A FAMILY GROUP.
From a Photograph.
Another feminine absurdity is the wearing of a long sort of toga, which trails down their backs and gets in the way whenever they bend over or go through the tangles of the mountain wood.
“Why don’t you wear a cap or small felt hat like the men?” I asked an old woman once.
“We have always covered our heads so,” was her explanation—an explanation, in her opinion, that was all-sufficing; peasants from one generation to another do everything simply because their forefathers did the same.
A HALT FOR REST.
From a Photo. by Jullien Bros.
One would imagine that on Sundays and fête days these women, particularly the young ones, would yield to the eternal feminine instinct of assuming the finery of their sex, but not they. Rest-time and feast-time always finds them in their usual garments. They have better-looking ones for these occasions, I confess, but they have no hankering for the trammels of skirts even during their courting hours. I was highly amused at seeing the pretty girls sauntering along the picturesque trails with their sweet-hearts’ arms around their waists, looking to the casual stranger for all the world like two young men gone “loony.”
One can scarcely imagine a wedding-party with bride and groom dressed in the same kind of garments, but I have seen one in the mountains, when the bride wore a white bodice, white trousers, and a bunch of white violets in her hair! She was as pretty as a picture, too, despite the attire, and quite as blushing and shy as any bride out of a convent.
The man of her choice, a perfect giant of a peasant, was resplendent in native costume, the chief glory of which, a green waistcoat with large brass buttons, could be seen a long way off.
Most of the weddings of recent years have been held in the little chapel of the village down in the valley, where the regulation “slip over” skirt is donned at the chapel door, to be discarded before the tramp up the mountain-side is begun.