Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on foot during the insurrection, August and September 1875Evans, Arthur, Sir
History
Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on foot during the insurrection, August and September 1875
Evans, Arthur, Sir
Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Description and travel; Bosnia and Herzegovina -- History -- Rebellion of 1875
About sunset we stopped at a small shed on the banks of the Ukrina,
where, seated among a group of Christian peasants, we regaled ourselves
with black coffee which was being dispensed at the rate of about a
farthing a small cup. Hard by, fixed over the Ukrina stream, was a
water-mill for grinding corn, of the most primitive construction, an idea
of which is best given by the accompanying diagram. These turbines are
universal throughout Bosnia, and are to be also seen in Croatia.
[Illustration: Plan of Turbine Mill.]
The peasants here were mostly Vlachs, that is, they belonged to the
Greek Church. The men wore red and black turbans, a flowing white linen
tunic like the Croats, with a fringe of that coarse lace which we had
noticed in Slavonia. A leathern belt wound several times round the waist
served as a pocket for their smoking apparatus; their trousers were worn
loose and expansive as the Croatian, sometimes close about the calf;
their hair was sometimes plaited together behind, and sometimes hung down
in two elf-locks—the crown of the head being shaven, as with the Turks.
As to the women, they were dressed in light tunics and aprons, much as
Croats and Slavonians, but their hair was often plaited like the men’s
into a single pig-tail. On their head was a white kerchief arranged in a
fashion peculiar to themselves, with a flower-like tassel at one side;
and they usually wore in front of the two necessary aprons a superfluous
black one with long fringe. Here is a Greek Christian girl that we saw at
a well, and who graciously allowed us to slake our thirst from the bucket
she had just drawn up.
[Illustration: Bosnian Girl of the Possávina.]
These Greek Church women wore blue embroidery to their dresses, but the
Roman Catholics of this part, though dressing otherwise like the Greeks,
distinguish themselves from their fellow-Christians by embroidering
their clothes with red, while their men protest against a Universal
Church by wearing tighter breeches than the Orthodox. It is hardly
to be expected after this that they should call the founder of their
faith by the same name; and, indeed, the Romanists call Christ ‘Krst,’
and themselves ‘Krisčiani,’ while the Greeks speak of ‘Hrist’ and of
themselves as ‘Hrisčiani;’ so that H in Bosnia is a shibboleth. The Greek
Bosnians use Cyrillian characters, and call themselves distinctively
Serbs or Pravoslaves, that is, ‘the orthodox;’ the others look on the
Cyrillian character as a snare of the devil, and, far from trying to
claim fellowship with the people of Free Serbia, style themselves
Latins—‘Latinski’—for it always seems to be a tendency of Romanists to
thrust patriotic interests into the background.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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