Dobruja

“ There was much hurrying to and fro as the troops were being put in readiness for the morrow. A crowd had gathered at the palace gates and as a young man came galloping up, holding in front of him a lady lovely as the day, the shout went up:
“Here he is! Here he is!”
The people in the courtyard took up the cry and as Dobromil rode through the gate all of them with one voice shouted out:
“Long live our beautiful queen! Long live our noble king!”
Dobrunka was struck with amazement.
[Pg 190] “Are you really the king, Dobromil?” she asked, looking into his proud and happy face. ”

“ It seems that the devil himself had come and before their very eyes had carried off his wife and mother-in-law. They looked at each other in amazement as Dobromil rode up with what seemed to be the same wife whom the devil had so recently carried off.
Dobromil explained to them what had happened and with one voice they called down punishment on the head of the wicked sister.
The golden spinning wheel had vanished. So Dobrunka hunted out her old one and set to work at once to spin for her husband’s shirts. No one in the kingdom had such fine shirts as Dobromil and no one was happier. ”

“ But the sad national tragedy was being played out, and in due course Doboj, the key of the Christian kingdom, became the stronghold of the Turk. It is a place full of dismal associations for the Christians of Bosnia; they seem to shrink instinctively from the ill-omened site, and at this day the population of Doboj is almost exclusively Mahometan. We could not wonder at coming upon a tradition among the rayahs of this neighbourhood that it was within these walls that the old Bosnian nobility forswore their faith and country and renegaded to the Infidel. ”

“ She handed her yarn to her mother and went back to the cottage. Then when she had put the kitchen in order, she sat down to her wheel and began to spin. Dobrunka had a pretty voice, as pretty as any of the song-birds in the forest, and always when she was alone she sang. So today as she sat spinning she sang all the songs she knew, one after the other.
Suddenly she heard outside the trample of a horse. “Some one is coming,” she thought to herself, “someone who has lost his way in the woods. ”

“ The ‘Starigrad,’ as it is called here, is one of the most interesting historic relics in the whole of Bosnia. A glance from its mouldering walls makes one realise the importance of its situation. The peak on which the castle of Doboj stands juts out abruptly into the valley of the Bosna just at the point where in one direction the Sprecca opens out an avenue towards the Drina and Serbian frontier, and in the other the pass of Dervent conducts the road to Croatia. ”

“ It is not sufficient to be floored with such heavy slabs of historical information as those by which we learn that the name of Dover has been arrived at through a long series of British, Roman, and Saxon forms, originating from the little stream called anciently the Dour, that flowed, once upon a time, through the chalk valley of Temple Ewell and Buckland, tinkling cheerfully through the old town and falling into the waves over the pebbles of Dover beach ”

“ The castle, therefore, was the key to the whole valley of the [105] Bosna against a foe coming from the Hungarian plains, and commanded the highway through the province of Ussora to the very heart of the Bosnian kingdom. The maize-covered river-flat that spreads below it seems one of those spots destined by nature to be the battle-field of nations; and the very name of Doboj or Dvoboi, as it was formerly written, means in Bosniac ‘the two fights.’
Old Castle of Doboj. ”

“ Zloboha took the spindle and, delighted with her bargain, carried it into her chamber where she had the wheel and distaff. The old woman was a little troubled, [Pg 199] for she feared Zloboha had acted foolishly. But Zloboha, confident of her beauty and her ability to charm the king, only laughed at her.
As soon as the boy had delivered the hands to the hermit, the old man carried them into the cave. Then he anointed the wounds on Dobrunka’s arms with the same healing salve that he used before, and stuck on the hands. ”

“ When the domestics had solemnly filed out of the big dining-room, the Dowager turned to her grandson—the one prop of her declining years—with an air of almost tragic appeal.
"I suppose," she said, "I must go to Brentmore and see this Battle—or Cattle—person?"
"It would look more friendly, if you did," said her grandson, "but I have no wish to urge anything of the kind upon you, if you feel unequal to it." "I never allow myself to feel unequal to a duty, Warbeck. But the position is heart-breaking." ”

“ These are the Troglodytes on the eastern part of Abyssinia, towards the Red Sea, south of Walkayt, Sire, Tigré, and Baharnagash, till they are there cut off by the mountains of the Habab. These, the most powerful of all their tribes, are comprehended under the general name of Dobenah; the tribe Baasa, which we have already spoken of as occupying the banks of the Tacazzé, are the only partners they have in the peninsula formed by that river and the Mareb, Their country and manner of life have been already abundantly described. ”

“ The girl, said Don Urbano, was the very pride of his eye, prop of his failing years, a little mother to the children. She had had a most pious bringing-up, never missed the Rosary, knew the Little Hours of the Virgin, could do sums with notches in a stick, market like a Jew's housekeeper, sew like a nun, and make a stew against any wife in the contrada. Dowry, dowry! What did such a girl as that want with a dowry? She was her own dowry, by Bacchus the Thracian. Look at the shape of her—was that not a dowry? ”

“ Thus we read in one of them: “Ana-Â-uzni is the daughter of Salimat. Salimat has given her a dowry, and has offered her in marriage to Bel-sunu, the son of the artisan. Ana-Â-uzni is pure; no one has anything against her.” The dowry, as we have seen, was paid by the near relations of the wife, and where there was none, as in the case of the singing-woman married by Nebo-akhi-iddin, there was no dowry at all. The dowries provided for the ugly by the prostitution of the rich must be an invention of the Greeks. ”

“ At the proper time, however, Hungarian gypsy music,—despite the fact that none of the players ever seem to look at the leader, and that each man appears to play the tune he likes the best,—is strangely fascinating.
Dóbsina itself lies in a hollow, surrounded with well-wooded hills, the general appearance much resembling some of the valleys of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. My brother and I started from Dóbsina on the morning of the 27th of July, 1895, at half-past seven o’clock, in a little open carriage with excellent horses and a Hungarian driver in national costume. ”

“ An Hungarian invasion of his Kingdom and the capture of the strong fortress of Dobor, on the lower Bosna, at once reduced him to submission, and a battle before the walls of Knin, in Dalmatia, finally severed the brief connection between that country and the Bosnian throne. To complete Dabisha’s misfortunes, the Turks, who had been in no undue haste to make use of their victory at Kossovo, invaded Bosnia for the first time in 1392, and gave that country a foretaste of what was to come. ”

“ None the less a marked moodiness of manner overcame him as the day of the encounter drew near, and often his deportment was that of a man doomed to early disintegration. To cheer him, Mr. Dobb contrived for him a secret meeting with Mr. Burch, who revealed himself as quite an amiable young gentleman, and promised Mr. Tridge that he should receive no real hurt until the final blow of the contest.
“And that,” interpolated Mr. Dobb, encouragingly, “you won’t be in your senses to feel, Joe, for more than a millionth part of a second, so you needn’t worry about that.” ”

“ Thus ended the campaign of the Dobenah, spoke of to this day in Abyssinia as the greatest warlike achievement of any of their kings. Twenty-six thousand men are said to have perished by thirst when the king took possession of the water at Tzaada Amba. And yet, notwithstanding the small-pox which, in some places, exterminated whole tribes, the Dobenah have not loft an inch of territory, but seem rather to be gaining upon Sirè.
Yasous arrived at Dancaz on the 8th of March 1592, having dismissed his army as he passed Gondar. ”

“ But Dubhan went to the strand, and a hundred men along with him; and there was no one there before him but Dolar Durba, and he said he was there to fight with the whole of them. And Dubhan's men gave a great shout of laughter when they heard that; but Dolar Durba rushed on them, and he made an end of the whole hundred, without a man of them being able to put a scratch on him. And then he took a hurling stick and a ball, and he threw up the ball and kept it in the air with the hurl from the west to the east of the strand without letting it touch the ground at all. ”

“ These villages were all deserted, the natives having fled. At length we came to what appeared, from its great size, to be the chief village, which we later learnt was named Dobodura. It extended some distance, and stood amid thousands of coconut palms. Here we determined to camp, but we found that most of the police had rushed on ahead after the Doboduras, much to Monckton’s annoyance, for it was risky, to [123] say the least, as the enemy might easily have attacked each party separately. ”

“ Dovach had been the sole child of a laird, whose lands marched with Baikie—a moderate man, who had said neither yea nor nay to the blustering of Sir Raoul. Dovach had grown up in those primitive days, in a rough, motherless solitude, a white, quiet, still girl with features like chiselled marble and eyes, also, like the deep, cool, fathomless, but intent eyes of a saint in a picture from beyond the seas ”

“ This tribe also has no regular practice of dowry, which is quite formal: perhaps either some beans, a hoe, two goats, pots, or 10 calabashes. If a wife leaves her husband he seeks out a discontented couple and pairs off with the lady.
The Burrum population honour a rigid dowry scheme, which consists of payment of a horse and five goats. Marriage is not recognised until the dowry has been paid. If a couple elect to go in double domestic harness without that preliminary, all children born to them can be claimed by the woman’s father. ”

“ Thereupon, Dobbie the Doomster, clad in sackcloth braided with white cord, and having a white cross and skull sewn on his back and breast, approached, and laid a hand upon her shoulder, signifying that she was now his peculiar charge.
Those lords who were priests waved a benediction to the people, so much did they (by mere force of habit) mingle religious with civil ceremony; then the whole bench arose, and the macer shouldered his mace; but at that moment the clash of swords was heard, and a violent uproar arose at the door of the Exchequer Hall. ”

“ Fortunately, no one understood, and these strange travellers arrived safely at Dover and crossed to Calais.
The adventure seems incredible when we consider that the Princess Henrietta Maria was born June 16, 1644, and that this journey to Dover is stated to have taken place towards the end of July, 1646. We have to ask ourselves, “Could a child of two years and a little over one month, understand and talk like that?” ”

“ The next time that the two met, Chellaya made the proposal and Chittampalam accepted it and then they went back to Chellaya's compound to discuss the question of dowry. As is usual in such cases the father of the girl wants the dowry to be small and the father of the boy wants it to be large, and all sorts of reasons are given on both sides why it should be small or large, and the argument begins to grow warm. ”

“ As soon as the rainy season was over, which lasted till the month of October, Surajah Dowlah marched out with his army into the country of Purneah, for the purpose of attacking his cousin, who was Phouzdar of that territory. The young Nabob bore a great hatred to this relation of his, and had frequently announced his intention of destroying him as soon as the weather should permit of his moving against him. At the head of the army, as usual, was the general, Meer Jaffier, and at my earnest request I was allowed to accompany him as one of his train. ”

“ Just then a frightful roaring, so near that it seemed to come from the stable in which they were, gave so violent a shock to Jovial, that with one effort he broke his halter, leaped over the bar that marked his place, and rushing at the open door, escaped into the court-yard.
Dagobert had himself started at the suddenness of this wild and fearful sound, which at once explained to him the cause of his horse’s terror. The adjoining stable was occupied by the itinerant menagerie of the brute-tamer, and was only separated by the partition, which supported the mangers. ”

“ Originally it was nothing else than a narrow channel of sea—the ‘silver streak’ that moated off the Roman rock asylum of Lavve from the more rustic dwellings of Serbian Dubrovnik, scattered among the pine-trees on the rocky steep of the adjoining mainland. ”

“ Dobb who had suggested a semi-public demonstration of his fistic powers which should compel admiration and respect. With this proposition Mr. Jevvings had fallen in so enthusiastically that he had left all arrangements, financial and otherwise, to be consummated by Mr. Dobb.
“So that’s where you comes in,” explained Mr. Dobb.
“I see,” said Mr. Tridge, acutely. “I says something to ’im, ’e knocks me down, and I get twenty quid for it?”.
“Oh, not so helementary as that, Joe!” replied Mr. Dobb, pained at such lack of artistic imagination. “It’s got to be worked up to, neat and natural. ”