THE WOMEN OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13925, 5 December 1908, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE WOMEN OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA.

While diplomats confer and kings pronounce and armies get into shape, it is sometimes well to take a peep behind the scenes at what may bo called the domestic side of an unheaval. Since the act of annexation by • Austria, the names of Herzegovina and Bosnia have by the frequency of their mention both in papers and conversation roused sluggard memory, and sent it back to the old days of geography lessons when the names of such places had to be served up in the form of exercises or maps. One gets a sudden reverence for the teaching thought at the time so futile— it is something, alter all, to be able to let these names slip glibly off the tongue. It is curious, by the by, to observe how faithfully the tongue always seconds memory —the word may not have been pronounced' for twenty years — yet it slips off as freely as if it were in daily practice. THE MAHOMETAN WIFE. When the Treaty of Berlin confided the countries to the administration of Austria, they had been almost completely isolated "by manners and mountains from the rest of Europe. In the interior particularly life was entirely primitive, and the law of the strongest reigned supreme. This law of brute force fell with particular hardness on the women; so much so, that the fust movement under the new conditions was for the amelioration of her lot. • There is a large Mussulman population. Though commonly supposed to be Turkish, the Bosnian Mussulman is in reality of the same race as the Christian. His ancestor just changed his religion at tho wish of the conqueror, and kept his position and his property. The life of the Mahometan woman in Bosnia is, as with most well-to-do Easterns, one of material comfort. She is tenderly reared, and • behind the barred windows and the walls of her tower she- passes lazy and monotonous days in sleepy content. She does not even experience the usual excitement of harem jealousy, since she lias no rival. She reigns the one and only wife of her husband, as the Bornian-turned-Mussulman remained monogamous "because of his love of peace," he explains. The remainder of the population has kept very strictly to its Slav traditions. The family or patriarchal system has still full swing in the villages. Clans of a hundred or two hundred people will be grouped round a chief. This chief is sovereign, law-giver, and judge, from whom there is no appeal. His wife shares his authority, and has absolute control over the women of the tribe. No woman reaches the honour until old age ; it comes at the end of a life of hardship and slavery. CHARMS AND WITCHCRAFT. , The young girl of these primitive States is handsome, intelligent, poetic, and sweet-tempered. So absorbed is she in illusions that the wretched life of her married sisters, which passes daily before her, docs not in the least dispeL them. Marriage is the one object of her life, the sole subject of her thoughts. In a country where superstition abounds all the charms of wise women and the resources of story "tellers form round this theme. The girl is for ever consulting fortune-tellers and "witches." She is over in search of a love potion which will gain and retain the love of a husbanddifficult problem in a country where sentiment in unknown, and where a girl's dream ends with the fact that she has secured a master and become a slave. In the charms to which the girls resort it is interesting to note one familiar in Scotland and Ireland, at least so far as the new moon plays a part. At first sight of the new moon the Bosnian girl calls out: Oh, moon, I beg of you by your youth, you who go round the world, if you see my intended husband tell him to come to me." This is very like the " new moon true moon" rhyme we ! all have heard.