But this vestment is of too great importance in a domestic, manufacturing, political, hygeian, and picturesque point of view, to dispose of thus. We travel thousands of miles to see an old ruin. Adventurer after adventurer staked his life against a glimpse of the interior sands of Africa. Here is the swaddling bands of a race. Is it not worth turning over and handling, and seeing what it is made of, and how it fits?
THE HAÏK.
If Prometheus had set himself down to consider, not how many things he could invent for man, but what single invention would serve him most, he might have fixed on the haïk. It is not known in Arabia, Judæa, or any part of the East. It is mentioned by no ancient writer; yet on its intrinsic characters, I claim for it the rank of first parent of costume. It is found in Barbary. Who then shall assign to it a date? The region is a nook in the ocean of time, where the wrecks of all ages are cast up, and here, like the moon, these things are found, which are lost elsewhere.
A shuttle and loom to weave, pins to knit, scissors to cut, or needles and thread to sew, are requisite for every other dress; the haïk dispenses with them all. It is a web, but not wove (in the modern sense of the word); it is a covering, but neither cut nor stitched. When Eve had to bethink herself of a durable substitute for innocence, this is what she must have hit upon. The name it bears is such as Adam might have given, had he required it in Paradise, “that which is wove,” i.e. web.
It is only a web, yet is it coat, great-coat, trousers, petticoat, under and over garment, enough for all and everything in one. Being but the simplest of primitive inventions, it outvies in beauty, and overmatches in convenience the succeeding centuries of contrivance and art: it completes the circle, the last step being not to return to, but merely to perceive the beauty of the first conception, and yield a barren and æsthetic applause to the perfection of the primitive design.
It is the only costume to which the language of the Bible is adapted, or by which its metaphors are intelligible. When I had seen it, I understood “rending the garments;” “Justice as a garment;” “girding with power;” “robing with light,” “clothing with a cloud.”
Adam’s names were given, not only as a description but with perfect knowledge of objects, which seem removed from the ken of man, until long labour and accumulated experience had found the order and the purpose of nature. What can be more exact as a logical definition, or more striking as a poetic image than the “day,” (םוי)—an “agitator;” the earth, (ץרא from צד) a “runner.” The heart derives its name from its action, בבל; the lever, דבכ, from its weight.
The objection will doubtless be urged, that the Easterns do not change their fashions, or lose their habits, and if the haïk ever was in Palestine, it would still be there. I answer, two successive races have been driven forth from the Holy Land. The first three thousand years ago, the second nearly two thousand. Both of these, at present, wear it in Morocco. The Jews, when expatriated, adopted elsewhere the costume of the country wherein they settled, their own being proscribed; and those at present found in the Holy Land have returned thither with foreign usages, the very language being the Castilian. Thus, all that belonged to the Philistine and the Hebrew, has been swept away, and the original features of that most interesting of all countries have been, by Chaldean or Egyptian, Persian or Parthian, Greek or Roman, Pagan or Christian, utterly effaced.
The Jew under his common clothing wears a mystic garment. Why he wears it, or when the practice arose, neither wise nor simple can tell. In vain is the Rabbi appealed to, the Talmudist consulted to explain the Tisit, which from Archangel to Suz, every Israelite puts on in the morning and takes off at night; or of the Talith which he wears in the synagogue when he prays.[273] Yet the meaning is as plain as if printed in an Encyclopædia.
These names do not occur in the Old Testament, and no mention is made of them in the “Six hundred and thirteen Fundamental precepts of Judaism,” promulgated after the return from the Babylonish captivity to enforce and maintain the ceremonial law, and which continue to be their code of life and manners. No mention of them is made in the New Testament, or in Josephus, or Hecateus, or any writer who treats of the Jews. Yet as this practice is universal, its date must have been antecedent to their dispersion: what more clear than that, when forbidden to appear in their costume, they preserved it in the sanctuary, and in secret bound an image of it to their hearts? What more touching record of the sorrows of an exiled people?[274] Linked together by oppression, they have since clung to a practice which they have ceased to comprehend, and the token handed down by their fathers they respect as a religious observance or cabalistic sign, and venerate the stuff for its fringes,[275] not for its former memory or future promise.[276] The Tisit is a small Talith, the Talith a miniature haïk.[277] The only difference is in the distribution of the fringes, and in the borders: the haïk has the fringe at the ends and no border. A blue border was enjoined by the ceremonial law. The Abyssinians wear it still.[278]