A SHEKERDJIS' SHOP.
Over the bodice a bright zouave is worn, richly embroidered in gold or silver, and strings of gold or silver coins hang round the head, or as a necklace round the throat, while on the wrists are heavy bracelets.
In other places it is described as consisting of "a skirt woven in stripes of silk and woollen, reaching to the ankles, with a tight-fitting bodice of the same, a cloth jacket braided or embroidered round the borders in gold thread and lined with fur, and in some districts a bright-coloured apron ornamented with needlework" (L. Garnett, "Women in Turkey").
The same writer reports that in the islands a favourite amusement on these occasions is for the girls to suspend a rope across a narrow street from the wall of their own house to that of a neighbour, and every youth who wishes to pass by must pay toll in the form of a small coin, and give one of the girls a swing, while he sings the following verse:
"O swing the clove-carnation red,
The gold and silver shining:
And swing the girl with golden hair,
For love of her I'm pining."
To which the maiden replies:
"O say what youth is swinging me,
What do you call him, girls?
For I a fez will broider him,
With fairest, whitest pearls."
The Vlachs that inhabit Macedonia follow principally pastoral and agricultural pursuits. They spend the winter in their mountain villages, but during the summer they lead a nomadic life in quest of pastures, and move about, gipsy-like, in caravans.
The care of their father's flock is committed to the charge of the daughters, whose beauty has often been extolled in many an amorous folklore song. Their duties are to milk the sheep and goats, churn the milk into butter, or convert it into cheese, bleach and spin the wool, and weave garments for the use of the family. A loom occupies the corner of every dwelling, and every spare moment is given to twisting thread with a spindle.
There is considerable dislike among the Greeks to let their daughters go out to service, but this feeling is not shared by the inhabitants of the Greek islands. On the contrary, they supply the main stock of domestic servants, and recognized agents sail to and from the islands to find them occupation and attend to their interests. These Greek servants are generally very ignorant, can seldom write, and depend on the agent or some kind friend both for reading and writing their letters. They do not draw their pay monthly or quarterly, but prefer to allow it to accumulate with their masters, and withdraw it in a lump sum. After having stayed for some years in service, the girls are greatly in demand with their countrymen, and return to their islands and marry, but only to go back to service when their lazy husbands have expended their savings. Many of them return in the capacity of wet-nurses, a vocation greatly in demand in the East, where children are seldom brought up on the bottle. They are highly paid, and, moreover, receive presents on such important occasions as the child's cutting its first tooth and the like.
Their social position is also different from that of other servants, for as foster-mothers they have a say in the child's upbringing, and their own children can claim kinship as foster-brothers or foster-sisters. Strange and incongruous connections are often the result, as, for instance, in the case of an acquaintance of mine in Smyrna, a British subject and manager of a bank. His foster-brother, a Greek, took to the mountains, and was known as the famous brigand, Caterdjee Yiani, and many a time the latter escaped detection and arrest by hiding in the house of his British milk-kinsman.
Wet-nurses in the Sultan's palace are, it is stated, invariably Circassians, and their own children become playmates with the Crown Princes, and are not forgotten in after life. The foster-mother enjoys a title of courtesy, and often her influence in the palace comes next to that of the reigning Sultan's mother. In the case of the wet-nurse of Sultan Abdul Aziz, her power was such that frequently the appointment or dismissal of Governors and other State officials depended on her good-will.
Greek servants are as a rule honest, but very slovenly, and at first very raw and unused to the ways of civilized life. They love to go about barefooted, or shuffle in slippers. Their hair is seldom combed, and their garments hang loosely about them. Their head-dress is a printed kerchief, called a fakiol, which they wear both indoors and out of doors, but the more advanced wear hats, and consider it such a distinction, that a man-servant of mine, who wanted to get married, could not describe his intended to me in more flattering terms than by saying that "she wears the capello" (hat).
On Sundays they put on their finery and are very keen to go to church, and gossip with their fellow-servants in the women's gallery. It was probably to similar tittle-tattling, so common in Eastern churches, that St. Paul referred when forbidding women to "speak in the churches."
Factories are so seldom to be seen in Turkey that women have few opportunities of employment as factory-girls, but in the silk-spinning factories in Brusa Greek, Armenian, and Turkish girls work side by side. Their great ambition is to be possessed of and wear gold coins about their persons, but specially a five-lira piece, representing about £4 10s. of our money. Too eager to wait until their savings enable them to buy that coin, they go to a money-changer and receive one immediately on credit, paying him weekly a stipulated instalment, and interest at 12 per cent. a year in addition. The result is that when they have paid off the debt they find that the coin has cost them at least £6 or £7; but in the meanwhile their feminine vanity has been gratified, and the coin displayed three or four years earlier than otherwise.
A curious class of people to be found in nearly every village in Turkey, and even in the interior of Arabia, Egypt, and Khartoum, is that of the bakals, or grocers, who are Greeks from Kaisarieh, in Karamania (Asia Minor). Fat, dumpy, and oily, with dirty, baggy trousers, greasy vests and shining countenances, they are as like one another as two peas. They have practically the monopoly of the retail grocery business, and their shops contain everything you can imagine in the way of Eastern articles of diet—bread, cheese, black olives, salted anchovies, sardines, curdled milk called yiaourt, oil, vinegar, salt, sugar, rice, sausages, and dried meats, honey, butter, dried fruits, tallow candles, matches, etc.
Their little boys—chips of the old block—go round every house, calling out "Bakalis" and catering for orders, or bringing them back in conical bags of brown paper. Nearly everybody buys on credit, and an account is run up (not always too honestly) which, after a short time, becomes formidable, and credit is stopped till an instalment is paid.
The bakals' book-keeping is of the most primitive type, and will baffle the sharpest chartered accountant; but mistakes are seldom on the wrong side.
A peculiar method for recording the number of loaves of bread distributed in each house is that of the tchetoula, and consists in cutting a notch on a piece of stick for every loaf taken. The householder retains the stick, and receives a new one when the amount is paid. Another method is to make a chalk-mark on the door, and efface it on payment.
With a community living from hand to mouth like the Eastern, it is difficult to know what they would do without the ubiquitous bakal. Besides making himself useful in the catering-line, he frequently is the only man in his village who can read, and is resorted to both for reading and writing letters. His correspondence is carried on in Turkish words, but with Greek characters, full of conventional signs and contractions, and is next to impossible to decipher.
Stray newspapers sometimes reach him, and the news of the day is conveyed by him to clients; and should there be a Christian church in his village, he is sure to be one of its dignitaries, and as psaltis, or precentor, preside over the singing.
Another curious product, if I may so call it, of the Greek market is a class of beggars known as the Volitziani. They come from villages in Thessaly, and are young women who put aside their best garments, and don an old black skirt and black jacket, so as to assume an air of abject poverty. When about to start they receive from their community a beggar's staff, as a badge or passport of their functions, and they proceed to Constantinople, or any other town where begging offers advantageous prospects. On their arrival they borrow or hire two or three children, one of which is an infant, and which they drug and cause to sleep on a handkerchief spread out in a corner of the street. The beggar sits beside it, putting on her most tearful looks, and when any likely passer-by approaches, she raises her voice in supplication, and sends the other children to pull at his coat-tails. These Volitziani frequent the neighbourhood of churches, and their appeal is: "Give for the sake of the souls of the departed." The result is a plentiful harvest of coins, which enables them to return with a bagful to their country. The beggar's staff is then hung behind the door as a trophy. Should they desire to proceed on another begging expedition, a second staff is given them, and so on, and at each successive return the staff that has done service is deposited behind the door. Sometimes as many as seven make up the trophy. Young men desiring to find wives with money pry behind the door, and form an approximate idea of the fortune of the owner, the one with seven staffs taking, of course, the palm.
Constantinople was once the great resort of beggars of all descriptions, and lines of them used to exhibit on the Galata Bridge (see frontispiece) all manners of deformities to elicit sympathy, but one of the reforming measures of the Young Turks was to expel them from the city. In illustration facing Chapter III. you will see one of these wayside beggars.