[139] To this westward and northward immigration of Serbs and Rascians I am inclined to attribute the peculiarity of many of the Bosnian Piesme, the half mythical heroes of which are taken rather from the history of the Serbs proper than of the Bosnians.
[140] Die letzten Unruhen in Bosnien (translated into English by Mrs. Alexander Kerr, and published in Bohn’s series).
[141] I am indebted to Canon Liddon for this valuable information. On such occasions the bishop generally takes his text from the Sermon on the Mount.
[142] M. de Ste. Marie.
[143] Ami Boué. In corroboration of this I may cite the testimony of an English traveller, Edmund Spencer:—‘While attending the Parliamentary debates of the Skuptchina, I was much struck with the self-possessed, dignified air of the almost unlettered orators, who were earnest without violence, impassioned without intemperance, depending rather on the force of their arguments than the strength of their lungs and theatrical gesticulations, to win the attention of their auditors. The Serbs resemble us in more than one particular: they have the same dogged resolution, the same love of fair play, the same detestation of the use of the knife, together with no inconsiderable portion of that mixture of the aristocratic and democratic in their character which so especially distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race.’ The last remark is now peculiarly applicable to the Bosnian branch of the Serbs.
[144] M. Yriarte, Bosnie et Herzégovine, p. 245.
[145] Franz Maurer, ‘Reise durch Bosnien, die Saveländer und Ungarn.’ Berlin, 1870, p. 45.
[146] See Brachet, ‘Dictionnaire Etymologique de la Langue Française,’ and Wedgewood’s ‘Dictionary of English Etymology.’
[147] See, for instance, the Croat man in [the engraving on p. 4].
[148] The Italian Testo, the Spanish Tjesto, and French Têt, came rather from the Latin Testum; while Testa, among the Romance population of Gaul, supplied the word for a head, tête. But in East Europe Testa does not seem to have developed this secondary meaning, as the Wallacks use Cap (Caput) for ‘head;’ and therefore Testa may still have retained its sense of ‘a pot.’