The Slavs of the War Zone

Excerpt:

Few cities in the world have seen more wars or stood more sieges than Belgrade — " the Home of Wars for Faith " the Turks called it.

Standing above the meeting of the great rivers, the Save and the Danube, the White City is the key to Hungary, and the gate- way to Serbia. Founded two thousand two hundred years ago, it has been under many masters, come through great vicissitudes, and has but rarely known peace. The present war of the world has once again brought it into notice and interested the peoples of the West in this the first City of the East.

I would here tell of it as it was just before the war came, and describe its people and its life when the storm clouds were gathering.


The Citadel, once a famous fortress — the White Castle — now only a prison and a barracks, stands overlooking the great blue lake made by the junction of the rivers. Behind it is the town itself, a city of white houses and iew churches, with the gardens of Kalemegdan from where may be seen the famous view over the rivers below.

The centre of interest in the city is the Teratsia, Belgrade's most beautiful boulevard, into which converge numberless precipitous streets bustling with life. Here in the market-place rows of stalls and booths, filled with all kinds of merchandise, and piled high with vegetables, amongst which paprika seems to be predominant with its green pods, dried pods, red pods — as red as fire. Other stalls are heaped with weird cheeses, sausages, scarlet-hued sides of bacon, eggs, butter, honey, and strange looking white breads, baked in the shape of crosses, horses, pigs, houses and crowns, all sprinkled over with pink sugar, and grey poppy seeds. Somewhat further on are booths, round which are stacked up tiers upon tiers of earthenware, brightly coloured pots and pitchers, big bundles of sheepskin coats, and disagreeably uncured skins of every sort, round which myriads of flies are buzzing. There are also rolls of home-woven linen, horsehair fringed aprons,' brass-studded peasant belts, gaudy kerchiefs, jewellery, filigree silver work, lovely embroideries, gorgeous carpets from Pirot, ribbons, farming implements, ikons, holy pictures, cowhide sandals, and long wooden stands bearing rows upon rows of round sheepskin caps, looking like so many decapitated heads.

Business is very brisk, for hundreds of country folk have come into the town to see what can be seen, to say their prayers, lay in stores, listen to the music which will play all the afternoon on the Kalemegdan, and a gay crowd it is ! Serbia, hke Hungary, can show a great variety of national costumes, all different, all picturesque and all brilliant. Each district has its own dress, its special customs, and though the residents in Belgrade have, more or less, adopted the fashions of Vienna and Paris — or tried to — the peasants, happily, still cling to their old world costumes. Under the shade of the lime trees, through which the sunlight flickers on the dazzling, uneven white cobbles, the holiday makers stroll to and fro. Here are huge, loose-limbed fellows, clad in baggy white or blue breeches, stiffly embroidered attila jackets and sheepskins, their waists supported by heavy brass and silver- mounted leather belts, in which they' carry a veritable arsenal of weapons. Their legs are swathed in linen or woollen bandages, their feet are shod in broad sandals of untanned hide, bound to the ankles "with scarlet braid. They move like panthers, silently, swiftly, lithely. From their sun-scorched, thin, high cheek-boned faces downwards there is not an ounce of superfluous flesh. They are mountaineers and represent Serbia's finest manhood. Oddly different are they in face and figure to their womenkind, who, in this district, are inclined to stoutness, but who make up for a certain squatness of figure by the grace with which they wear their straight-cut hnen robes — chemises, rather — over which are crimson, or blue velvet zouaves, stitched -with silver, and their dark shining hair is glossy and beautiful, coiled and folded as it is round the cheeky little red fezzes, perched coquettishly at the back of their well-set heads. Some of the costumes are, however, not so classic as these, and the girls from some of the villages contrive to render themselves grotesque by adding to their already ample proportions a number of gathered petticoats.

Serbia is, taken as a whole, a poor, a very poor land, and it puzzles one to learn that some of these gala dresses cost about forty of our English pounds. But then, a Balkan woman perhaps buys only a single dress in her lifetime, so it might well be splendid.

There are foreigners too, hailing from the other Balkan States and Hungary. At one stall may be noticed a group of decidedly insolent looking Magyar Alfolders. They have come across the river from the Danube Valley. Great, dark-visaged fellows, they are plainly horsemen, judging by their walk. Their dress is a full white cotton skirt reaching half way below the knee, a blue or red, silver-buttoned jacket, sheepskin overmantle, high black boots, and a small black felt hat, surmounted by a gay flower and hung with coloured ribbon streamers. They crack their tremendously long whips, converse at the top of their raucous Magyar voices, and glance about with an expression of utmost scorn at the " swine-dogs " — the Serbs — for whom, together with all Slavs, they cherish an inveterate scorn and dislike; a dislike which the "Swine-dogs," not unnaturally, cordially reciprocate. Then there are Dalmatian women in floating draperies and veils, and Jews, not so dirty as their brethren elsewhere, who speak the soft, musical Spanish patois peculiar to the Hebrews in this part of Europe. And there are Bosnians, too, in their abbreviated white kilts, fur-edged, silver embroidered zouaves, tulip-hued turbans, and beautiful silken sashes, wound, not only round their stomachs, but also round three or four silver-embossed big swords, which, supported by the sash, cause the wearers' waists to protrude several inches on each side. Gentle mannered Croats, men in long, flapping, white linen trousers, loose linen jackets, and wide-brimmed felt hats, the women in short yellow, or white, kilted petticoats, black jackets, and white kerchiefs, nib shoulders with rough- tongued, heavy-featured Bulgarians, of both sexes, the women attired in garish smock-like garments, with sequins and ribbons in their coarse black hair ; the men in homespun and sandals, with the characteristic Kulpak — a lofty erection of sheepskin — as headgear. Some girls from Herzegovina are trying to drive a bargain with a dealer in painted and stitched sheepskin jackets. Pretty they are, and their national costume — a short cotton, smock and trousers with a bright scarf round the waist — rivals in picturesqueness, if not in extravagance, that of their Albanian sisters. A couple of these latter stand gazing about in a vacant sort of manner, barbaric to look at in their large purple velvet aprons fringed with gold, their thick red gaiters, deep, stiff, and be-jewelled belts of silver, ear-rings, seven inches in length, kerchiefs of orange silk, and flowing hair. The only really highbred and beautiful women in the throng are some Montenegrins dressed in snowy white, with long, sleeveless, sky-blue coats over dainty, rose-tinted jackets, with cobwebby lace veils floating from their sleek black heads, making a misty background for their sparkling dark eyes. They appear to have but a poor opinion of an ugly Turkish couple — a yellow-complexioned, hook- nosed man in a magenta turban and slovenly red breeches, and his wife, a mere bundle of thick black cloth and white muslin head wrappings. With the exception of the Magyars all belong to nations of Slavonic, or partly Slavonic, origin.

As one watches, the crowd thins, for it is now past eleven o'clock, and getting on to dinner hour. Stall keepers are packing up their wares, preparatory to going home. Along one side of the market-place little cafes and restaurants are making tre- mendous and noisy preparation to feed the poorer multitude at rickety tables placed along the street kerbs. Balkan menus are curious, and the odour of most of the dishes is enough for an Occidental. Indescribably loathsome beggars — gipsies chiefly, for the Serb rarely begs — are swarming towards the eating houses, having already done an excellent morning's business at the church doors by the exhibition of their sores and horrible deformities. They are now intent upon extracting all they can out of the diners, certain that if they persist long enough they will be bribed to move off out of sight.

All at once there is a stir amongst the jostling crowd. A sudden burst of music proclaims the coming of an infantry regiment. They are playing a Slavonic folk song, wild, strange, of course in a minor key, yet somehow full of a defiant and cheerful spirit. Then comes a quick march, played fortissimo, as band and soldiers swing into view. They are not much to look at in their dusty, patched, blue-grey breeches and high caps, loose cotton shirts, and down-at-heel boots, but in their young, eager faces, in the flash of their eyes, in their merry laughter, they give one a glimpse of that unconquerable national spirit . . .