TRANSYLVANIA.*
WE cannot suppose that the Colonel of Austrian hussars whose wife has won such applause from English readers as the author of Beata, would be otherwise than gratified at her actual name being placed on the title-page of her books, to the great relief of the reviewer, who can refer to the writer of these charming volumes neither as Miss nor Madam. This, however, is not the only nor the main difficulty he encounters in the execution of his task, for as a record of observation, as a picturesque portrayal of a curious jumble of races, and as a vivid narrative of personal experiences, the present work alike merits a consideration of which space does not admit in adequate measure from any one of the above-mentioned points of view. With the fidelity of a photograph it combines the breadth and colouring of a picture limned by a dexterous pencil, in which the lights are not too high nor the shadows too dark, and of which the elements are as varied as their combina- tion is curiously unique. In fine, we commend the book heartily to readers of all tastes, and especially to such as love to know how their kind win through life in the out-of-the-way corners of the earth. For Transylvania is an almost "unbeaten track." It lies on the way nowhere. It is neither a Northern nor a Southern, nor an Eastern nor a Western country ; but, ensconced in the south-eastern angle of the great Carpathian chain, turns its back upon the Turk and the Slav, and looks hopefully towards the freedom of the North and West. Its population is a singular mixture of nondescript Wallachs, Aryan Teutons, Turanian Huns, Semitic stragglers, and Hindoo nomads, who have existed side by side for ten centuries without the least approach to fusion. It seems to have been a refuge for the waifs and strays of the vast hordes that in the earlier centuries of our era tramped ceaselessly westwards from unknown Asiatic tracts, to prey upon the dying Empire of Rome. The battle-ground of races, it has hardly any history of its own, and a constant strife of tongues, customs, and faiths has allowed no play for the evolutionary forces that might have gradually welded into a nation the discordant elements of its post-Roman population. Wallachs, or, as they much prefer to call themselves, Rou- manians, form the bulk of the population, counting some twelve hundred thousand out of rather more than two million heads. Who these Roumanians are is one of the enigmas of ethnology. That very little Dacian blood runs in their veins, we may be pretty sure. They speak a dialect of Latin ; but so do the French, who are Celts, and the North Italians, who are Celto-Goths. The Roman colonies planted by the Emperors consisted in large measure of Thracians, Greeks, and Illyrians, rather than Italians, who, under the Roman eagles, had adopted the language of Rome, and whose features still may be traced in the classical traits not uncommon among Rouman folk. For the rest, Goths, Bulgars, Avars, Huns, and Turks have successively swept over the land, and, no doubt, added to the complexity of the strain. It is for the Roumanians that the author reserves her warmest
• The Land Beyond the Forest. By E. Gerard. With Maps and Illustrations. 2 vols. London and Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons. 1888.
sympathy, seeing in their union with their brethren beyond the Carpathians, in whom their gifted Queen has raised the national sentiment to an unexampled height, the possibility of a strong and noble people, who might do much towards achieving a satisfactory settlement of the great Eastern Question. An incident at Hermanstadt, of which the author was an eye-witness, displayed the national yearnings of the Transylvanian Roumanians in a striking manner. The Austrian commandant had ordered the band to play in honour of two Roumanian Generals who were in the town on frontier business. A few soldiers, passing by, stopped to stare at the foreign uniforms. They were joined by others, and in a short time a hundred of them were gazing intently at the two Generals. The soldiers were all recruits.
from Roumanian villages, and the expression of longing sympathy which their countenances displayed was not to be mistaken,—to the ill-concealed annoyance of the Austrian officers, and the scarcely veiled delight of their Roumanian guests. Nevertheless, whatever they may be in posse, in ease the Roumanians do not seem particularly attractive. They are shifty and revengeful, and appear to possess most of the bad, and to lack most of the good qualities of a barbarous folk. They are ferocious but not brave, superstitious but destitute of religion ; indeed, their only merits seem to be a strong feeling of nationality and a plasticity of intellect that may render their civilisation a comparatively easy task under
a firm government. They possess, too, a strong faculty of poetic expression. Of the innumerable ballads which form the stock-in-trade of the wandering cantari, collections have been. recently made by Alexandri and Torceanu ; and to judge by the specimens translated by the author into melodious rhymed
trochaies, these folk-songs are of no mean order, though of too diffuse a character to lend themselves readily to quotation. Far more attractive than the Roumanians, however, we find the Tziganes, or gipsies, whom the Magyars, masterful people though they are, have always treated with an indulgence these poor vagrants have experienced at the hands of no other race. In Hungary they number about 150,000, more than half of
whom are to be found in Transylvania. Outside of Christianity, they are held in contempt by the Roumanians, who, where they could, kept them in bondage up to a quite recent
period. The author cites a Bucharest advertisement of 1845 offering for sale two hundred gipsy families, by batches of five families at a time,—with handsome discount to large pur- chasers. There must be some inherent villas in a people that, like the Jews, have kept themselves racially pure for so many centuries in the midst of a hostile environment. The dis- tinguishing characteristic of the Hungarian gipsy is hia wonderful talent for music, the only art his wondering habits have permitted him to exercise, rather than to study, for he has no scientific knowledge of music ; it is with him an instinct, an inspiration. Music is his natural language, and when he speaks in it—to quote one author—he "gives forth everything that is secretly lurking within him,—fierce anger, childish wailings, presumptuous exaltation, brooding melan- choly, and passionate despair ; and at such times, as a Hun- garian writer has said, one could readily believe in his power of drawing down the angels from heaven into hell !" Yet no such musical power has ever shown itself among those Eastern Aryans of whom the Tziganes are an outcast off-
shoot, and it is difficult to understand how they can have acquired it from their European surroundings. We must suppose the faculty to have been latent in them, and to have worked out its manifestation under the favourable conditions
of Magyar rule. Whatever contempt the proud Magyars may feel for the races subject to their domination, they are the slaves of the Tzigane musician :—
"Under the sway of gipsy music a Hungarian is capable of flinging about his money with reckless extravagance,—fifty, a hundred, a thousand florins and more being often given for the performance of a single melody. Sometimes a gentleman will stick a large banknote behind his ear, while the Tzigane proceeds to play his favourite tune, drawing nearer and nearer till he is almost touching, pouring the melody straight into the upturned. ear of the enraptured auditor, dropping out the notes as though the music were some exquisitely flavoured liquid flattering the palate of this super-refined gourmet, who, with half-closed eyes expressive of perfect beatitude, entirely abandons himself to the delicious ecstasy."
In this land of ethnological surprises, one is hardly astonished at the existence of a compact body of some two hundred thousand "Saxons" in the midst of the incongruous medley of races. Their capital is Hermanstadt—Nagy-Szebert
in Hungarian, Sibiin in Roumanian, for even place-names are polyglot in Transylvania—near the Roumanian frontier, where the author arrived on the day the townsmen were com- memorating the founding of the city by their ancestors seven hundred years before. Why or whence these Teutons wan- dered so far eastwards, it is not easy to say; as good a tradition as any other has it that they were the lost children of Hameln, who followed the famous piper, and after a long journey by underground passages, emerged from a cavern known as the Alnoscher Hale, in the North-East of Transylvania. A very unattractive account is given of these people, who are described as having all the self-regarding, and no altruistic, qualities, and as being as ugly physically as they are repulsive morally. A singular instance of the pertinacity of their feeling of race was afforded in 1848, when the villagers of Szass Lona, German by descent, but who, isolated in the midst of a Magyar population, spoke only Hungarian, rose to a man in rebellion against the Buda-Pesth government. It is indeed wonderful that these Saxons maintain their language any- where, for Hungarian is the only official language, and is compulsory in every school. Boys must have a hard time of it in Austria,—the author's sons had to learn Polish, English, German, French, Greek, Latin, and Hungarian, and their mother considers them lucky in having escaped Bohemian, Slavonian, Ruthenian, and Italian. Austrian boys ought to be provided with Magliabechian minds.
Of the Szekels, who pride themselves on their direct descent from the Huns of Attila, and of the Armenians, who seem to replace the Jews in Transylvania, a most interesting description is given in these fascinating volumes, which are, besides, a very mine of folk-lore, traditions, and customs. Some of the latter are strange enough, even among the unimaginative Saxons. One of the chief presents offered by a Saxon bride to her groom is a shirt, which he only wears twice, on his wedding-day and as his shroud. The Rossel-tanz, or Horse- dance, forming part of the wedding programme, is a survival from the days of Thor and Loki ; and the form of capture is preserved in a curious counterfeit struggle for the bride's maiden head-dress. In fact, the Teutons, though Lutherans, still practise many pagan ceremonies; the Roumanians, who are Greek Christians after a way of their own, practise many more, and, besides, keep up a singular system of castes. One of their customs, now becoming extinct, is the annual maiden market, held on the summit of the Gaina Mountain on June 29th, where the marriageable girls of the surrounding district assemble to be courted, taking their trousseaux and dowries with them, and accompanied by their relations. Formerly the business was a reality, but now the couples are assorted beforehand. Each fiancee, on her return home, in passing through a certain village, offers, or at least offered, a kiss to any one she might meet. To refuse the embrace was an insult, and it was repaid by a present in coin,—or perhaps only in kind. As Hermanstadt is the Saxon centre, so Klausen- berg and Kronstadt are the Hungarian and Roumanian centres respectively. Of society in all three a lively account is given; and it is clear that the life of an Austrian officer's wife is not without its pleasures. Home-rule in Hungary means Magyar ascendency, and to be a real Home-rule it would have to be supplemented by a whole series of Home-rule systems. Hungarian domination has, no doubt, its disadvan- tages, but it would be difficult under existing circumstances to find an adequate substitute for it.
Among the curios of Transylvania are the Saxon fortified churches which were used as places of refuge, and also as storehouses, during the long centuries when the land was the -frontier of Christendom against Turk and Tartar. One of the many illustrations which add interest to these volumes, repre- sents one of these clerical fortresses. The Tartar has become a myth, the Turk can hardly hold his own ; but the villages still take an odd pride in filling their churches with unneeded stores, rivalling each other in the quantity thus hoarded up, often for so long a time that the provisions—bacon, flour, grain, &c.—become mouldy and unfit for use.
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