“it is a fine country, but there are dreadfully many roumanians,” was the verdict of a respectable saxon, who accompanied his words with a deep sigh and a mournful shake of the head. evidently the worthy man thought necessary to adopt a deprecatory tone in alluding to these objectionable people, as though the presence of roumanians in a landscape were matter for apology, like the admission of rats in a stable, or bugs in a bedstead. to an unprejudiced outsider, it is certainly somewhat amusing to observe the feelings with which the three principal races inhabiting this country regard each other: thus, to the hungarian and the saxon the roumanian is but simple, unqualified vermin; while the saxon regards the magyar as a barbarian, which compliment the latter returns by considering the saxon a boor; and the poor roumanian, even while cringing before his saxon and hungarian masters, is taught by his religion to regard as unclean all those who stand outside his faith.
briefly to sum up the respective merits of these three races, it may be allowable to define them as representing manhood in the past, present, and future tenses.
the saxons have been men, and right good men, too, in their day; but that day has gone by, and they are now rapidly degenerating into mere fossil antiquities, physically deteriorated from constant intermarriage, and morally opposed to any sort of progress involving amalgamation with the surrounding races.
the hungarians are men in the full sense of the word, perhaps all the more so that they are a nation of soldiers rather than men of science and letters.
the roumanians will be men a few generations hence, when they have had time to shake off the habits of slavery and have learned to recognize their own value. there is a wealth of unraised treasure, of abilities in the raw block, of uncultured talent, lying dormant in this ignorant peasantry, who seem but lately to have begun to understand that they need not always bend their neck beneath the yoke of other{123} masters, nor are necessarily born to slavery and humiliation. in face of their rapidly increasing population, of the thirst for knowledge and the powerful spirit of progress which have arisen among them of late years, it is scarcely hazardous to prophesy that this people have a great future before them, and that a day will come when, other nations having degenerated and spent their strength, these descendants of the ancient romans, rising ph?nix-like from their ashes, will step forward with a whole fund of latent power and virgin material to rule as masters where formerly they have crouched as slaves.
two popular legends current in transylvania may here find a place, as somewhat humorously defining the national characteristics of the three races just alluded to.
“when god had decreed to banish adam and eve from paradise because they had sinned against his laws, he first deputed his hungarian angel gabor (gabriel) to chase them out of the garden of eden. but adam and eve were already wise, for they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge; so they resolved to conciliate the angel by putting good cheer before him, and inviting him to partake of it. in truth, the angel ate and drank heartily of the good things on the table, and, after having eaten, he had not the heart to repay his kind hosts for their hospitality by chasing them out of paradise, so he returned to heaven without having executed his commission, and begged the lord to send another in his place, for he could not do it.
“then god sent the wallachian angel florian, thinking he was less fine-feeling and would execute the mission better. adam and eve were sitting at table when the servant of the lord entered, shod in leather opintschen (sandals) and with fur cap under his arm. after humbly saluting, he told his errand. but adam, on seeing the appearance of this messenger, felt no more fear, and asked roughly, ‘hast brought no written warrant with thee?’ at this the angel florian began to tremble, turned round on the spot, and went back to heaven.
“then the lord became angry, and sent down the german archangel michael. adam and eve were mightily terrified on seeing him, but resolved to do their best to soften his heart; so they prepared for him a sumptuous meal of his favorite dishes—ham-sausage, pickled sauerkraut, beer, wine, and sweet mead. the german angel was highly pleased, and played such a good knife and fork that adam and eve began to feel light of heart again. but hardly had the archangel{124} eaten his fill when, rising from the table, he swung his flaming sword overhead and thundered forth to his terrified hosts, ‘now pack yourselves off!’ in vain did our first parents beg and sue for mercy; nothing served to touch the heart of the inflexible german angel, who, without further ado, drove them both out of paradise.”
the second legend relates to the holy sepulchre, and tells us how a deputation, consisting of a hungarian, a saxon, and a wallachian, was once sent by the transylvanian diet to palestine in order to recover the saviour’s body from the infidels. “they started on their journey full of hope, but when they had reached jerusalem they found the sepulchre guarded by a strong enforcement of roman soldiers. what was now to be done? was the question debated between them. the hungarian was for cutting into the soldiers at once with his sword, but the canny saxon held him back and said, ‘they are stronger than we, and we might receive blows; let us rather attempt to barter.’ the wallachian only winked with one eye and whispered, ‘let us wait till nightfall, and then we can steal the body.’”
there has been of late years so much learned discussion about the origin of this roumanian people that it were presumption, in face of the erudite authorities enlisted on either side, to advance any independent opinion on the subject. german writers, especially saxons, have been strenuous in sneering down all claims to roman extraction, and contending that whatever roman elements remained over after their evacuation of the territory must long since have been swallowed up in the great rush of successive nations which passed over the land in the early part of the middle ages. roumanian writers, on the contrary, are fond of laying great stress on the direct roman lineage which it is their pride to believe in, sometimes, however, injuring their own cause by over-anxiety to claim too much—laying too little stress on the admixture of slave blood, which is as surely a fundamental ingredient of the race. one of the most enlightened roumanian authors, joan slavici, states the case more accurately in saying that the ethnographical importance of the roumanians does not lie in the fact of their being descendants of the ancient romans, nor in that of the long-vanished dacian race having been romanized by the conquerors, but solely and entirely therein; that this people, placed between two sharply contrasting races, form an important connecting link in the chain of european tribes.
the classical type of feature so often to be met with among roumanian peasants of both sexes pleads strongly in favor of the theory of roman origin; and if in a former chapter i compared the features of saxon peasants to those of noah’s-ark figures, rudely cut out of the very coarsest wood, the roumanians as often remind me of a type of face chiefly to be met with on cameo ornaments or ancient signet-rings. if we take at random a score of individuals from any roumanian village, we cannot fail to find a goodly choice of classical profiles, worthy to be immortalized on agate, onyx, or jasper, like a handful of antique gems which have been strewn broadcast over the land.
wallack, or wlach, by which name this people was generally designated up to the year ’48, points equally to roman extraction—wallack being but another version of the appellations welsh, welch, wallon, etc., given by germans to all people native of italy. it may, however, not be superfluous here to mention that at no period whatever did these people describe themselves otherwise than as “romāns,” roumanians, and would have been as little likely to speak of themselves as wallacks as would be an american to call himself a yankee, or a londoner to designate himself as a cockney. as far as i can make out, a certain sense of opprobrium seems to be attached to this word wallack as applied by strangers, explainable perhaps by the fact that the appellation wlach was formerly used to describe all people subjugated by the romans.
