[4] M. Fishberg, "The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment," p. 361.
CHAPTER XIV A POLISH VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS
It was a Jewish trader who advised me to visit Jedlovka. He said that I would see the peasants living there now as they had lived for hundreds of years—in the simplest and most primitive fashion.
Jedlovka, I found, is a little straggling village in the foothills of the Carpathians—the mountains which divide Galicia from Hungary. In order to reach the village it was necessary to take the train at Cracow and ride for an hour or more in the direction of Lemberg, which is the Ruthenian, just as Cracow is the Polish, metropolis of Galicia.
At a place called Turnow we changed cars and continued our journey in a direction at right angles to that in which we previously travelled. It was another hour's ride by train to the foothills of the mountain. At Tuchow, at the point where the railway, running southward, plunges into the mountain, we disembarked again and continued our journey by wagon. The road led up out of the broad plain through which we had been travelling, into a narrow and sombre little valley. At the end of this valley there is a little wayside inn. Higher up, where the road, winding up out of the valley, leads out into a high, clear space at what seemed to be the top of the mountain, there is a church, and this tavern and the church, together with a few scattering log huts, were the village of Jedlovka and the end of our journey.
I had had a vague sort of notion that somewhere in this remote region I should meet peasants wearing sheepskin jackets, sandals, and leggings bound with thongs, driving their herds to pasture. I even had a wild hope that I should come upon some rustic festival, such as I had read about, where the young men and women would dance upon the greensward, to the music of shepherds' pipes. As a matter of fact, it chanced that our visit did fall upon a feast day, but there were no shepherds and no dances. What I saw was a crowd of women pouring out of the little church, high upon the hill, and crowds of drunken men carousing at the tavern below.
Before I proceed to tell what I learned of the peasant life in this mountain country, however, I want to refer to one feature of Polish life which was impressed upon me by what I saw on the way.