As a wife she is faithful; for indeed the jealousy of a Circassian husband is not to be endured. The disgrace of being sent home to her parents and of compelling them to pay back her purchase-money, would pierce her heart like a knife; not to mention other more barbarous punishments with which the haughty warrior instantly avenges any encroachment on his honor.
She is not only dutiful, but diligent in his service. She prepares with her own hands his food; she makes all his clothes, covering them with stitches until they become a raiment of needle-work; and helped by her daughters she even manufactures his shoes and caps, his tent and shaggy cloak, besides embroidering the coverings of his arms and the trappings of his war-horse. To the Circassian woman therefore might be addressed the commands of Telemachus to Penelope:—
| Your widowed hours apart, with female toil And various labors of the loom, beguile. |
Nor in her poverty does she refuse the severer labors of the garden and the field. Frequently she delves in the earth by the side of her Adam. Sometimes she earns in the sweat of her brows the bread of both, while he combats the invaders of their common country in pass and plain, or practises his athletic games in the peaceful valley, or even sits idle by the house-door, interrupting his listlessness only to burnish a weapon or caress his steed. And in the higher and more barren mountains, if the reports of travellers are to be credited, his better half, as modest and still more industrious than the first mother, may be seen picking the flinty soil during the heats of the day decked out with none of the finery worn on occasions of ceremony, but clad simply in that one garment deemed indispensable in all countries having made the smallest progress in civilization.[1]
The headdress of the married woman is not the tiara of the maid, but some kind of plain or ornamental stuff wound round the head in the form of a turban, and with ends falling gracefully down on the shoulders. This completely covers the hair which is worn short, with curls in the neck. Over it on going out is thrown a veil of snow-white muslin which descending mingles its folds with those of the mantle. This latter is often a large square of European woollen of the finest texture that can be afforded by the wearer; and whether fine or coarse has always a picturesque look in the distance; and nearer by is generally worn with a certain degree of womanly coquetry which lends grace to its folds, and to the dullest eyes reveals half-glimpses of the beauty concealed beneath.
Here the fashions of dress, whether for males or females, never change. Garments therefore not being thrown aside or altered with every month's variation of style as in the west, are frequently made of costly materials and adorned with such elegance of needle-work as to render them almost as precious as the sacred poet's vesture of gold wrought about with divers colors. This applies of course to garments of ceremony chiefly. A very fine paraja or mantle of camel or goat's hair, a skirt of brocade, or a scarf ornamented with silver thread will sometimes outlast a generation, and be handed down an heirloom even to grandchildren. The belle who putting on the apparel which possibly a preceding century has fabricated, does not find herself in an antiquated cut nor with stitches placed amiss, loses no time of course in dreaming of new fashions, nor self-respect in being obliged to parade in the old ones. Her only fashionable foible is that of knitting silver lace, she not having as yet been initiated into the mystery of making Chinese boxes and card-racks, dolls' dresses and family portraits in worsted.
[1] Dubois.