The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania

Of the household animals the sheep is the most highly prized by the Roumanian, who makes of it his companion, and frequently his oracle, as by its bearing it is often supposed t...

It is hardly necessary to remark that the history of Roumanian literature must needs be a scanty one as yet. Considering the past history of these people on either side of the f...

The 25th of November, feast of St. Catherine,[14] is in many districts the day selected for tying all these matrimonial knots. When this is not the case, then the weddings take...

Life at Hermanstadt always gave me the impression of living inside one of those exquisitely minute Dutch paintings of still-life, in which the anatomy of a lobster or the veins...

It needed the sight of beautiful Kronstadt to efface the impression of this ghastly picture—beautiful, indeed, as it clings to the steep mountain-side, looking as though the pic...

In every other country where the gypsies made their appearance they were oppressed and persecuted—treated as slaves or hunted down like wild beasts. So in Prussia in 1725 an edi...

The unaccountable decisions of a short-sighted Ministry, which, without ostensible reason, send unfortunate military families rolling about the empire like gigantic foot-balls—f...

Grimm has said that “superstition in all its multifariousness constitutes a species of religion applicable to all the common household necessities of daily life;”[33] and if we...

Not without difficulty have these Saxons succeeded in keeping their national costume so rigidly intact that the figures we meet to-day in every Saxon village differ but little f...

Whoever has lived among these Transylvanian Saxons, and has taken the trouble to study them, must have remarked that not only seven centuries’ residence in a strange land and in...

Among the various omens of approaching death are the groundless barking of a dog, the shriek of an owl, the falling down of a picture from the wall, and the crowing of a black h...

The contrast between the domestic lives of Roumanian and Saxon peasants is all the more surprising as their respective clergies set totally different examples; for while many Ro...

Of the Hungarians in general, who constitute something less than the third part of the total population of Transylvania, it is not my intention to speak in detail. Hungary and H...

The old-china mania, which I hear is beginning to die out in England, has only lately become epidemic in Austria; and as I, like many others, have been slightly touched by this...

Among the crooked, irregular houses, low-storied and unpretentious, which form the streets of Hermanstadt, there is one which stands out conspicuous from its neighbors, resembli...

Saxon villages are as easily distinguished from Roumanian ones, composed of wretched earthen hovels, as from Hungarian hamlets, which are marked by a sort of formal simplicity....

Readers of the foregoing pages will have had occasion to remark that, except when diversified by fire or bloodshed, life at Hermanstadt was _not_ a lively one; therefore an invi...

Our quarters at the shelter-hut in the pine valley were so satisfactory, and its situation so delightful, that instead of remaining only two nights, as had been originally inten...

In our intercourse with the Roumanian peasantry we are constantly reminded of the fact that only yesterday they were a barbarous race with whom murder and plunder were every-day...

The words “church” and “fortress” used to be synonymous in Transylvania, so the places of worship might accurately have been described as churches militant. Each Saxon village c...

“When I was young our mountains were still locked up,” I was told by a gentleman native of the place, who accompanied me on my first mountain excursion in Transylvania. “Whoever...

Few things possess such powerful attraction as the thought of buried treasures which may be lying unsuspected around us. To think that the golden buttercups which dot a meadow a...

Some of the Saxon customs are peculiarly interesting, as being obviously remnants of paganism, and offer curious proof of the force of verbal tradition, which in this case has n...

The Roumanians have often been called slavish and cringing, but, considering their past history, it is not possible that they should be otherwise, oppressed and trampled on, per...

Transylvania has often been nicknamed the Bärenland, and though bears and wolves do not exactly walk about the high-roads in broad daylight, as unsophisticated travellers are ap...

There is a Transylvanian legend telling how a mother once pronounced on her son a curse, the effect of which should continue until he succeeded in giving a voice to a dry piece...

Oats have been defined by Dr. Johnson as a grain serving to nourish horses in England and men in Scotland; and in spite of this contemptuous definition, its name, to us Caledoni...

By-and-by, when a few months have passed over the heads of the newly married couple, and the young matron becomes aware that the prophecies pointed at by the broken distaff and...

The railway from Hermanstadt to Kronstadt takes us mostly through a rich undulating country, for, leaving the mountains always farther behind us, we near them again only as we a...

The Roumanian is very obstinate in character, and does not let himself be easily persuaded. He does nothing without reflection, and often he reflects so long that the time for a...

1. _Caluseri_ and _Batuta_, ancient traditional dances performed by men only, and often executed at fairs and public festivals. For these a fixed number of dancers is required,...

This first taste of the delights of a Transylvanian mountain excursion had but stimulated our desire for more enjoyment of the same kind. After revelling so unrestrainedly in th...

In order at all to understand the Roumanian peasant, we must first of all begin by understanding his religion, which alone gives us the clew to the curiously contrasting shades...

The cat, dedicated to Frouma, Frezja, or Holda, in old German times, still plays a considerable part in Saxon superstition. Thus, to render fruitful a tree which refuses to bear...

“False as a Tzigane,” “Dirty as a Tzigane,” are common figures of speech. Likewise to describe a quarrelsome couple, “They live like the gypsies.” And if some one is given to us...

Marriageable Roumanian girls often wear a head-dress richly embroidered with pearls and coins; this is a sign that their trousseaus are ready, and that they only wait for a suit...

Next morning we proceeded to the real object of our excursion, the Bulea See, a lake which lies at the foot of the Negoi, 6662 feet above the sea-level, and situated about three...

The superstitions afloat among Saxon peasants are of less poetical character than those _en vogue_ with the Roumanians; there is more of the quack and less of the romantic eleme...

Among the many writers who have made of this singular race their special study, none, to my thinking, has succeeded in understanding them so perfectly as Liszt. Other authors ha...

Among the curiosities I picked up in the course of my wanderings about Saxon villages is a large zinc dish sixteen inches in diameter, curiously engraved and inscribed. On the o...

At risk of dispelling the idea just given of the somnolent nature of life at Hermanstadt, I am bound to mention that the quiet little town was once distinguished by a murder as...

As on the second morning the rain had stopped, we thought we might venture to proceed on our way, the next station we had in view being the Jäeser See, a mysterious lake lying h...

Leaving Transylvania after a two years’ residence, I felt somewhat like Robinson Crusoe unexpectedly restored to the world from his desert island. Despite the evidence of my own...

The Roumanians seem to be a long-lived race, and it is no uncommon thing to come across peasants of ninety and upwards, in full possession of all their faculties. In 1882 an old...

We had provided ourselves with a passport from Hermanstadt, for just at that particular moment the regulations about crossing the frontier were rather strict, in consequence of...

As I happened to arrive at Hermanstadt[4] precisely seven hundred years later than the German colonists who had founded that city, I had the good-luck to assist at a national fe...

“Henceforward no man shall know the day or hour of his death; thou art the last one who has known it.” And since that time we are all kept in ignorance of our death-hour; theref...

Transylvania is interesting not only on account of its geographical position, but likewise with regard to the several races which inhabit it, and the peculiar conditions under w...

Very little genuine Tzigane poetry has penetrated to the outer world, and many songs erroneously attributed to the gypsies (by Borrow among others) are proved to be adaptations...

The south-west of Transylvania used to form part of the territory called the _Militär-Grenze_ (military frontier)—a peculiar institution now extinct, which, interesting as being...

“It is a fine country, but there are dreadfully many Roumanians,” was the verdict of a respectable Saxon, who accompanied his words with a deep sigh and a mournful shake of the...

The ever-recurring excitements and excesses of which these people’s life is made up cannot fail to have a deteriorating effect on mind and body—early undermined constitutions an...

So the end of our Transylvanian sojourn had actually come, and like many things whose prospect appears so unconditionally desirable when viewed in the far distance, the realizat...

It is not possible, even in the most cursory account of life and manners in Hungary, to escape all mention of the conflicting political interests which are making of Austro-Hung...

Walking across the country one breezy November day, I was attracted by the sight of a gypsy tent pitched on a piece of waste-land some hundred yards off my path—motive enough to...

I shall never forget the shock to my feelings when, shortly after leaving Transylvania, I went to spend the summer months in the much-famed Wienerwald near Vienna. In former yea...