Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
History
Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.
Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
Serbia -- Description and travel
We then came to the Skela, and seeing a large house within an
enclosure, I asked what it was, and was told that it was the
reconciliation-house, (_primiritelnj sud_,) a court of first instance,
in which cases are decided by the village elders, without expense to
the litigants, and beyond which suits are seldom carried to the higher
courts. There is throughout all the interior of Servia a stout
opposition to the nascent lawyer class in Belgrade. I have been more
than once amused on hearing an advocate, greedy of practice, style
this laudable economy and patriarchal simplicity--"Avarice and
aversion from civilization." As it began to rain we entered a tavern,
and ordered a fowl to be roasted, as the soup and stews of yester-even
were not to my taste. A booby, with idiocy marked on his countenance,
was lounging about the door, and when our mid-day meal was done I
ordered the man to give him a glass of _slivovitsa_, as plum brandy is
called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive
sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to
our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of
the nation." I looked with astonishment at the torn, wretched
habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain
these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the
feather which indicated how the wind blew. The Servians are by no
means a nation of talkers; they are a serious people; and if the
determination to rise were not in the minds of the people, it would
not be on the lips of the baboon-visaged oaf of an insignificant
hamlet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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