Wallachians

“ One charm employed by the Wallachians to prevent a person becoming a vampire was to rub the body in certain parts with the lard of a pig killed on St Ignatius’s Day.
In Poland and Russia, vampires make their appearance from noon to midnight [13] instead of between nightfall and dawn, the rule that generally prevails. They come and suck the blood of living men and animals in such abundance that sometimes it flows from them at the nose and ears, and occasionally in such profusion that the corpse swims in the blood thus oozing from it as it lies in the coffin. ”

“ The Wallachians have a very great fear of sudden death, greater perhaps than any other people, for they attribute sudden death to the attack of a vampire, and believe that anyone destroyed by a vampire must [6] become a vampire, and that no power can save him from this fate. A similar belief obtains in Northern Albania, where it is also held that a wandering spirit has power to enter the body of any individual guilty of undetected crime, and that such obsession forms part of his punishment. ”

“ The methods employed for the detection of vampires have varied according to the countries in which the belief in their existence was maintained. In some places it was held that, if there were discovered in a grave two or three or more holes about the size of a man’s finger, it would almost certainly follow that a body with all the marks of vampirism would be discovered within the grave. The Wallachians employed a rather elaborate method of divination. They were in the habit of choosing a boy young enough to make it certain that he was innocent of any impurity. ”

“ In very obstinate cases it is further recommended to cut off the head, fill the mouth with garlic, and then replace the head in its proper place in the coffin; or else to extract the heart and burn it, and strew the ashes over the grave.
The murony of the Wallachians not only sucks blood, but also possesses the power of assuming a variety of shapes, as, for instance, those of a cat, dog, flea, or spider; in consequence of which the ordinary evidence of death caused by the attack of a vampire, viz. the mark of a bite in the back of the neck, is not considered indispensable. ”

“ Snorri Sturluson does not know the word Edda, nor any collection of ancient poems attributed to Saemund; and though Saemund may have made the first collection of national poetry, it is doubtful whether the work which we possess under his name is his.180.The people whom we call Wallachians, call themselves Romàni, and their language Romània.
This Romance language is spoken in Wallachia and Moldavia, and in parts of Hungary, Transylvania, and Bessarabia. On the right bank of the Danube it occupies some parts of the old Thracia, Macedonia, and even Thessaly. ”

“ Though the villages of the Wallachian plain are few and far between, and though it is no uncommon thing for a peasant to walk a dozen miles from his home to the fields in which he works, the whole region seemed a-hum with industry. ”

“ The people, too, are different—of quite another type, and speaking, most of them, another tongue. For this is the country of the Walloons, that hard-working race whose aptitude for strenuous labour distinguishes them from the light-hearted, easy-going people of Flanders and Brabant, and whose language is a form of old French mingled with words derived from German roots. ”

“ The Wallack women, whether walking or standing, never have the spindle out of their hands: the attitude is very graceful, added to which the thread must be held daintily in the fingers. They are very industrious, making nearly all the articles of clothing for the family.
After a great deal of palavering—I think we must have spoken to every able-bodied man in the churchyard—I at last induced a young Wallachian to say he would accompany me. He spoke a little German, which was a great advantage. ”

“ Among the hills of eastern Belgium there lives a race of men—vivacious and hardy, immensely proud of their ancient origin, who are descended from one of the Gallic tribes conquered by the Romans twenty centuries ago. These interesting people—they are called Walloons—inherited from their conquerors a Romanic dialect which they made their own. Though more like French than any other language, it can scarcely be understood by natives of France. ”

“ As for the Albanians, they had not yet entered Greece; had they done so, the conquest would probably have been far less easy. Besides the Greeks and the Slavs, there were Wallachs in Thessaly, who extended as far south as Lamia, and who had bestowed upon the whole of that region the name, which we find employed by the Byzantine historian Niketas, of “Great Wallachia.” That the Wallachs are of Roman descent, scarcely admits of doubt ”

“ Moreover, that province was no longer inhabited by a mainly Greek population; in the twelfth century it had passed so completely under Wallachian influence that it was known as Great Wallachia, and its colonists were the ancestors of those Koutso-Wallachs, who still pasture their herds in the country near the Thessalian frontier, descending to Bœotia in the winter, and who, in the war of 1897, were on the Turkish side. Finally a debased currency pointed to the financial decline of the Byzantine Government. In short, the Empire was ripe for the Latin conquest. ”

“ A descendant of the Voïvode’s grandson above alluded to, is now living in Wallachia, and possesses all the landed property left by his ancestor, which gives him an annual income of upwards of 200,000 piasters. He is looked upon by his countrymen as the first and richest Boyar of Wallachia, and is acknowledged by the court of Vienna as prince of the Roman Empire, a title which, however, he cannot assume in his own country so long as the Turks are the possessors of it. ”

“ Almost anywhere along this imaginary line, one can, by going a short distance south, be among people who nearly all speak French or the Walloon dialect of French, and, by going a little way north, be among people who, though they may write French and speak it as an acquired language, use Flemish as their native tongue. Nevertheless, in this densely populated, busy, rich, and closely unified kingdom, the various elements of the population were happily mingled. Thousands of Belgian families are part Walloon and part Flemish. ”

“ The Rise of Belgian Industry
Belgium’s story, as complex in pattern as the tapestry of Flemish looms, is interwoven with the bright threads of genius, and, no less, with the gold of commerce and the crimson threads of war. Proud mistress of the arts as Belgium can claim to be, she has held her own for centuries past as a vigorous industrial nation. Tribes that came across the Rhine after Caesar’s conquest of the Gauls, 57-52 before Christ, were permitted by the Romans to settle upon the lands that extended from the basin of the Meuse River to the sea. ”

“ She stared at him in amazement.
"You are joking, of course," she said, forgetting her danger for the moment in face of this extraordinary phenomenon. "If you are a German, and I suppose you are, and an educated German at that, you don't for a moment imagine you gave the world anything. Why, the Germans have never been anything but exploiters of other men's brains."
From dull red, his face had gone white, his lip was trembling with passion and when he spoke he could scarcely control his voice.
"We were of all people ordained by God to save the world through the German spirit." ”

“ Wallmann—“This language (the Hottentot) is to me at this moment of greater interest than any other. The facts, of which once before I have given you some account, have now so increased upon me, and offer such strong analogies, that there is no further doubt in my own mind that not only the Coptic but also the Semitic, and all other languages of Africa (as Berber, the Galla dialect, &c., &c.) in which the distinction of the masculine and feminine gender pervades the whole grammar, are of common origin.” ”

“ One half of its divided tail is Walloon and the other half Flemish; yet now, with pure patriotism, and loyal to a hero king and a noble queen, and with all the people united in devotion to their homeland, only the Belgian lion’s tail recalls the history of the past; while its body and limbs represent the majesty, the courage, and the devotion of the brave Belgian people. ”

“ Wallaby, wol′ab-i, n. a small kangaroo.—On the wallaby, On the wallaby track, out of employment, a slang Australian phrase derived from the shy habits of the kangaroo.
Wallachian, wäl-ā′ki-an, adj. of or pertaining to Wallachia, a Danubian principality, since 1878 forming with Moldavia the kingdom of Roumania.—ns. Wall′ach, Wall′ack, a native or inhabitant of Wallachia. [From a Slavonic term represented by Pol. Wloch, an Italian, Woloch, a Wallach; all from Old High Ger. walh (A.S. wealh) , a foreigner.] ”

“ A wide expanse of sandy soil extends from east to west almost uninterruptedly across Belgium; the eastern section of this, covering the northeastern portions of the provinces of Antwerp and Limburg, is called the Campine. Cf. R. C. K. Ensor, Belgium, p. 24.
[5] The term “Walloon” comes from Wala, “foreigner,” the name that was given by the Teutonic invaders to the Gallo-Romans dwelling behind the Sylva Carbonaria. The name Wala is to be connected with the terms “Welsh,” “Wales,” apparently of the same origin and given to the Britons and their country by the Anglo-Saxon invaders. ”

“ Wallace impatiently. "The Congo is just as civilized as parts of our own country. We can take a steamer at the mouth and travel for thousands of miles by it. I have one recruit from New Britain already, and I'd like to have Burt if you'll spare him." ”

“ Through them flows the Scheldt, the river of commerce.
South of the line are the mines and the mountains, the foundries and the forests, of Namur, Liège, Hainault, and the Ardennes. This is the Walloon country, through which runs the Meuse, the river of romance.
In the north live the stolid, easy-going, devout Flemish peasantry, while in the south are the lively, energetic, enterprising Walloons. They are a larger people physically than their neighbours, more heavily built, and of darker colouring, for there is a strain of Spanish blood in [332] their ancestry. ”

“ In Switzerland and in Germany, the Waldenses lived by the labor of their hands, leading exemplary lives amongst their foreign brethren, but listening with indifference to their offer of substantial dwellings, answering little, but silently longing for their valleys, their chestnut woods, their clear mountain streams. The little light which shone there so brightly amidst the bloody night of persecution, burned feebly in peaceful but foreign abodes. ”

“ Wallace's testimony seems to dispose of much of the current criticism of the Dutch colonial system. When the population is really barbarous, at any rate, there seems no room at all to doubt that the system works admirably. Thus in the north of Celebes Mr. Wallace tells us that within the memory of persons still living the inhabitants of the several villages formed distinct tribes constantly at war with one another. To protect themselves from attack they built their houses on long poles. ”

“ Wallace says, "I believe that the Dutch system is the very best that can be adopted when a European nation conquers or otherwise acquires possession of a country inhabited by an industrious but semi-barbarous people." And again, having explained what the system is, he sums up — "On the whole the people are well fed and decently clothed, and have acquired habits of steady industry and the art of scientific cultivation, which must be of service to them in the future." ”

“ It is remarkable that while no people living on the south of the Balkans appear to be mentioned as Wallachs until the tenth century, when Anna Comnena mentions a village called Ezeban, near Mount Kissavo, occupied by them, almost suddenly we hear of them as a great nation to the south of the Balkans. They spoke a language which differed little from Latin. Thessaly, during the twelfth century is usually called Great Wallachia. ... ”

“ In the big towns also they established important colonies—as for example in Jassy, where they form more than one third of the population, and in Galatz, where they occupy whole streets with their shops. In all these centres they live by trade or as craftsmen—tinsmiths, glaziers, shoemakers, hatters, tailors, butchers, bakers and the like. The southern province of Wallachia is studded with smaller colonies both of Spanish and of Polish Jews, while there are families, settled chiefly in Bucharest, whose ancestors have been in the country from time immemorial. ”

“ Such slight mistakes as sending men to South Africa and Australia where the crops are six months later than the European and American harvests may be forgiven, because the German thinks longitudinally, and north and south are the two points of the compass which he never bothers his head about. If the Germans had been a seafaring people they'd have discovered America before Columbus, but they would never have found the North Pole or rounded the Cape in a million years. ”

“ Besides the loods, there are in Wallachia about one hundred thousand individuals, and a proportionable number in Moldavia, who do not belong to the class of peasants, but who pay taxes at an equal rate. These are the tradesmen, Ottoman Jews, and other Rayahs. ”

“ The natural richness, and the various resources of Wallachia and Moldavia, are such, that if those countries could enjoy the important advantages of a regular government and a wise administration, under which industry and agriculture should receive their due encouragement, the trade of exports laid open, the commercial intercourse with foreign nations set upon a proper footing, and finally, the mines explored, they would in a short time become the 85most populous and most flourishing provinces of Europe. ”