The Walachian women are very fond of ornament. They paint their cheeks red, and this addition is deemed even by the poorest essential to beauty. They often colour the eyebrows black, and wear ear-rings of different kinds: but the chief ornament of the rich consists of several necklaces of silver or sometimes gold coins, instead of which the poor use base coins and glass beads, strung on threads and hung round the neck and breast. Their number is indefinite, and they frequently reach quite to the girdle. The embroidery also upon their shirts and their many coloured aprons is esteemed by them an indispensable part of ornamental attire.
Children of both sexes wear in summer nothing but a long shirt reaching to the ankles. In winter they are seldom better clothed, and may be seen playing and leaping about in their shirts in the snow. At the age of six or seven years, they begin to dress like men and women.
In winter the Walachian provides himself with a sheep-skin cloak with the wool turned inward, and having a fur cap instead of a hood; or he throws over him a white or brown cloth mantle, which descends to the knees, and has a large hood to put over the head in bad weather. Under this cloak he wears his usual dress. The women likewise wear sheep-skin cloaks with sleeves; lined inside with wool and adorned outside with coloured patches and coarse embroidery, and held together in front by laces and buttons.
The gipsy tribe is also very numerous in Transylvania. They may be divided into two classes, the itinerant and the stationary. The former having no fixed habitations, wander in summer and winter from one place to another. In summer they generally live in tents; in winter in wretched huts of clay, or in holes which they excavate to the depth of a few feet in the declivity of the hills, and cover with branches, moss and turf, to protect themselves from the weather. It is easy to conceive how miserable the inside of one of these dwellings must appear. Air and light are almost wholly excluded; and the only apartment is a cave, in the centre of which is a fire serving at the same time for warmth and cooking. Household and culinary utensils are scarcely to be expected. The inmates sit, eat and sleep on the bare ground, or at best lie on a heap of rags. On a fine winter day they open their cavern for a few hours to the sun; but if the weather is cloudy they keep themselves shut up, nestle round the fire, cook and divide the food which chance or theft has placed at their disposal, and pass the remainder of the day in chatting and smoking, for the latter of which they have a particular predilection. Men, women and even children know no greater happiness than to smoke tobacco out of a short pipe, or to chew a piece of the wooden pipe when it has been well impregnated with the essential oil of tobacco.
Their furniture seldom consists of more than an earthen pot, an iron pan, a spoon, a water-jug, a knife and sometimes a dish. If the father is a smith, which is most frequently the case, he has a pair of small hand-bellows, a stone anvil, a pair of pincers and a couple of hammers. Add to this a knapsack, a few rags for clothing, a tattered tent, formed of a piece of coarse woollen cloth, and this is a complete inventory. But if he is so fortunate as to possess besides these an old foundered horse, he puts the whole establishment on its back, and thus rambles from place to place.
The wandering gipsy is generally clothed in rags, and the women are more remarkable, if possible, for their want of cleanliness than the men. Wrapped in their tattered garments, which scarcely suffice for decency, carrying their infants in a piece of cloth suspended from their shoulders, and driving before them the elder children, naked, or at most covered with a torn shirt, they visit in all their filth, particularly during fairs, the towns and villages, to dispose of the paltry produce of their labour, or rather under that pretext to exercise their skill in pilfering. Their stations are generally by the road side, where the naked children lie and beg; or by following travellers, by tumbling and by locking the wheels of carriages, they obtain a trifle or seize an opportunity of purloining something. Their usual occupation is making coarse iron articles. Some cut spoons, shovels and little troughs out of wood; others make brooms of twigs, weave baskets, and gather herbs, rushes, or juniper-berries. In this manner they contrive to gain a scanty subsistence, and if, after providing absolute necessaries, there is any surplus, it is expended in brandy of which they are very fond.
The settled gipsies, who are termed Neubauern, or new peasants, live much better than their wandering brethren. They reside in the outskirts of suburbs and villages, where they herd together, and their habitations contain a greater variety of conveniences than the dens described above. Their occupations are in general those of the wandering tribe. The greater part are smiths, and in spite of their imperfect apparatus they perform their work well. They visit also the neighbouring towns and villages to mend iron and copper utensils: others make a profession of music, and pass in companies from place to place. Some of them are tolerable performers, and collect large contributions from parties which amuse themselves with dancing and other festivities: others are engaged in mending shoes and in working in wood, or assist in agricultural occupations, in which, however, they are seldom industrious. They are usually employed as executioners, and in the business of flaying animals which have died a natural death. The women mostly trade in old clothes, in which the men assist them; or they levy a tax on the superstition of the peasantry by fortune-telling and pretensions to magic. Another occupation in which they are much engaged in Transylvania is gold-washing, in the many rivulets of the country which yield that metal.
UNMARRIED FEMALE OF THOROCZKO.
Thoroczko, pronounced Torotzko, is a village in the county of Thorda, with an iron mine which is not wrought by means of regular shafts, but by passages cut in the side of the mountain. The inhabitants are Germans from Styria, who have settled here to work in the mine, but have ceased to speak their native language; and Hungarians belonging to the Unitarian church.
The females of this place are distinguished from their neighbours by their head-dress, by the singular and tasteful embroidery on their chemises and corsets, by the red sash which encircles the waist, and by the peculiar manner in which they plait their petticoats. They wear occasionally a blue cloak, without arm-holes, plaited like the petticoat.