The Czech has a reputation as an epicure, and the Bohemian girl is generally an excellent cook, in addition to her other good qualities. To mention Slavic cooking and leave out garlic would be “Hamlet with the Prince left out,” and I feel sure that travellers in Slavic countries will readily testify to the excessive presence of this fragrant bulb, although they may never have seen it.
The literature of the Slav is abundant, and some of it is no doubt great. That of Bohemia is the oldest, that of Poland the most finished, and that of Russia in modern times the most abundant. The folklorist has here much virgin territory in which to gather material, but it remains to be seen whether it is worth gathering and preserving. Both folk-lore and literature are strongly realistic, being a reflection of the Slavic character, and not a protest or reaction, as with the Germanic people. The Slav speaks and sings about plain things plainly, but naturally, and not offensively when one understands the source of his song. It never makes sin attractive, and consequently is wholesome. The lyric love-song is made in the hearts of the people, travels from lip to lip, and is simple and beautiful in the original; thus the Czech sings:
If I see thee, kneeling, praying
In the church, my dear,
I am far from God and heaven,
But to thee am near;
If I’d love my God in heaven
As I now love thee,
I would saint or very angel
In His presence be.
The Slovak sings thus of love:
Whence getteth everybody
Love in his very breast?
It grows not on the bushes,
It’s hatched not in the nest;
And were this love abiding
On rocks as heaven high,
We’d send our hearts to find it,
Yes, even if we die.
More poetically, the Croatian sings:
Oh, what is love? a zephyr mild,
As gentle as a new-born child,
To kiss each blossoming flower.
Oh, what is love? a wild storm-cloud,
A roaring, maddening tempest loud,
A weeping, drenching shower.
Oh, what is love? a scattered gloom,
A thousand glorious flowers in bloom,
A glowing, burning fireball,
A giant held by chains in thrall,
A joyful, chiming wedding bell,
A dreadful chasm, a burning hell.
Oh, may thy love, thou dearest child,
Like spring winds be, so sweet, so mild!
Oh, reach to me thine angel hand,
And lead me to that heavenly land!
One of the marked characteristics of the Slav is his deep religious feeling. If you wander through Moscow, you will see at every step evidences of this in the many churches, chapels, and wayside icons before which the faithful cross themselves or lie prostrate in the dust. Everywhere the Russian manifests his deep allegiance to the Church, and every action of his life is in some way influenced by its teaching. He obeys implicitly all its rules, especially in regard to the many fast or feast days. He venerates the churches and cloisters, has implicit faith in the intercession of the saints, and every year out of every village go forth pious pilgrims over barren wastes and through dense forests to some sacred tomb in some faraway cloister. The height of ambition of every pious mujik is to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and a whole lifetime is spent in self-denying struggle to accumulate money enough for that purpose.
Common to all the Slavs is the tendency to superstition; remnants of the old heathenism remain everywhere, startling one by stories and usages which during centuries of winters’ nights have grown to grotesque proportions in the dark, uncomfortable izbas of the peasants, and have curiously blended with their Christian faith, so that it is difficult for them to distinguish one from the other. The Slav is usually charitable to the poor, although not always generous to the weak, and he cannot be praised for excessive hospitality. He is too often clannish, is apt to be jealous, and consequently not always faithful or honest. The Polish and Russian peasants are proverbially thievish; as one of their current sayings has it, “the only things which they will not carry away are hot iron and millstones,” a characteristic which they lose completely under better economic conditions.