Chapter XXXIII: Grosswardein

It is nightfall at Grosswardein and the fires of sunset have faded into cold grey ashes. All along the river Kőrős the stealthy vapours, following its leaden course, are slowly rising. Shadows deepen on the plains. The gilded steeples no longer glisten in the evening light, but stand out black and sullen, like huge sentinels, against the pale green sky. Everything in nature is sad and gloomy. Within the town, however, “high carnival” is nightly kept.

The Magyars, as we have seen, possess a tinge of melancholy even in their most joyous moments. This, however, cannot be said of the Wallachs. There surely never was such a gay and pleasure-loving people; whilst in their love of dancing they far exceed even the Magyars themselves.

Hark to the sound of music! the rhythmic beat accompanied by the rapid and hollow throb of steps. Let us follow its inviting strains, away through the broad streets to the great square.

Not only here, however, is there music and dancing, but in many of the one-storied houses also. In the cafés too the _Czigánok_ are fiddling away for dear life. Inside, persons, sitting before small tables, sip their coffee and smoke like chimneys. They applaud and sip and smoke, and then smoke and sip and applaud again; whilst the streets are crowded with promenaders and cheerful with the laugh of girls.

Here and there, like moths amongst the butterflies, may be seen a group of middle-aged Wallachs or grave Magyars talking earnestly together, whispering of political complications between Russia and England, the result of the “Danube Commission,” or the rising of the bed of the river Theiss. The beauty of the Wallachs is the same as when last we were here four years ago: the delicate and refined features, the pouting lips, the broad, low forehead, the lithe figures of the women, and the deeply sunken eyes, long hair, and aquiline noses of the male descendants of the Dacians, all are the same; but the ancient costumes of the people and their characteristic traits are fast departing under the facilities which, in these modern days, are afforded for travel. The railways, extending their iron arms into the very centre of Transylvania, are gradually weaving this former _terra incognita_ into the duller web of Western civilisation, and the beautiful and graceful costumes, which so delighted us once, are day by day becoming absorbed and replaced by those Gallic abominations invented to conceal and render hideous the human form.

That monstrous article of female attire, the crinoline, which until recently was exploded by the fair sex of Western Europe, has been adopted by their Eastern sisters, and we recognise it not only beneath the skirts of the gaily dressed Jewess as her long train sweeps the streets, but under those of the Wallach lady also; whilst one peasant girl--though still dressed in her graceful, homespun garments--emulating her superiors--had her narrow but classical _katrincza_ distended to the condition of a sausage by the adoption of this hideous contrivance. We saw, I am thankful to say, only one who had thus travestied the lovely and pictorial costume of her race, but it was sufficient to demonstrate the silent march of--in this case misnamed--“civilisation,” which threatens ere long to obliterate all the distinctive external characteristics of nations and render every country alike.

Off the beaten track the Wallachs still retain the customs of their ancestors both in dress and manner of living, and after our visit to this place is ended we shall be travelling in the interior of Transylvania--of which Grosswardein is the frontier--where we shall see the Wallachs in all their delightful simplicity. It is here that the traveller is first introduced to this people in their own home, of whom, concentrated in the eastern portion of Hungary, there are almost two millions and a half. The Wallachs of Transylvania, however, must not be confounded with the dwellers in the Wallachian or Roumanian Principality, although they are off-shoots of the same race, having been in olden times the overflow of the inhabitants occupying that province. Both races now form a distinct people, although they are alike descendants of the ancient Dacians, originally a Thracian people subjugated by Trajan in his conquests already alluded to in the chapters on the Lower Danube.

The term Wallach is said to be a German version of the appellations “_Welsh_,” “_Welsch_,” “_Wallon_,” etc., given by the Teutonic conquerors to the provincials or subjects of the Roman Empire, whether in Britain, Italy, or Gaul; _Welsh_ being the word still used by the Germans in the present day to denote strangers or foreigners of whatever nation.

Naturally preferring to trace their origin to the conquering, rather than to a vanquished people, the Wallachs affect to be the descendants of the Roman colonists introduced by Trajan after his subjugation of the province, and call themselves, though incorrectly, _Roumans_, or _Rummanyi_, and their country Roumania.

The language spoken by the Wallachs, which greatly resembles in its pronunciation the Italian of to-day, is soft, rich, and melodious, and composed chiefly of Latin, with a considerable admixture of Slav, Turkish, and Greek words. That there should be such a marked Latin element in their language is certainly a singular fact, seeing that the dominion of the Romans over the Dacians extended for a period of 170 years only; a circumstance tending to foster the idea that the Wallachs _have_ some grounds for their pride of ancestry. There are, however, peculiarities about their language which prove that the origin of this people is more Dacian than Roman.

A considerable Roman element was doubtless infused into the primitive inhabitants of Dacia by inter-marriage with the numerous Roman subjects who remained behind after the Emperor Aurelian relinquished Dacia in the middle of the third century, and this would account in a great measure for the resemblance between the Wallachian and Latin languages. Until the time of Alexander, the Dacians scarcely figured in history, and their original language is consequently not accurately determined. It is, however, believed to have been Slávic, not only from the number of Sláv words mingled with their corrupt Latin, but also from the number of Slavonic names given to the rivers and mountains of Wallachia and Transylvania.

In the fifth century the Wallachs peopled Thessaly, whilst the Thracian dialect of that period is said to have borne a strong resemblance to the Neo-Latin spoken alike by the Wallach tribes of the Pindus Mountains--the remnants of the former inhabitants of Thrace--and by the so-called Roumanian people at present occupying the province of ancient Dacia.

So much does their pronunciation resemble Italian that we experienced no difficulty in understanding, or even conversing with them, particularly after having ascertained that they place the definite article at the end of their nouns, joining in fact both noun and article together. This singular construction is also found in the Bulgarian language, but, strange to say, in no other Slavonic dialect whatever, from which circumstance it is supposed that both the Bulgarians and Wallachians--whose countries join each other--must have derived this peculiarity from the same source, viz., from their north-eastern neighbours, the Dacians, whose language is believed to have been neither Neo-latin nor strictly Slavonic.

In ancient time the province of Dacia comprised a district of 1300 miles in circumference, and was bounded on the north by the Niester, on the west by the Theiss or Tibiscus, and on the south and east by the Lower Danube and Black Sea; comprising not only the mountainous country of the Eastern Carpathians, but Bukovina and the district of Banát. The population of Moldavia and Bessarabia is likewise almost exclusively of Dacian origin.

On Trajan’s Column in Rome is sculptured the history of this first campaign of the young and ambitious Emperor, and the forms, cast of features, and dress of the Dacians, as there minutely represented, correspond, strange as it may seem after the lapse of sixteen centuries, in almost every particular with those of the Wallachs of the present day.

Grosswardein, or Nagy-varád, as it is called in Hungarian, is a fortified town of Bihar, the largest county in Hungary. It contains 36,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom are Wallachs, and is, in spite of its gaiety, one of the most ecclesiastical places in Hungary, full of churches and convents. At present there are thirty of the former, whilst at one period it boasted of no fewer than seventy. It is also the see, alike of a Catholic bishop and one of the Greek rite. The suburbs of the town are very pretty, each house being surrounded by a garden and orchard, and shut in behind high walls.

Like Temesvár, the town of Grosswardein is exceedingly pretty with long streets and numerous marketplaces. From the bridge which crosses the Kőrős, a good view is obtained of the town with its glittering steeples of black and gold, together with that of the new Catholic Church which, standing by the dome of the Jewish Synagogue, looks like a huge coronet of gems. On the river long rafts of pine logs from the Transylvanian forests are leisurely floating down stream, whilst women with skirts tucked up wade in the water and wash their linen, thumping away at it with a big stone, and with a vigour and perseverance as if every blow were aimed at a Turk’s or Austrian’s head.

We were walking through one of the suburbs of the town when we heard the distant sounds of bitter wailing, and a little crowd of people soon approached, in the centre of which was an old Wallach woman who, with tears rolling down her shrivelled cheeks, was evidently telling her wrongs to the group of sympathisers following in her wake. On inquiring the cause of this unusual manifestation of grief, she clasped her hands and giving vent to renewed wailings cried,

“Only a Jew, gentle lady, only for killing a Jew.”

The meaning of which unintelligible sentence the bystanders--who appeared to take no small interest in the case--explained by informing us that her husband had in a street quarrel accidentally killed one of those despised children of Israel, and that the Judge, having taken a somewhat different view from herself of the value of human life as exhibited in that particular type of humanity, had just sentenced him to condign punishment the extent of which however did not transpire.

As in all other towns in Hungary, Grosswardein is pervaded by the usual Hebrew element, and although Jews are no longer taxed as being such, but are permitted to enjoy all the rights and privileges common to the Gentile, they often find it difficult to hold their own even here against the antipathy so universally entertained against them.

All is bright and clean in this prettiest of towns save in the Hebraic quarter, which is full of marine stores where every kind of _bric-à-brac_ is to be met with, even crucifixes, in dark dens which one would fear to enter. The Jew is the same here as elsewhere, the same miserable-looking, down-trodden outcast he has continued to be ever since Pompey the Great entered the Holy City and struck the first blow at the Israelitish nation. How, even to the letter, has the prophetic curse been fulfilled in this once “chosen people”!

The _spécialité_ of the Hungarian Jew in this quarter, as in all others devoted entirely to the class, is “ole clo,” and inside their hovels are found not only dirt and muddle, but pictorial rags, whilst over the doorways are seen such names as the following, Löwenstein Jukab, Kohn Mozesne, Fűred Jőzsef, and Szép Ábrahám, and on the walls sentences are written in Hebrew characters.

The type of Hebrew physiognomy is more marked here than in other parts of Hungary, a consequence possibly of there having been less inter-marriage with the Christian community than elsewhere. Wherever we look we observe the long aquiline nose curving into the moustache, which only partially conceals the protruding lips. Now and then a fair young Miriam may be seen crossing the road and picking up a dirty little Moses who is wallowing in the mud; neither are Hagars and Ishmaels wanting, nor old Sarahs, fat, ugly, and repulsive-looking in their grease-begrimed garments.

Turning now to the Christian quarter, we see how the Gentiles flourish like a green bay-tree. Yonder stands the princely palace of the Roman Catholic bishop, whose income is 300,000 gulden, or £25,000 a year, whilst that of his Lordship of Erlan in the East of Hungary is twice that amount, and that of the Prince Primate £60,000, the revenues being derived in each case from landed estates. Surrounding the palace are beautiful gardens laid out in broad straight walks and long avenues of chestnuts, under the shade of which at eventide the Dom Herren may be seen sauntering in the cool still air. Near the palace are the houses of the residentiary canons, and opposite, the grand church built by Maria Theresa, a building so vast in its proportions that, as the doors are thrown open to admit us and we stand beneath its lofty roof, rising one hundred and twenty feet above, we almost lose our breath.

The church although built in the Doric style is cruciform, and its roof a succession of arches culminating in an immense central dome; the whole a gorgeous blaze of splendid colour, very rich and harmonious, but not adapted to inspire devotion. The Hungarian disposition is not suited to the “dim religious.” They are a people who dislike mysticism of every sort, and with a very few exceptions their churches, garish and sensuous, are better fitted for the gorgeous worship of some heathen goddess or their Pagan _Magyarok Isten_ (ancient Magyar deity) than for the pure and simple worship of Christians.

As we returned to our hotel, the sun just setting was gilding with impartial glory alike the temples of the Christian and the Jew.