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
Many of the Croat women’s girdles are almost identical in pattern with
those I have seen among the Lapps of Lake Enare. In the Museum is to be
seen a large and curious collection of Croatian needlework, all of this
angular pattern—crosses, and lines, and zigzags. Here are also to be seen
carpets of rude character wrought by the homely looms of Slavonia, which
are curious illustrations of the perfection of the old style—complex as
the patterns are, they are all square or angled, and might any of them
be models for a mosaic pavement; their colours are green, red, yellow,
and white, less usually purple, and dark blue. But what is strange,
is to find side by side with these rude shapes the secondary form of
decoration in a highly developed state. The curved style of embroidery,
as it appears on some of the men’s mantles—and it is noteworthy that
it is confined almost exclusively to the men’s attire—is often a real
work of art, and the elaborate pear-shaped forms which it frequently
takes suggest the rich tendrillings of a Cashmere shawl. So abrupt is
the leap from the ruder kind of ornament generally used, that these
_chefs-d’œuvre_ of curvature seem to be rather importations from without,
than flowers of home growth. Nor does it seem difficult to trace their
origin, for they are very often reproductions of the decorations which
appear on the costly vests and jackets of the Turks. They are seedlings
from Stamboul—less directly, from Byzantium.
As in ornament so in general character, the Croatian dress resembles
that of all the Southern Sclaves, including the Roumans of Transylvania
and Wallachia, who, for ethnological purposes, may be looked on as
a Latinized branch of the family. In parts, indeed, it has been
Orientalized by the Turks; and it is noteworthy that just as the men’s
costume in Croatia shows the Oriental influence in ornament, so in
Serbia, Dalmatia, and the lands beyond the Save and Danube, it is the
men’s costume that makes the chief advances towards the Turkish. It is
possibly a symptom of the almost Oriental seclusion of those who have
to dread Oriental license. Often, when the husbands dress in completely
Turkish fashion, the wives preserve almost unaltered the old national
costumes; and it is owing to this, that throughout the whole South
Sclavonic area, enough of the original dress has survived to show the
common sisterhood of all. And of all, the Croat costume seems to be
the best representative of the old Serb—of the Sclavonic costume as it
existed in the days of the great Czar, Stephen Dūshan. Almost everywhere
else the men’s costume, at least, has suffered from Turkish influences.
Here, far better than in free Serbia, is the description applied to the
Serb laity in the old laws—the ‘dressers in white,’ still applicable to
the Croat men. At Belgrade it would be a meaningless epithet; at Agram
it is still true. The Croats, too, with their fine mantles and flowing
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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