Behind the mosque and the bath is an open space which resembles an empty lot, except on Fridays. Friday is both the sabbath of the Turks and the market day of the Bulgars, but the police are never called upon to prevent a clash between the two. Once a week the capital is crowded with peasants assembled from every village within a radius of twenty kilometres. Fellow-residents of the same broad, sunny plain in which Sofia lies come trooping in, clad in lighter clothes than those worn by the mountain men from Vitosh. They begin to gather on Thursday evening, and long before the next day breaks the space is covered with sacks of corn, strings of onions, bunches of chickens, baskets of eggs, buckets of cheese, bolts of homespun cloth, bleating lambs, and squealing pigs.
The peasants, young and old, men and women, walk to market. Only pigs and babies are carried. The carts and the pack-animals are too heavily laden to carry their owners; and, besides, every individual afoot can carry something more. One sympathises with a pretty girl dressed in holiday costume, a red rose in her hair, carrying a pig over one shoulder, over the other a dozen chickens strung up by the feet. One sympathises with the pig and the fowls also, for these poor things have been carried with their heads hanging for probably three hours. The pig is slung by one or both hind legs, with a lash tied so tightly that it entirely stops the circulation, and may cut through the flesh to the bone. The girls always laugh on their way to market, and the pigs always cry. Of course the pigs are laid down now and again along the route, when the happy girls take a rest, but they arrive in Sofia with their eyes popping out of the sockets. These pigs which the girls carry are little pigs, but huge hogs are hung in the same manner at the sides of laden ponies.
On various occasions I pointed out this wanton cruelty to prominent Bulgarians whom I knew, and generally got some reply about the five hundred years the peasants had spent under the Turks. Where was the boy who asked me what the English word civilised meant?
ON THE MARKET PLACE, SOFIA.
The Bulgarians are careful of their draught animals. This, perhaps, they have learned in their term of subjection to the Mohamedan. It is a common sight in summer to see a girl in holiday attire, with a long-handled dipper throwing water from a puddle on to the backs of sweltering buffaloes as they move slowly past, dragging a heavy, creaking cart. In the winter each buffalo has his blanket.
The peasant girl weaves the cloth for her own clothes, spins the threads on her long marches to town, and saves her earnings for brass belt-buckles, bracelets, and other ornaments. Her bracelets often weigh over a pound, and her belt-buckle sometimes measures ten inches across. Her hair is far below her waist, but it generally changes in both texture and colour considerably above. The lower portion resembles horsehair. When such an appendage is spliced on to the maiden’s own locks, the proud possessor spends hours making the combination into a score of thin plaits, which she spreads out across her shoulders and loops together at the end.
The bazaars of other capitals in the Near East are filled with cheap German and Austrian imitations of native jewellery and dress, but Sofia is freer from this pollution.
There are few Jews in Bulgaria as compared with the number in the border State of Rumania; the Jews cannot thrive on the close-fisted Bulgars. The Jews who live among them are fairer in business transactions than their co-religionists anywhere else in the Balkans. I had an interesting experience with an old Israelite one day. He was selling key-rings, among other trinkets, on the market place, and I stopped and took one. I held up a franc by way of asking the price, and he said, ‘Franc,’ and held up one finger. The ring was a common affair and not worth so much, but I needed one badly, and, being unable to argue over the price, I gave up the franc and proceeded to adjust my keys to the ring. The old Jew was embarrassed. He had clearly expected me to bargain with him. He looked at the franc and then at me, undecided whether to do the honest thing or pocket the piece. As I started away he touched me on the arm, drew a greasy old purse from a deep pocket in a baggy pair of trousers, and finding a fifty-centime piece, pressed it upon me.
But while the Jew who has elected to remain among the Bulgars has had to surrender some of his principles of gold-getting, the Bulgar at horse-trading is a brother of the world fraternity of stock-dealers. One bright market day, when the streets were crowded with peasants and the European garb was almost obliterated, I went with a fellow-correspondent to buy a horse. We were not long in finding a satisfactory animal, but the bargaining was a tedious process. The owner of the horse was a simple old peasant, but he was assisted in the deal by the mayor of his village, an independent person of some thirty years, dressed like the other in homespuns and sheepskins.