Beguines

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ This was a sufficient income to allow her to live without working in a leisure principally occupied by the performance of religious exercises.
On the outskirts of Longres there stands a small béguinage, long since abandoned by its Béguines, who are now all over Belgium a diminishing and nearly extinct community, and inhabited by a colony of ordinary poor folk. The little old gabled houses are built round the sides of a large grassy square, in the centre of which stands an abandoned church. ”

“ Schweinau afforded abundant opportunity for charitable women to aid suffering fellow-mortals, since it was here that the unfortunates who had been mutilated by the hands of the executioner and his assistants, or wounded on the rack, often nearly unto death, were brought to be bandaged, and as far as possible healed. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They busied themselves with handiwork and the education of girls, the spiritual training of females, and sewing, washing and nursing the poor in the houses of the city. The surplus of income over expenditure was applied to works of benevolence. Every Beguine house had its own costume and colour. These institutions soon spread over all Belgium, Germany, and France. The first Beguine house known to us was founded about 1180 at Liège, by the famous priest and popular preacher, Lambert la Bèghe, i.e. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of these Bechuanas are rich in cattle, sheep, and goats. They have their cattle-posts away in the bush, where the stock is looked after, cows milked, and once or twice a week a pack-ox is loaded up with skins of milk and taken to the kraal for use. These “vieh-posts” are in charge of their slaves, called Vaalpans. They are the Bushmen of the country kept in subjection by the Bechuana tribe, and are a very harmless and quiet people, the only drawback to their liberty being they cannot leave their masters’ service; otherwise they have full liberty of action. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These are the slaves of the Bechuanas. Those natives (the Bechuanas) who come down to the diamond fields to work, every one of them has a master, and twenty or thirty of them have to stay in those dry countries and hunt ostriches for their masters. Going farther from south to north one meets, north of the Bakwenas, two tribes of the Bamangwato—the Eastern and the Western Bamangwato, or as I call the Eastern according to their capital, Shoshong, the Shoshong Banmangwato, and the Western ones, which I call, on account of the residence of their king lying near to the Lake N’Gami, Bamangwatos. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ All the other tribes can have as many wives as they are able to keep. They belong to the Bechuana family, and live more in the northern part of Griqualand West, near the Harts river, as all the lower parts are occupied by English, Dutch, and others in farms, allowing small native kraals to remain on them, that the occupiers may have the use of their labour when required, and they are allowed a piece of ground to cultivate and grazing for their cattle. ”

“ The first acquaintance of Europeans with the Bechuanas dates from an early period of the history of the Cape Colony. There is reason to believe that this nation once extended as far as the Orange River, but at the present day none of the tribes are found beyond the 28th parallel of south latitude. ”

“ 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 harbor is excellent, and is the entrepôt to the celebrated Bihé section, through a series of tribes which Pinto visited and which he describes as of superior physique and intelligence. Benguella was once the seat of an active slave trade, and Monteiro says, in his volume published in 1875, that he has seen caravans of 3,000 blacks coming into Benguella from Bihé, fully 1,000 of which were slaves. The white settlers cleared many fine plantations about Benguella, which they stocked with slaves and upon which large crops of cotton were formerly raised. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Demons in Dutch New Guinea and German New Guinea. A Dutch missionary, who spent twenty-five years among the natives of Dutch New Guinea, tells us that “in their ignorance of a living God the Papuans people earth and air, land and sea with mysterious malignant powers, which take up their abode in stones and trees or in men and cause all kinds of misfortunes, especially sickness and death.”261 Again, speaking of the Bukaua, a tribe of German New Guinea, a German missionary writes that “the Bukaua knows himself to be surrounded by spirits (balum) at every step. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the day which has been arranged to meet the Beegay, the Kooringal, guardians, and boys start out and carry all their things with them, as if shifting camp. When they reach the appointed place, which is in a piece of open country, their swags are laid down and a fire lit, at which the old men remain. The boys are then taken away on the pretence of accompanying the men hunting, and one or more of the Kooringal go ahead unseen by the boys, in order to see where the Beegay are. ”

“ 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. ”