Through the Land of the SerbDurham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
History
Through the Land of the Serb
Durham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
Montenegro -- Description and travel; Serbia -- Description and travel
They are an honest, civil lot, these Skodra tradesmen; and though your
money will probably fly from hand to hand and disappear round the
corner, the change always comes back correctly in the end, and you pass
the interval drinking coffee with the shop owner. If your purchases are
many, he will kindly send out to buy a piece of common muslin in which
to wrap them; for Skodra does not supply paper, and when you have bought
a thing, conveying it away is your own affair. We in London are used to
having paper included lavishly with the goods, but an old lady once told
me that in her young days the fashionable drapers of London would lend
linen wrappers to those who bought largely, and the said wrappers had to
be returned next day. In this particular Skodra is not more than eighty
or ninety years behind London.
To see the bazaar in all its glory one must go on a Wednesday; that is
"bazaar day," and all the folk of the surrounding country flock
thither. "Which is bazaar day in London?" I have been asked any number
of times by Serb, Montenegrin, and Albanian. And "Every day is bazaar
day in London" is the one thing that gives them any idea of London's
size. The five million inhabitants, railway trains, electric lights, and
so forth, are all quite beyond their ken; but "bazaar every day" stuns
and dazzles them, and at once calls up a picture of vast crowds and
illimitable wealth. On "bazaar day" Skodra is thronged with strange
types--costumes bizarre, grotesque, wild and wonderful, and the road
from an early hour is crowded with flocks, pack-animals and their
owners. Flocks as strange as their drivers, for the ram of the pattering
drove of sheep is often dyed a bright crimson, and his horns instead of
curling neatly round by the sides of his head are trained to stand up
like those of an antelope with their tight twist pulled out to long
spiral His fashion is an even older one than that of his masters, for we
find the ram with the same head-dress in early Egyptian frescoes. For
some of these people it is three, even four days' tramp down to the
market from their mountain homes, and over the rough tracks the women
carry incredibly heavy burdens; not only the bundles of faggots or hides
that are for sale, but the baby in a big wooden cradle is tied on the
top. The men march in front with their rifles and look after the flocks.
Firearms have to be left outside the bazaar. It is true that a good
number of people are still privileged to carry them, but I have haunted
the bazaar quite alone so often that I have ceased to believe in the
many blood-curdling tales about its murderous possibilities with which
travellers are usually favoured. Nor, when you once know your way, do
I think any guide or kavass necessary. It is very dull with a kavass,
for no one comes to play with you. I tried it once for an hour or so,
and never again. But though you see no murders, you may see cases where
apparently vengeance has been satisfied with mutilation, and meet a man
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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