The 19th
January, the Feast of the Three Kings, is called the Eslama-gunu, or
Dipping-day, and every man in the village is carried off to the
fountain and thoroughly soused with water unless he ransoms himself by
the payment of a certain amount of wine, the forfeits thus collected
being drunk by the assembled villagers in the evening.
This
custom is not Slavonic, but common to all peoples who profess the
Greek religion. The day following is observed (though only in those
villages which are of pure Slavonic race, and not by the Gagaous) as
the Babou-dien, Old Woman's Day, when all the married women celebrate
a sort of Saturnalia, and wind up by getting very drunk in the
evening.
This year we arrived
at the village of Dervishkivi in Roumelia, on the Babou-dien, and
hardly were we seen approaching when a troop of Bacchantes surrounded
us, and nearly pulled us off our horses, only consenting to let us
pass on the receipt of black mail. In the evening a similar troop,
very tipsy, invaded the house where we were staying, and danced about
in the most frantic manner, headed by an old lady astride upon a cane,
and looking a very impersonation of a witch upon the traditional
broomstick. Perhaps it might be possible to trace the origin of the
Sabbat of the Brocken to the hills of the Balkans.
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PEACE HAVENS of BULGARIA
