Fete of the Nations
BY PADRAIC COLU.M.
THE exoticism of Central America served to show how uniform after all are the folk-cultures of Europe. In the displays of singing and dancing. that the nations were giving in the Garden of Albert the First in Nice, the transition from the Scottish to the Swedish, from the Hungarian to the Roumanian, was natural. But the Central Americans in their dancing, their music and costume stood out as different.. I remember the long, thin Hispano-American women with flounced dresses trailing behind and cut low in front, with bare shoulders, bare legs and' red bandanas on heads, and the low-sized, -more Indian-looking girls with their brilliantly striped dresses which suggested the skins of serpents. The young men were just as one sees them in a club in Havannahat least the Hispano-. Americans were, but there were others, Guatemalans, who were low-sized and with the Mask-like face of Central American sculPture, the strangest of all the nations who assembled for this fête by the Mediterranean.
All the folk-cultures of Eastern Europe—Russian, Roumanian, Jugoslavic, Czechoslavic, and Hungarian— were seen to be varieties of a single culture, and all of them had a style and dignity beyond that possessed by the Western. folk. • The -Russians- had sung their expansive songs, they had shown us dances which lead up to acrobatic displays, and when they stood in a line, the young women with high. headdresses like crowns which make each of them seem a princess, one could See that in their costume and movement there is the reproduction of the life of a court : all this came out of a palace in Byzantium. *So did the costumes and Movements of the other Eastern nations, but the Russian has remained closer to the Byzantine model. All folk- cultUres, I am sure, arc the poptilariz.ations of something that was once aristocratic—music, poetry, costume, dance. And the reason why the Eastern nations have more style and dignity in their folk-cultures is that the Byzantine court had longer life and immensely greater influence than the court of the revived Western Empire. Had Charlemagne's empire lasted, the folk- cultures of the countries from Ireland to Sweden and from Poland to Portugal would have had the uniformity that prevails in the lands from Poland to Bulgaria.
The parade , was along the Promenade des Anglais. Young Sweden was passing as I took my place, the girls looking as if they had been selected for their clear faces and blond hair. I knew no other group would carry themselves with . such spirit. A girl walks so lightly and so firmly that it is a delight to look at her ; when she makes a gesture of salutation to her friends along the route one sees in the movement of her hand all the poise that training can give. Kilted and with tartan showing on their mantles and on their caps the Scots come along, displaying the most distinctive folk-costume in Europe.
The Scots describe themselves as English, which is not a sensible thing to do ; like all other folk of the British islands they are not used to displaying themselves, and their movement is purposeless and their rank without order. It is interesting to note the movements of the different nations.- The Chinese move as if they were approaching a temple or the tomb of the ancestors. Clothed in black, the young men are grave and unsmiling. In contrast, the two young_ women who are in the group show ' willingness to win us. They • smile graciously. And then one of them makes a gesturea very slight gesture—with her small fan. I. cannot interpret what Was in that gesture. But I know that when it was made all those fine young. people of Europe seemed to be good-natured; gOod7humonied barbarians—it indicated that there was a discipline more learned somewhere beyond us, and that in the Chinese group there was an artist. If the Chinese were grave, the Japanese were solemn, the young women being as unsmiling as the men the whole group had the tension that one feels in those unrelaxed people. . How gay. the- Europeans seemed after the Orientals, especially the .Poles, Roumanians and Hungarians—the. Poles whose girls wear crowns Of_ daisies and poppies, and whose dresses are as vari-coloured and bright as a field of flowers, the Hungarians whose dresses are at once sumptuous and brilliant, the girls with dresses so embroi- dered and braided that the making of one must mean months of labour, the Roumanians whose costume is between the courtliness of the Russian and the brilliancy of the Hungarian, having less colour than the Hungarian, less design than the Russian. . The Hollanders seemed resolved to make their group the comic relief of the pro- cession, and they tramped along in their heavy clogs and wide pantaloons and skirts to the music of the melodeon. Then, with white veils and dresses of sombre stuffs, the women of the Armenian group, with their heavily-lipped mouths, their dark eyes and curved noses, their tragic looks, remind us that they are of a stock whose history is mingled with Assyrian kings and Hebrew patriarchs. And from the other side of the Eurasian continent come a people whose costume looks too good to be true, the Letti whose women wear dark-red mantles over black dresses, with clasps as wide as the ancient Irish brooch, but of solid silver. If the Russian women all look prin- cesses, these women of the Baltic all look royalties.
Bringing handsome costumes to Nice is, after all, like bringing owls to Athens. The Nigoise costume itself is the most charming that Europe can show—a full skirt with bright stripes on it, a velvet bodice, big ear-rings, and the hat with shallow crown, and streamers that is worn on the wide of the head but more often carried on the arm. Nice is in this procession of .strangers, but under the name of her neighbour Monaco. And the most charming figure in the procession is a little girl of about twelve riding a donkey with a grace that is seldom seen in riders of donkeys... Then come mounted men bearing the banners of their various lands, and I realize that men on horseback are'proper to a procession, and that without the superb movement of horses heroism and gallantry are absent from the march. ,
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