United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The Wallack maiden is adorned by her dowry of coins hanging over head and shoulders, and with braids of plaited black hair mingled, I am afraid, with tow, if the truth must be spoken. Kronstadt is rather a considerable place; the population is stated to be 27,766, composed of Saxons, Szeklers, and Wallacks, who have each their separate quarter.

"You little geese!" cried Manasseh, laughing, "it was only a hay-thief. Grass grows on Hidas Peak, and ever since the days of King Matthias the Szeklers on the Aranyos have quarrelled with their neighbours over the cutting of it. The man who is on hand first with his scythe carries it off.

My battery is not for you to see. Yes, I have a battery, all complete. If Aaron Gabor could fit out his Szeklers with artillery, why should not his namesake be able to do the same? You young women may see my big guns; I'll show them to you. But first promise me solemnly not to tell any mortal soul what you see not even Manasseh."

It was too much. I entered the last house of that straggling village with a stern resolve that not even new-born twins should bar my claim to hospitality! I found the postmaster at Csik Szereda a very intelligent man, with a fund of anecdotes and recollections, which generally centred in the troubles of '48. As I mentioned before, the Szeklers rose en masse against the Austrians.

Upon this the Szeklers flew to arms on the side of the Magyars, of course; throughout their history they have always made common cause with them. In the autumn of the same year, Joseph Bem, a native of Galicia, who had fought under Marshal Davoust, later with Macdonald at the siege of Hamburg, arid had also taken part in the Polish insurrection of 1830, attached himself to the Hungarian cause.

It is known that an earlier wave of the Turanians had swept over Europe before the incoming of the Magyars, and the so-called Szeklers were probably a tribe or remnant of this invasion, the date of which, however, is wrapped in no little obscurity. This is certain, that they have preserved their independence throughout all these ages in a very remarkable manner.

Quite separated from the rest of the town is the quarter inhabited by the Szeklers. This people constitute one of four principal races inhabiting Transylvania. They are of Turanian origin, like the Magyars, but apparently an older branch of the family.

Manasseh seems to have been recognised by the family as the gifted one, his brothers are nothing more than honest and intelligent Szeklers, and for his education and advancement in the world all worked in unison. When he was only twenty years old this young genius became a candidate for the council.

The peasants' own lands, as a rule, are very badly managed; their ploughing is shallow, and they do nothing or next to nothing in the way of drainage. Want of progress amongst the Saxons The Burzenland Kronstadt Mixed character of its inhabitants Szeklers General Bem's campaign. It was a glorious morning when I left the comfortable village of Zeiden.

When the Magyars overran Pannonia in the tenth century, under the headship of the great Arpad, they appear to have found the Szeklers already in possession of part of the vast Carpathian horseshoe that part known to us as the Transylvanian frontier of Moldavia. They claim to have come hither as early as the fourth century.