Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

I22 THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. With a desire to be strictly impartial, I attended each upon Christmas Day of the Orthodox, lighted a twopenny candle in each, and bestowed a similar sum upon the priest who begged for contributions at the door. Each treated me with kind consideration, and classed me as a male —that is, I was conducted to a spot near the front. The women in this land are usually either left outside in a sort of covered passage that frequently surrounds the church, whence they can only see and hear what is taking place through the windows, or they are shut behind a fine lattice screen at the further end of the building. There they while away the time by chattering loudly; the babies squall, and the place is thick with candle-smoke. From my exalted masculine position I observed that chattering and the sucking of sweets was the rule in our department also. And all the time the priest's long, yowling intonation rose above the general talk, the congregation crossed itself, we bowed our heads, were censed and splattered with holy water, and nobody showed the smallest reverence or devotional feeling. Nor was there anything to distinguish the 'Greek' congregation from the 'Bulgarian.' The attendance at one or the other is merely a case of party politics. I stared at the chattering, careless crowd and the slovenly priest as he helterskeltered the service, and remembered, with a start at the contrast, the last Orthodox service I had attended but six months before, upon St. Peter's Day, in the heart of the Montenegrin mountains,
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About this Item

Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 122
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001
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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bosnia/ans3900.0001.001/129

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2025.
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