Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/337

 ROUMANIAN EASTER EGGS.

BY AGNES MURGOEI, BUCHAREST.

it be to the advantage of a people to boast a mixture of origins, the Roumanians possess here a legitimate source of pride, for few nations are compounded of more diverse elements than the Roumanian nation. There is a substratum that may be termed "Dacian," but with this is mingled a Latin element, the preponderance of which is attested by the Neo-Latin character of the existing Roumanian language. There is also a considerable Sclavonic admixture in the nation, and in the language one-third of the words are derived from this source. Moreover, there is political as well as ethnological complication, for the Roumanians at the present time are not confined to the kingdom of Roumania, but also inhabit neighbouring provinces,—Transylvania (belonging to Hungary), Bukowina (belonging to Austria), and Bessarabia (belonging to Russia),—as well as some regions in Macedonia and Servia and sundry villages in Bulgaria.

The social conditions in all these districts are, however, similar, the population consisting, speaking broadly, of two classes,—a very large peasant class and a small class of landowners. The town population and landowning class together do not amount to 18 per cent, of the total, so that it is clear that the peasant is the typical Roumanian. In spite of the fact that education has long been nominally compulsory, few of the peasants can read or write, and