The girls’ schools, also formed by the active American ladies, deserve our attention. Their principal object is to bestow sound Christian instruction upon the rising female population, and their efforts have met with deserved yet unexpected success, not only in developing knowledge among their own people, but in stimulating the Bulgarian communities to display a greater interest in the education of their daughters and found schools of a similar character. These establishments have produced a number of excellent scholars, who have done honor to them by their attainments and general good character.
The agents of the Roman Catholic Propaganda have schools in the principal towns, and are actively employed; but their efforts are more particularly directed to proselytism than to instruction, and their work has consequently met with less success than that of the Protestant missionaries.
CHAPTER XX.
SUPERSTITION.
Superstitious Character of the Dwellers in Turkey—Olympus—Klephtic Legends—The Vrykolakas—Local Spirits—A Vampire at Adrianople—Spirits of the Springs—Miraculous Cures—Magic—Influence upon Bulgarians—An Historiette—Antidotes for Spells—The Meras Tas—Universal Belief in Magic, and the Consequences—Buyu Boghchas—The Buyu Boghchas of Abdul-Medjid and Aziz—Quack Astrologers—A Superstitious Pasha—The Evil Eye—Remedies thereagainst—Spring Bleeding—Vipers—Means of expelling Vermin—Remedial Properties of Hebrew Beards—Dreams—Omens—Sultan Mahmoud’s Omen—Predictions—The Bloody Khan: Buried Treasure.
There are few people so superstitious as the people of Turkey. All nations have their traditions and fancies, and we find educated Englishmen who dislike walking under a ladder on superstitious grounds; but in Turkey every action, every ceremony, every relation, is hedged round with fears and omens and forebodings. Whatever happens to you is the work of supernatural agencies, and can only be remedied by the nostrums of some disreputable hag or some equally suspicious quack diviner. If you lose anything, it is the evil eye of some kind friend that has done it. If you look fixedly at anybody or anything, it is you who are trying to cast the evil eye. In short, nothing happens in Turkey unsupernaturally: there is always some spirit or magician or evil eye at the bottom of it. And this belief is not confined to the Turks: Greeks, Bulgarians, and even a good many Franks, are equally superstitious. Nor is this superstition, like the many harmless customs still observed in England, a mere luxury—an affectation: it is a matter of life and death. Not a few young girls have died from the belief that they were bewitched, or from some other superstitious shock; not a few homes have been made miserable by the meddlesome prophecies of a suborned astrologist.
A great centre of superstition is Mount Olympus. Since the gods deserted it the popular imagination has peopled it with spirits of every denomination, and Klephtic legend has added to the host. The Greek peasants have a superstitious horror of approaching the ruined villages at the foot of the mountain; making the sign of the cross, they take a circuitous by-path sooner than follow the deserted road that would lead them past the desecrated church, the neglected graveyards, the blackened ruins of the cottages, now believed to be haunted by the restless spirits of dead Klephts, who roam about in the silence of night, bemoaning their fate, and crying vengeance on the oppressors of their race. It is only on the anniversary of the patron saint of this deserted region that the surviving inhabitants of these once prosperous hamlets, bringing their descendants and carrying the aged and infirm as well as the youngest babes, set out on a pilgrimage to these spots hallowed by unforgotten wrongs, to pray for the souls of the dead and offer mnemosyné to calm their restless spirits; and to inculcate in their children the sacred duty of vengeance on the tyrants who inflicted upon their ancestors those speechless injuries whose memory it is the object of these pilgrimages to preserve fresh and vengeful. The Turks, ever ready to accept their neighbors’ superstitions, dread these ruined villages no less than the Greeks. Peopled, as he believes them, by Peris and Edjinlis, no Turk will come near them, for fear of coming under some malign influence.
The Klephtic legends are full of the most terrible of all ghosts, the Vrykolakas, or vampire. Many popular songs tell of this fearful spectre, who is the spirit of some traitor or other evil-doer who cannot be at peace in his grave, but is ever haunting the scene of his crime. One ghastly poem records the visit of a traitorous Klepht chieftain, Thanásê Vagía, as a vampire, to his widow. This man had betrayed his comrades to Ali Pasha, and their souls, heralded by the ghostly Kukuvagia, or owl of ill-omen, come and drag him from his grave and hurry him to Gardiki, where his deed of treachery was done. Suddenly they find the soul of the tyrant Ali Pasha, and, forgotten in the rush, Thanásê Vagía takes refuge with his widow. The dialogue between them is full of dramatic power; the horror of the wife at the livid apparition that seeks to embrace her, and the vampire’s terror in his miserable doom, are vividly told. At last the spectre is driven away by the touch of the cross, which he uncovers on his wife’s bosom. It is a striking poem, and brings home to one the living reality of this horrible superstition to the Greeks. As we have seen, they make periodical visits to the graves of their dead to discover whether the soul is at peace. If the body is not fully decomposed at the end of the year, they believe that their relation has become a Vrykolakas, and use every means to lay the spirit.
But the Vrykolakas, though the most ghastly of spirits, is not alone. There are invisible influences everywhere in Turkey. If the Vrykolakas haunts the graveyards, old Konaks have their edjinlis, fountains their peris, public baths their peculiar genii.
All these imaginary beings, whose existence is implicitly believed in, are expected to be encountered by the persons upon whom they may choose to cast their baneful or good influence. Their dreaded hostility is combated by the Christians by religious faith, such as an earnest appeal to Christ and the Virgin, by repeatedly crossing themselves in the name of both, or by taking hold of any sacred amulet they may have on their persons. These amulets consist of small portions of the “true cross” enshrined in crosses of silver, a crucifix, or an image of the Virgin, which, trustingly held and shown to the apparitions, have the effect of rendering them impotent and causing them to vanish. The Turks have recourse to the repetition of a certain form of prayer, and to their muskas or amulets, in which they place as much faith as the Christians do in theirs.
In 1872 the whole town of Adrianople was put in commotion by the nightly apparition of a spectre that showed itself at Kyik, a fine elevated part of the town, inhabited both by Christians and Mussulmans. This imaginary being, believed to be a Vrykolakas, was represented to me, by eye-witnesses of both creeds, who swore they had seen it listening about their houses in the twilight, as a long, slim, ugly-looking figure, with a cadaverous bearded face, clad in a winding-sheet; one of those restless spirits, in fact, who, not being allowed the privilege of peaceful decomposition in their tombs, still haunt the homes of the living, tapping at their doors, making strange noises, and casting their evil influence upon them. This comedy lasted a fortnight, during which in vain did the Mussulman Hodjas and the Christian priests endeavor, by their prayers and incantations, to free the people from their alarming visitor. At last, it was rumored that the only human being possessing the power of doing so was a Turkish Djindji, or sorcerer, famous for his power over evil spirits, who lived in a town at some distance, but who could only be prevailed upon to come by payment of seven liras by the Kyik people. On the arrival of this man at Adrianople the supposed spirit disappeared. The belief of the inhabitants in the existence of the vampire was too deeply rooted to allow me to ascertain who was the charlatan that had benefited by this imposition on public credulity. I questioned a Greek woman who had seen it. She crossed herself, and said she would rather dispense with talking on the subject. On asking a Turk his opinion on the apparition, he said, “It must have been the spirit of some corrupt bribe-eating Kadi, forbidden the repose due to the remains of an honest man, and come back to trouble us with his presence after he has lost the power of fleecing us of our money!”