The Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Otago Witness, Issue 2856, 9 December 1908, Page 73

The Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

| While diplomatists -confer and tings pronounce and armies get into shape, it > is sometimes well to take a peep behind the scenes at what may be called tfoo 1 domestic side of an unheaval. Since the | act of annexation by Austria, the names jof Herzegovina and Bcenia have, by the j frequency of their mention both in papers and conversation, -roused sluggard memory, I and sent it back to the old days of geo- ■ graphy lessons when the names of such places had to be served up in the form of exercises or maps. One gets a Midden reverence for the teaching thought at the time so futile — it is something, after all, to be able to let there names 6!ip glibly off the tongue. It is curious, by the 1 bye, to observe how faithfully the tongue , always seconds memory — the word may not have been pronounced for 20 years — y-it it slips off as freely as if it were in daily practice. — Ignorance. — What do any of us who have not travelled there know of Bosnia and Herzegovina? Dare I confess that a lady at a j i quiet gathering of none too stupid folk i jacked if the Balkans /were the mountains between Europe and Asia, and did not even rai<-e a smile of wonderment at the question. one, at any rate, ventured offhand to exactly describe the locality. I can imagine many exclamations of horror i from you, O my readerE (men and women), I at such a display of ignorance, yot how many of you over the age of 30, who have not recently studied a map, could answer promptly the question : What are the boundaries of Bosnia - and Herzegovina ? i The two little States are to our minds just so many letters as spell their names — 1 nothing more ; if we go in for being I

political we may know them as pawns on a deadly chessboard at which the players are Europe's, wiliest statesmen. Yet what fields of interest and romance are walled out by sndh ignorance ! This thought came very much home to me the other day as I was reading a description given by a Frenchman of the condition of the women in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Perhaps I had better leave out the word romance; applied to women it has not in general much significance in these States.

— 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 first 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 Teality of the same race as the Christian. His ancestor just changed his religion at the wish of the conquex-or, 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 sb« passes lazy and monotonous days in sleepy content. She does not even experience the usual excitement of harem jea-

loti6y, since she- has no rival. She reigns the one and only wife_of her husband, as the Bosnian-turned-Mussulnvan remained monogamous "because of his love of peace," he explains. The remainder of tue population has kept very strictly to its Slav traditions. The family or p/ .riaxchal syttem 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. — 1 The young girl of these primitive States is handsome, intelligent, poetic, and sweettempered. So absorbed is she in illusions that the wretched life of her married sisters, wliich passes daily before her, does not in the least dispel them. Marriage is the one object of her life, the I sole subject of h-er thoughts. In a coun- ■ try w here superstition abounds all the 1 charms of wue women and the resources of story-telleis form round this theme. Ihe girl is ior ever consulting fortuHe-tc-llers and "witches." She is ever in. ( search of a love potion which will gain and retain the love of a husband — difficult problem in a country where sentiment is unknown, and wheie a girl's dream ends ' with the fact that i-he luis secured a master and become a slave. In the charms to which the giih resorts it is interesting to rote on© 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 btg of you by your youth, you who ■ gj round the world, if you see my intended husband, tell him to come to me." This is very like the , "new moon, true m oon"' rhyme wo all have heard.

—Locking up a Heart. —

But, say that 'the new moon does ite business, and a Marko or Nikolas comes along, the girl does not want him to steal her heart straight away — it is easily taken.

but not easily regained. So she takes a little casket and goes to the cross-roads where the admired one is sure to pass. She holds up the box, and as she watches him coming along she turns the key, in its lock; afterwards she throws the box in a, well and the key in a river. Thus does 6he guard her heart, poor Bosnian maiden — T. P.'s Weekly.