and future tenses.
The Saxons _have been_ men, and right good men, too, in their day;
but that day has gone by, and they are now rapidly degenerating
into mere fossil antiquities, physically deteriorated from constant
intermarriage, and morally opposed to any sort of progress involving
amalgamation with the surrounding races.
The Hungarians _are_ men in the full sense of the word, perhaps all the
more so that they are a nation of soldiers rather than men of science
and letters.
The Roumanians _will be_ men a few generations hence, when they have
had time to shake off the habits of slavery and have learned to
recognize their own value. There is a wealth of unraised treasure, of
abilities in the raw block, of uncultured talent, lying dormant in this
ignorant peasantry, who seem but lately to have begun to understand
that they need not always bend their neck beneath the yoke of other
masters, nor are necessarily born to slavery and humiliation. In face
of their rapidly increasing population, of the thirst for knowledge and
the powerful spirit of progress which have arisen among them of late
years, it is scarcely hazardous to prophesy that this people have a
great future before them, and that a day will come when, other nations
having degenerated and spent their strength, these descendants of the
ancient Romans, rising phœnix-like from their ashes, will step forward
with a whole fund of latent power and virgin material to rule as
masters where formerly they have crouched as slaves.
Two popular legends current in Transylvania may here find a place, as
somewhat humorously defining the national characteristics of the three
races just alluded to.
“When God had decreed to banish Adam and Eve from Paradise because
they had sinned against his laws, he first deputed his Hungarian angel
Gabor (Gabriel) to chase them out of the garden of Eden. But Adam and
Eve were already wise, for they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge; so
they resolved to conciliate the angel by putting good cheer before him,
and inviting him to partake of it. In truth, the angel ate and drank
heartily of the good things on the table, and, after having eaten, he
had not the heart to repay his kind hosts for their hospitality by
chasing them out of Paradise, so he returned to heaven without having
executed his commission, and begged the Lord to send another in his
place, for he could not do it.
“Then God sent the Wallachian angel Florian, thinking he was less
fine-feeling and would execute the mission better. Adam and Eve were
sitting at table when the servant of the Lord entered, shod in leather
_opintschen_ (sandals) and with fur cap under his arm. After humbly
saluting, he told his errand. But Adam, on seeing the appearance of
this messenger, felt no more fear, and asked roughly, ‘Hast brought no
written warrant with thee?’ At this the angel Florian began to tremble,
turned round on the spot, and went back to heaven.
“Then the Lord became angry, and sent down the German Archangel
Michael. Adam and Eve were mightily terrified on seeing him, but
resolved to do their best to soften his heart; so they prepared for
him a sumptuous meal of his favorite dishes—ham-sausage, pickled
sauerkraut, beer, wine, and sweet mead. The German angel was highly
pleased, and played such a good knife and fork that Adam and Eve began
to feel light of heart again. But hardly had the archangel eaten his
fill when, rising from the table, he swung his flaming sword overhead
and thundered forth to his terrified hosts, ‘Now pack yourselves off!’
In vain did our first parents beg and sue for mercy; nothing served to
touch the heart of the inflexible German angel, who, without further
ado, drove them both out of Paradise.”
The second legend relates to the Holy Sepulchre, and tells us how a
deputation, consisting of a Hungarian, a Saxon, and a Wallachian, was
once sent by the Transylvanian Diet to Palestine in order to recover
the Saviour’s body from the infidels. “They started on their journey
full of hope, but when they had reached Jerusalem they found the
sepulchre guarded by a strong enforcement of Roman soldiers. What was
now to be done? was the question debated between them. The Hungarian
was for cutting into the soldiers at once with his sword, but the canny
Saxon held him back and said, ‘They are stronger than we, and we might
receive blows; let us rather attempt to barter.’ The Wallachian only
winked with one eye and whispered, ‘Let us wait till nightfall, and
then we can steal the body.’”
* * * * *
There has been of late years so much learned discussion about the
origin of this Roumanian people that it were presumption, in face
of the erudite authorities enlisted on either side, to advance any
independent opinion on the subject. German writers, especially Saxons,
have been strenuous in sneering down all claims to Roman extraction,
and contending that whatever Roman elements remained over after their
evacuation of the territory must long since have been swallowed up in
the great rush of successive nations which passed over the land in the
early part of the Middle Ages. Roumanian writers, on the contrary,
are fond of laying great stress on the direct Roman lineage which it
is their pride to believe in, sometimes, however, injuring their own
cause by over-anxiety to claim too much—laying too little stress
on the admixture of Slave blood, which is as surely a fundamental
ingredient of the race. One of the most enlightened Roumanian authors,
Joan Slavici, states the case more accurately in saying that the
ethnographical importance of the Roumanians does not lie in the fact
of their being descendants of the ancient Romans, nor in that of the
long-vanished Dacian race having been Romanized by the conquerors,
but solely and entirely therein; that this people, placed between two
sharply contrasting races, form an important connecting link in the
chain of European tribes.
The classical type of feature so often to be met with among Roumanian
peasants of both sexes pleads strongly in favor of the theory of Roman
origin; and if in a former chapter I compared the features of Saxon
peasants to those of Noah’s-ark figures, rudely cut out of the very
coarsest wood, the Roumanians as often remind me of a type of face
chiefly to be met with on cameo ornaments or ancient signet-rings. If
we take at random a score of individuals from any Roumanian village, we
cannot fail to find a goodly choice of classical profiles, worthy to be
immortalized on agate, onyx, or jasper, like a handful of antique gems
which have been strewn broadcast over the land.
Wallack, or Wlach, by which name this people was generally designated
up to the year ’48, points equally to Roman extraction—Wallack being
but another version of the appellations Welsh, Welch, Wallon, etc.,
given by Germans to all people native of Italy. It may, however, not be
superfluous here to mention that at no period whatever did these people
describe themselves otherwise than as “Romāns,” Roumanians, and would
have been as little likely to speak of themselves as Wallacks as would
be an American to call himself a Yankee, or a Londoner to designate
himself as a cockney. As far as I can make out, a certain sense of
opprobrium seems to be attached to this word Wallack as applied by
strangers, explainable perhaps by the fact that the appellation Wlach
was formerly used to describe all people subjugated by the Romans.