Beguine

“ In the morning she rises, much earlier than ladies rise nowadays, though not so early as nuns, who must say matins, for that, her husband tells her, is not a fitting hour for married women to leave their beds. Then she washes, much less than ladies nowadays, hands and face only perchance, and says her orisons, and dresses very neatly, for she knows whose eye is upon her, and so goes with Dame Agnes the béguine [pg 117] to Mass, with eyes on the ground and hands folded over her painted primer. ”

“ The Beguines occupied themselves in nursing them, but had many a conflict with the spiritual authorities, who preferred the monks and nuns bound by a monastic vow. The order of St. Francis alone regarded them with favour, interceded for them, and watched over them with kindly interest, taking care that they were kept aloof from everything which would expose them to reproach or blame. ”

“ Genovefa, in Begga's church, where it worked miraculous cures, and was adorned with votive offerings of gold and precious stones. The monastery of Anden was afterwards converted into a collegiate church of thirty-two canonesses of noble families, with ten canons to officiate at the altar. Begga is said by some authorities to have founded the Béguines, who devoted themselves to religion under simple vows not taken for life. ”

“ The houses are occupied by the Béguines, a sisterhood of nuns in Belgium which has six thousand members. They are bound by no vows, as ordinary nuns are, and may therefore return to the world at pleasure, marry, and come back in their widowhood. ”

“ In the nineteenth century the list of good works accomplished by the Beguines is very striking and some of them have been listed by Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their "History of Nursing":
"In 1809-10 the Beguines of Belgium had devoted their whole strength to the service of the army during an epidemic of fever. During the war of 1813 their buildings were turned into hospitals, and after Waterloo they literally gave all they had to relieve the overwhelming distress. In 1832, 1849, and 1853 they again served nobly in cholera epidemics. ”

“ The Beguines wear the old Flemish head-dress and a dark costume, and are conspicuous for their kindness among the poor and their sick nursing.
It is uncertain whether the parallel communities of men originated also with Lambert le Bègue. The first records are of communities at Louvain in 1220 and at Antwerp in 1228. The history of the male communities is to a certain extent parallel with the female, but they were never so numerous and their degeneration was far more rapid. ”

“ With surprising swiftness the new order spread through the Netherlands and into France and Germany. Every town had its surplus of homeless and pious widows, and also its little quota of women who wished to spend their lives in doing good, but had no vocation for the cloister. The Beguinage, as it was called, became a home and refuge to either class. Before 1250 there were Beguines, or Begging Sisters, at Tirlemont, Valenciennes, Douai, Ghent, Louvain, and Antwerp in Flanders; at all the principal towns in France, especially at Cambray, where they numbered over a thousand ”

“ For two centuries these were accepted as genuine and are admitted as such even in the monumental work of Mosheim. In 1843, however, they were conclusively proved by the German scholar Hallmann, from internal evidence, to be forgeries of the 14th and 15th centuries. It is now universally admitted that both the institution and the name of the Beguines are derived from Lambert le Bègue, who died about the year 1187. The confusion caused by the spurious documents of Puteanus, however, led, even when the legend of St Begga was rejected, to other suggestions for the derivation of the name, e.g. ”

“ The warning voices of the matrons, to whose aid the Beguines had hastened, were drowned by the uproar, but the danger which specially threatened Eva, whom the barber's widow pointed out to her neighbour who had stolen a child to train it to beg, was soon ended, for the wild cries had reached the men's building, from which Herr Berthold Pfinzing came hurrying in, accompanied by the superintendent, his assistants, and several monks. ”

“ Beuningen plac’d by the King on a Mat, complain’d to him, That the Guineans fled from him where-ever he came, though in Friendship, to barter European Commodities with them, against Fruits, Poultrey, Sheep, and other Provisions: Whereupon the King promis’d to furnish him therewith, and invited Beuningen to Dinner. After some stay, the Kings Wives entred the Palace, a very mean and ill-favour’d Building, more like a great Barn than a Kings House, and plac’d a kind of nasty Trough on the Ground, in which lay nothing but some wild Herbs, and a piece of a smoak’d Sea-Calf ”

“ The Bechuana sorts his skins with much care, according to their colour, size, or length of hair, and only uses those of one species of animal for the same garment; among the Marutse, on the other hand, we find all kinds of fur patched promiscuously together without any regard to symmetry. Their mantles, too, are not finished off by being ornamented with claws or tails like those of the Bechuanas. In the matter of sewing, the tribes north and south of the river may be said to be about on a par; it is done by means of an awl and the finest animal sinews that can be procured. ”

“ The extensive plain in which the town of Bengazi is situated, is bounded to the southward by the range of high land, on whose summit Cyrene once stood so conspicuously; and the whole of the plain at the foot of this range is covered with vegetation from the hills to the sea. The sight, we believe, was refreshing to all parties; for our very horses and camels appeared to partake of the pleasure which we could not avoid feeling ourselves in contemplating so agreeable a scene. ”

“ But all Makuba’s resources of discipline and diplomacy were taxed when I hired Obianga, a young man of the Fang, whose home was near Angom. Poor Obianga is [280] dead; and I would not make cheap jokes at his expense. He was like a wild unbroken colt, full of life, willing to work, and not lazy, but resentful of the bit and reins of authority. For any man, especially one of another tribe, to give him an order was equivalent to calling him a slave; and, representative of his tribe, he seemed ever to be saying: “We were never in bondage to any man.” ”

“ Nor do we like to hazard an opinion as to whether they or the Nubians were the creators of ancient Meroe. The termination ab which is so common throughout the Berber Province proves that people of the Bega stock once held this district, and their immediate descendants are probably to be looked for among the riverain “Arabs” rather than the desert Begas, for no civilized people would exchange a settled life for a nomad life, least of all so warlike a race as the Begas. ”

“ The rough treatment that they have received from the Bechuanas, as punishment for their misdemeanours, makes them very shy of the white man; and in travelling across the Kalahari desert, or through such woods as we had just traversed, or through those between Shoshong and the Zooga, or, again, between the Salt Lakes and the Zambesi, a European may be followed unawares by people of this tribe, who keep their distance from mere fear of being maltreated or put to hard work ”

“ I was hunting one day near Cooe, and happened to ride down the river close upon a number of these girls and two old women, which caused a great commotion amongst them. I was told if they had caught me they were likely to kill me for trespassing into their sanctuary. All the Bechuana tribe have this ceremony. This region being far removed from any white people, the natives are much better behaved, and it was a pleasure to be amongst them. As a people they are quite alive to the ridiculous, and can understand a joke as well as any one. ”

“ As to religion, these people believe there is a God, the efficient cause of all things; but, like the rest of the Guineans, they are superstitiously and idolatrously inclined.
The last division of Guinea from which slaves are imported, are the kingdoms of Kongo and Angola: these lie to the South of Benin, extending with the intermediate land about twelve hundred miles on the coast. Great numbers of the natives of both these kingdoms profess the christian religion, which was long since introduced by the Portugueze, who made early settlements in that country. ”

“ Catch Begil Bey while he is lying in his bed. Bind his hands, cut off his beautiful head and spill his red blood upon the earth. Plunder his tribe and his camp, and capture both his daughters and his daughters-in-law."
It happened that Begil also had a spy in the area. He sent word to Begil, saying: "Prepare for battle! The enemy is coming."
Begil looked up and said: "The heavens are deep and far away, and the earth is hard." He called his son to his side and spoke to him. ”

“ The situation of Bengazi is, however, much better than so filthy a town may be said to deserve. It is built on the coast, close to the sea, at the extremity of a beautiful fertile plain, extending itself to the foot of a long chain of mountains about fourteen miles distant (in this part) to the south-eastward. Plentiful crops of corn and vegetables are afforded to the town by the cultivated lands in the neighbourhood, and the supplies of beef and mutton are in general very regular and abundant. ”

“ Before describing my return journey, I will append some further details of Bechuana customs to those which I have given in the previous chapter.
As a rule a heathen Bechuana has but one wife, though the more well-to-do not unfrequently have two; the number allowed to the sub-chieftains varies from three to six; the kings being permitted to have more, although not so many as those in the Marutse empire. A man of competent means presents his newly-married wife with several head of sheep or oxen. ”

“ He states that fevers prevail all along the river-banks of the Zambesi, and in the lands adjoining the river, but that the country extending inland from the highlands of Benguela is the most suitable territory in all tropical Africa for colonization, being five thousand feet above the sea, fertile, well watered, and healthy. The people, he says, are docile, capable of improvement, are very fond of dress, and that a market would here be found for the consumption of foreign manufactures. ”

“ The British magistrate—there are about seventy Europeans living in the town—described these Bechuanas as a quiet folk, not hard to manage. They have less force of character and much less taste for fighting than Zulus or Matabili. The main impression which they leave on a stranger is that of laziness. Of the many whom we saw hanging about in the sun, hardly one seemed to be doing any kind of work. Nor do they. They grow a few mealies (maize) , but it is chiefly the women who hoe and plant the ground. ”

“ After leaving Benguela, till you reach the district of Bihé, you will see only one native village, and that is three miles from the road. Much of the country is fertile. Villages have been plentiful in the past. The road passes through their old fields and gardens. Sometimes the huts are still standing, but all is silent and deserted now. Till this winter there was one village left, close upon [Pg 70] the road, about a day’s trek past Caconda. But when I hoped to buy a few potatoes or peppers there, I found it abandoned like the rest. Where the road runs, the natives will not stay. ”

“ The miasmal vapors that clustered thickly about the flats by night gathered their linen and fled like the hunted. They were scurrying upstream when Bogoru, the fisherman, walked out on his sampan landing. He looked at the unruffled surface of the bay, and then looked upward quickly at the lane of tall kenari trees between the stockade and government buildings on an elevation a short distance back of the town. The spindly tops of the trees pointed heavenward with the rigidity of church spires. ”

“ Sixty miles from the western end of the island is the mountainous land of German New Guinea; and sometimes, when the air is clear and the south-east trade wind blows, the savages on Berara can see across the deep, wide strait the grey loom of the great range that fringes the north-eastern coast of New Guinea for many hundred miles. Once, indeed, when the writer of this true story lived in New Britain, he saw this sight for a whole week, for there, in those beautiful islands, the air is very clear at certain seasons of the year. ”

“ The few English people who have ever heard of Bihé at all probably imagine it to themselves as a largish town in Angola famous for its slave-market. Nothing could be less like the reality. There is no town, and there is no slave-market. Bihé is a wide district of forest and marsh, part of the high plateau of interior Africa. It has no mountains and no big rivers, except the Cuanza, which separates it from the land of the Chibokwe on the east. ”

“ When the headmen consider that the novices have gone through a sufficient course of instruction and discipline in the bush, a number of men, called the Beegay who have arrived at the women's camp since the boys were taken away, are despatched to liberate them. The Beegay start away from the main camp, and proceed to a waterhole in the bush which has been decided upon by the headmen as the place where the kooringal and guardians are to wash the black paint off their bodies. ”

“ By the most authentic relations of those early times, the natives were an inoffensive people, who, when civilly used, traded amicably with the Europeans. It is recorded of those of Benin, the largest kingdom in Guinea,AThat they were a gentle, loving people; and Reynold says,B "They found more sincere proofs of love and good will from the natives, than they could find from the Spaniards and Portugueze, even tho' they had relieved them from the greatest misery." ”