BELGIUMPeasant Life
FOUR
Belgian customs, habits and amusements are strongly rooted in the soil. Half the population of the country maintains life by tilling the land. The nation’s prosperity, greatly affected by the discovery and operation of prolific mines, is nevertheless due in large part to the activity of peasant proprietors—owners of a few acres that are usually cultivated with the help of all the family. Grains, grape vines, sugar beets and vegetables, dairy cows and huge Belgian horses are the chief products of the fields. The amount of productive land in the kingdom is about four-fifths of the entire area.
No one that has ever looked over the hedge of a Belgian pasture will ever forget the sight of black and white cows as large as prize bulls in other countries, and of awkwardly cavorting colts, taller and much heavier about the joints than ordinary American farm horses. On the cobbled roads of Belgium one meets these splendid horses, moving ponderously, embraced by the shafts of capacious two-wheeled carts. Equally picturesque are the dogs of burden, hitched single, or in teams of two or three, drawing wagon-loads of milk, bread or fuel. Not infrequently, one or more members of the owner’s family are included in the load the dogs must pull. I once counted a jovial group of seven persons seated on meal-bags in a cart drawn by a panting pair of mastiffs. At country cross-roads the sign is frequently displayed: “Treat the animals with kindness”; but violations of the laws of humanity are so common as to excite little comment among the blunt-mannered country-folk of Belgium.
Before low-roofed houses bordering Flemish roads, the pilgrim discovers rows of lace-makers, comprising the feminine occupants of buff-colored cottages. Often there are children six or seven years of age perched on the straight-backed chairs. Their tousled heads barely reach above the broad “pillow” on which they and their sisters ceaselessly weave the spindles from dawn to twilight. The pay of a lace-worker averages a franc a day, or twenty cents for eight to ten hours of skilled labor. The lace made in these peasant homes is contracted for by buyers from Brussels or Bruges, who supply the thread. An expert worker, who has perhaps been trained in a convent school and is familiar with the delicate patterns of Princess, Cluny, Mechlin, Valenciennes, and Brussels lace, rarely receives more than fifty cents a day.
Before daybreak, the roads of the Belgian countryside resound with the rumble of wheels and the clack of wooden shoes. All through the sunlit hours until nightfall the stooping figures of men and women are seen in the fields. In Walloon districts the farmers live in settlements that adjoin the tilled acres. Flemish landowners are wont to build their homes apart from each other, with perhaps the chateau of a rich merchant as the pivotal center of the scattered dwellings. Within the stone or stucco-covered brick cottages of farmer and villager, and in the rear yard bounded by bake-house, wash-house and animal shed, the household duties are performed by the mother of the family, or by a daughter that can be spared from field-work. An intensively cultivated half-acre plot may yield an income of a hundred and fifty dollars a year, and on this meager sum a family that raises its own produce often manages to exist.
If the weekdays of the Belgian peasant are given over to unrelieved toil, on Sunday, Flemish and Walloon communities burst into gaiety, and the sound of the automatic piano is in the land. Women in voluminous skirts and tight basques, men in proper black suits and boots, wend their way after mass to the nearest tavern, and there whirl the hours away until closing time. Behind the bar presides the robust and well-coiffed wife of the proprietor, while her daughters help in the serving of light beverages and bread and butter sandwiches. The kirmess, which at some time during the summer occupies the principal square of every town in Belgium, is especially dear to the hearts of the natives. Fakirs, magicians, circus performers, freaks, caged animals, merry-go-rounds and their wheezy calliopes are the lure for heavy-footed squires, matrons that resemble the rollicking models of the painters, Jordaens and the younger Teniers, and delighted apple-cheeked children. On holidays of national importance, pilgrimages to favorite shrines are organized, or the populace surrenders itself to the enjoyment of archery contests, games of ball, pigeon-flying, dog races, smoking competitions, and processions, many of them allegorical in character and of genuine historic interest. Preceding the War, not a July in twelve centuries but had seen in “quaint, dull Furnes,” in West Flanders, the impressive “Procession de Pénitence,” in which a great number of characters in medieval costumes represented scenes from the Old Testament and the Story of the Passion. Conceive the wire-pulling among ambitious mothers to insure a place as Mary or Joseph for their Mitsche or Jan! Imagine the exaltation of a wife whose fame rests at other times of the year upon the excellence of her raisin bread, or the spotlessness of her floors, to be chosen to walk in hooded black cloak near the symbol of the Sacrament! Material as the Belgians are in thought, and often dour, even loutish in conduct, they are devoted to form and the tinseled show, to music and the dance, and to emotional celebrations of every sort.
WRITTEN FOR THE MENTOR BY RUTH KEDZIE WOODILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 8, No. 3, SERIAL No. 199COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.
GUILD HOUSES OF THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES SURROUND THIS ANCIENT SQUAREFLOWER MARKET ON THE GRAND PLACE, BRUSSELS
GUILD HOUSES OF THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES SURROUND THIS ANCIENT SQUARE
FLOWER MARKET ON THE GRAND PLACE, BRUSSELS