Austria: containing a Description of the Manners, Customs, Character and Costumes of the People of that EmpireShoberl, Frederic
History
Austria: containing a Description of the Manners, Customs, Character and Costumes of the People of that Empire
Shoberl, Frederic
Austria -- Social life and customs
The enjoyment of liberty and civil rights seems to have produced a
strong effect on the physical constitution and physiognomy of the
Hebrew race, and to have bestowed on them a dignity and energy of
character, which we may look for in vain in the Jews of other
countries. The men, clothed in long black robes reaching to their
ankles, and sometimes adorned in front with silver agraffes, their
heads covered with fur caps, their chesnut or auburn locks parted in
front, and falling gracefully on their shoulders in spiral curls,
display much manly beauty. In feminine beauty, the women are likewise
distinguished; but beauty is not uncommon among the Jewesses of other
countries. When looking at them, says Dr. Neale, seated, according to
their usual custom, on a wooden sofa, by the doors of their houses,
on the evenings of their sabbath, dressed in their richest stuffs and
pearl head-dresses, I have imagined that I could trace a strong
resemblance between their present head-ornaments and those sculptured
on the heads of the Egyptian sphynxes. Nor do I think it at all
improbable, that the dresses of the Hebrews of both sexes in Poland,
are at this day nearly the same as those of their ancestors when they
quitted the “house of bondage.”
Without having visited Poland, and had ocular demonstration of the
filth and abominable uncleanliness of the inhabitants, it seems
difficult to believe the accounts which have been given of them. The
floors of the houses of the lower classes consists of clay or earth
always damp, and from which the heat of the stove draws up a perpetual
vapour of the most offensive odour, which, as their windows are never
opened, circulates continually. Both sexes sleep together like pigs on
the straw or furs, upon the sides and tops of their ovens, without
undressing themselves. They eat few vegetables, and their diet
consists of every putrescent animal food, with bad bread, diluted
copiously with spirituous liquors. Such a diet necessarily predisposes
them to imbibe readily every contagious poison, which, when once
received, is propagated among them with the rapidity of combustion
itself. Thus it is related, that when the plague was brought into the
country in 1770, in consequence of the hostilities between the Turks
and Russians, all the peasants of a village belonging to Prince Adam
Czartoriski were swept off by it in one day.
Generally without medical assistance, the wretched creatures are
abandoned to their fate; and such is the callous selfishness of the
great majority of the Polish nobles, that instead of attempting to
meliorate the condition of their serfs, all their ingenuity is
exhausted in ministering to their debaucheries and increasing their
own overgrown incomes, by throwing the temptations of drunkenness in
their way. Bishops and nobles are joint proprietors of all the inns,
and the greater the drunkenness of the peasantry, the larger are the
returns to the lord of the soil.
THE END.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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