The patriarch received, as yearly rent of the houses, from five to ten piasters each. Thus, when I threw two cottages into one, I paid for two as though not consolidated. The tenant made all repairs, excepting when the main beam of the ceiling broke, which was supplied by the proprietor.
The proprietor received of whatever grew from the leaf a half: as, of tobacco, figs, oil, mulberry leaves for feeding silkworms (which last two were commuted for a certain portion of the products, viz., silk and oil) and a quarter of all kinds of corn. Besides these certain receipts, he had incidental ones on particular occasions, and certain perquisites: all which may be put down as follows:
| piasters. | |
| Corn, eight gararas, | 800 |
| Each time the patriarch had a festival, as at Easter and Christmas, the peasants presented him with eggs and fowls, valued at | 40 |
| Work done for the patriarch by the peasants gratis always on Sundays | 50 |
| Green corn or other pasture allowed him for his cattle | 15 |
| Oil, one quintal (worth three hundred piasters) half the produce | 150 |
| Tobacco | 100 |
| Silk, five rotolos from the leaves growing in the village, and eight rotolos from leaves bought in the gardens of Sayda, at eighty piasters the rotolo, makes one thousand and forty piasters—half of which is | 520 |
| Rent for houses, forty one families at seven and a half piasters each house, | 300 |
| 1975 |
The patriarch therefore had here a gain of thirteen hundred and eighty-nine piasters, or about £68 per annum. There were of course other sources of gain, with which I was not acquainted, and I may have even underrated the different products which I have enumerated.
I could never clearly understand the nature of the tenure of the land and other property. Thus the patriarch was the proprietor of the houses and could build or pull them down, or eject a tenant from them, when he liked. All trees, not bearing fruit, seemed to be his: for, whenever the peasants were in want of a rafter or joist, it was necessary to apply to the kûly for permission to cut. Yet, in those bearing fruit, as olive or mulberry trees, the peasants had a right of possession, and of transmission to their children; of which I saw repeated examples. With regard to the soil, that, too, was not the patriarch’s; for each family would speak of certain pieces of land as belonging to them. Still it was odd that, when Lady Hester wanted a field any where for sowing or for any other use, it was always given to her, let her have cast her eye on what piece she would. I concluded therefore that the purchaser of a village became the proprietor of the tithe, rather than the possessor of the soil, which was partitioned into smaller or greater farms or estates, as prosperity and adversity appropriated or alienated it, by purchase or sale, from man to man.[87]
A small village like Abra, away from any high road, was seldom visited by strangers. Occasionally, a pedlar selling soap, kadámy, or parched peas, and a little halàwy or sweetmeat, would pass through, crying his wares: for the purchase of which he would receive money, or, in default of it, eggs, or chickens, which he resold, in the towns, to advantage. Sometimes a pauper, after begging from house to house, would sleep through the night in the village tanûr or oven, a favourite lodging both in towns and villages for the wretched.[88]
The life which these peasants lead is simple enough. At sunrise the husband goes to his field to plough, or sow, or reap, or plant his tobacco, or to cut leaves for his silkworms. The women wash, bake, grind at the handmill, feed the silkworms, gather the figs, the olives, and, if fathy, as they call it, or having nothing to do, they spin. Were I desired to describe a peasant woman in her most customary occupation, I should represent her as seated at the door of her cottage, spinning with a hand-spindle, and having a long cane lying by her side to drive away the chickens, which she talks to and scolds as if they were children, giving to each a name. When at the tanûr, baking, she gossips. She generally cooks once in the twenty-four hours, for the evening repast, to which her husband returns when his day’s work is over.
Midwifery at Abra was entirely in the hands of women.[89] A woman lay-in of her first child soon after I came to the village. She was half an hour in labour. All the married females of the village assembled on the occasion, and they instructed her how to act in her new situation. She was placed in the chair used on these occasions, a sketch of which I have annexed, having caused it to be brought to me for that purpose, and having thought it sufficiently curious to interest the Scriptural reader, who might find in it the explanation of a passage otherwise not quite intelligible.[90]
MIDWIFERY CHAIR.