Fanny Janet Sandison Blunt

“ If you lose anything, it is the evil eye of some kind friend that has done it. If you look fixedly at anybody or anything, it is you who are trying to cast the evil eye. In short, nothing happens in Turkey unsupernaturally: there is always some spirit or magician or evil eye at the bottom of it. And this belief is not confined to the Turks: Greeks, Bulgarians, and even a good many Franks, are equally superstitious. Nor is this superstition, like the many harmless customs still observed in England, a mere luxury—an affectation: it is a matter of life and death. ”

“ The bridal procession had just returned from church, when a band of ferocious Turks fell upon the house where the festivities were being held, robbing and beating right and left, until they arrived at the unfortunate bride, whom, after divesting of all her belongings, they dishonored and left to bewail her misfortunes in never-ending misery. The distracted husband, barely escaping with his life, rushed into the street, loudly calling upon his Christian brethren to shoot him down, and thus relieve him of the life whose burden he could not bear. ”

“ Déjà en 1806 apparait le premier livre publié en langue Bulgare; l’année 1819 on voit paraître deux autres, et depuis ce temps chaque année apporte son contingent, quoique bien maigre encore, à ce petit trésor, qui s’amasse goutte à goutte. Quel rêve avait fait tressaillir ce peuple dans cette torpeur où il était plongé et qui avait toutes les apparences d’une léthargie devant durer éternellement? Etait-ce un souvenir instantané du passé? Une espérance subite d’un avenir moins sombre? ”

“ Preparing the house for the coming festivity, washing with ceremony the bride’s head, exhibiting the trousseau for the inspection of the matrons, who do not spare their criticism on its merits or demerits, while the young and thoughtless are busy putting a last stitch here and there amid gay songs and cheerful talk; the ornamentation of cakes sent round to friends and relatives in lieu of invitation cards,—all these are old customs which ring in unison with the peaceful and industrious habits of a people whose life in happier times reminded one of the Arcadias of the poets. ”

“ Gregory was appointed Patriarch of Armenia, and after creating a number of churches, bishoprics, and convents, and regulating the canons of each, he retired into the solitude of a hermitage, where he was put to death by order of the king’s son. It was the beginning of a long course of misfortunes. There is something grand in the sacrifice that the ignorant and stout-hearted Asiatics made in the cause of religion. Nowhere was persecution so long or so cruel, martyrdoms so terrible, self-denial so complete as among the people of the land where the human race is fabled to have had its origin. ”

“ The moment the soul is believed to have quitted the body, the women begin to utter wailings. Some tear their hair, others beat their breasts, in an outburst of genuine sorrow. A lull soon follows, and, without loss of time, preparations are made for performing the last duties to the corpse; for the Turks do not keep their dead unburied any longer than is necessary for the completion of these preliminaries. ”

“ In Armenia, the people who remain, remembering the terrible sufferings their country has gone through, have followed the wise policy of burying in the depths of their hearts any surviving sparks of patriotism or love of liberty; though these hidden sparks may some day be fanned into flame by the introduction of education and by the influence Russia is exerting in the country. So far the Porte may felicitate itself on the success its foreign policy has met with in Armenia. ”

“ The nation has marched steadily forward in the little time it has been free; it has made great steps in educating itself and in spreading knowledge among its members still subject to the alien; it has shown itself able to govern itself, even to restrain itself under terrible provocation when there was much to gain and little that could be lost. If it is given fair play, the time may yet come when a seventh Great power shall arise in Europe, when the Greeks shall again rule in Byzantium, and Europe shall know that the name of Hellenes is still a sacred name. ”

“ The wisdom and generosity of this law cannot be too highly commended; it is an indispensable clause in the canons of polygamy. So easy is it for a Turk to divorce his wife that he has only to say to her in a moment of anger, “Cover thy face, thy nekyah is in thy hands,” and she ceases to be his wife, and must at once leave his abode, carrying with her, luckily for her, “bag and baggage.”
The privileges of divorce thus indulgently permitted to a man are entirely beyond the reach of a woman, whom no human power can release from her nekyah vows without her husband’s free consent. ”

“ In steam-boats, for example, an unattended Turkish woman is seldom known to be insulted, even when her conduct gives provocation.
Three hours before dawn, drums are beaten and verses sung through the streets to warn the people to prepare for the sahor, or supper, after which an hour’s leisure is accorded for smoking and coffee-drinking, when the firing of a gun announces the moment for rinsing the mouth and sealing it against food till sunset. All business is put off by the wealthy during the day, which is filled up by sleep; while the poor go through the day’s work unrefreshed. ”

“ On the eve of the wedding-day the virgin meal took place, each maiden arriving with her offering of sweets in her hands. It was a pretty sight to look at all those bright young faces, for the time free from care and lighted up with smiles of content and joy. It takes so little to amuse innocent peasant girls, for whom a day of rest is a boon in itself, well appreciated and generally turned to good account. ”

“ It is generally in early spring, when the trees have lost their nakedness and the hedges are covered with green leaves and sweet-smelling blossoms, that this element of infamy and destruction makes its appearance, taking to the highway or lurking for its prey among the hills and valleys, and polluting with its blood-stained feet the freshness and purity of resurgent nature. Its victims may often be found lying dead on a bed of violets or lilies, gazed upon by the wild rose that hangs its head and seems to blush for man’s outrage. Such sights are of every-day occurrence. ”

“ I do not think it is possible to find a people who can enjoy more heartily the wild music of the gaida than the Bulgarian, or enter more enthusiastically into the dance than he does. With the Greeks, dancing is reserved for appointed times and seasons, but the Bulgarian, be he in the field or resting on the common on a Prasnik day, will come forward and indulge in it as his greatest delight. ”

“ No assassin will more recklessly plunge his knife into the heart of an enemy, no seducer be more enticing, no brigand more dashing and bold. And yet in the worst of these there is some redeeming quality; a noble action polluted by many bad ones; crimes often followed by remorse and a return to a steady and honest life. Gratitude for a good service is always met with among the Greeks, as among the Albanians. An example of this may be seen in an adventure that more than twenty years ago happened to an Englishman in the Government employ, who was travelling in a province infested by brigands. ”

“ So long as its high dignitaries have to purchase their appointments from Turkish ministers and Sultans, so long will it retain its character for truckling and corruption, so long will it lack the one thing needful in a church—moral force. Not less are the lower clergy affected by this unhappy connection between church and state. The government puts every obstacle in the way of the establishment of schools for priests: it is aware that its influence over the mass of the clergy can last only so long as that clergy is ignorant and knows not the energy for freedom which education must bring. ”

“ In their devotions they become strangely excited, their limbs become frightfully contorted, their faces deadly pale; then they dance in the most grotesque manner, howling meanwhile; cut themselves with knives, swallow fire and swords, burn their bodies, pierce their ears, and finally swoon. A sacred word whispered by two elders of the order brings the unconscious men round, and their wounds are healed by the touch of the sheikh’s hand, moistened from his mouth. ”

“ But granting the honesty and impartiality of a correspondent, allowing the accuracy of his report of what he has seen, it must be conceded that his opportunities for observation are short and hurried, that he judges almost solely from the immediate present, and that by the nature of his profession he is seldom able to make a very long or intimate study of a people’s character. One accepts his reports as the evidence of an eye-witness; but one does not necessarily pledge one’s self to his deductions. ”

“ The Greek Government might not be equal at first to the administration of their newly-acquired kingdom, but if united in close alliance with some friendly power and placed under its tutelage, an honest and stable empire might be established with every probability of soon rising into a flourishing condition in the hands of a people whose intelligence, activity, and enterprising spirit give them an incontestable superiority over the other races of Turkey. ”

“ Women’s honor is held in such high esteem in these wild regions that so trivial an accident suffices to cause a terrible destruction of life.
Albanian women are generally armed, not for the purpose of self-defence—no Albanian would attack a woman in his own country—but rather that they may be able to join in the brawls of their male relatives, and fight by their side. The respect entertained for women accounts for a strange custom prevalent among Albanians—that of offering to strangers who wish to traverse their country the escort of a woman. ”

“ This prevalent idea, not altogether ill-founded, gave to the Bulgarian character that rapacity and love of gain which, being developed by late events, in the midst of general ruin and loss of property, tempted him to try to get what he could of what had been left, without much scruple as to the means. When unmerited calamities befall a people, and oppression long weighs heavily upon them, the sense of justice and humanity is gradually lost and replaced by a spirit of vindictiveness which incites to ignoble and cruel actions. ”

“ There were the charitable establishments whence the poor never turned away unrefreshed,—and there the dungeon where the powerful were left to starve and die. There was the gilded kiosk where the Padishah smoked his chibouk and issued his decrees,—whose terrible ordinances were carried out in the adjoining chamber-of-blood. Beyond were the mausoleums of his race, lifting up their rich adornment in the chill beauty of the city of the dead—severed by a little space from the scarcely more splendid dwellings of the living. ”

“ The amusements of the Rayahs are neither very brilliant nor very varied, but they are part of a more healthy social life, and serve as a point of union between the sexes, increasing the joys and pleasures of home existence, whose monotony they do not often interrupt. The great delight of these people is the national dances of the Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Jews, always gladly indulged in when a chance offers. ”

“ The men, dressed in their picturesque costume, wearing their arms, some of which were curious and rich pieces of Eastern workmanship, were lazily lounging about the commons of their villages; while the women, arrayed in their dress of red silk braided with gold, presided over their household duties. Some well-conditioned cattle, driven by Circassian youths, were grazing in the surrounding meadows. I stopped at a Bulgarian village opposite one of these settlements. It was a prasnik, or feast-day, and the Bulgarian youth and beauty, dressed in their best, were dancing the hora. ”

“ The women keep up the Nautch dance of the East with an excruciating kind of accompaniment, consisting of a drum, bagpipe, tambourine, and pipe, with which they make the round of the towns and villages on feast-days, when they are hired by the people, and dance and shout to their hearts’ content.
The gypsies are idle, false, and treacherous. They have none of the manly virtues; and on account of their known cowardice, they were never pressed into military service by the Turks until last year, when a certain number of those settled in towns and villages were sent off as recruits. ”

“ The Greek peasants have a superstitious horror of approaching the ruined villages at the foot of the mountain; making the sign of the cross, they take a circuitous by-path sooner than follow the deserted road that would lead them past the desecrated church, the neglected graveyards, the blackened ruins of the cottages, now believed to be haunted by the restless spirits of dead Klephts, who roam about in the silence of night, bemoaning their fate, and crying vengeance on the oppressors of their race. ”

“ In their belt is contained all the money they possess. When the fortune-seeker has to wait a long time for the fickle goddess to smile upon him, and the forbearance or generosity of his friends is exhausted, and the kemer becomes empty, he sells his fine arms, and the splendid suit of clothes follows to the same fate. But the Albanian, though externally transformed, will be by no means crushed in spirit or at all less conceited in manner, even when a tattered rag has replaced the gaudy fez, and a coarse aba his fustanella and embroidered jacket. ”

“ The habits of these people are essentially nomadic. Sultan Murad IV. tried to check their roving disposition by ordering that they should be permanently settled in the vicinity of the Balkans, and obliged to live a regular life; but disregarding the imperial decree, they dispersed all over the country, now pitching their tents in one place and now in another, like evil spirits bent on mischief, or birds of prey ready to pounce upon any game that offers itself. Their pilfering propensities are entirely directed to supplying the common wants of nature; they never grow rich on their plunder. ”