Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/69

Rh There was a time among the Serbs when habits were the real laws, and they are so called by the Serbs till the present day—unique laws which governed all social communications, to which all works conformed, by which all criminals were judged and all crimes punished, they protected the interests, they established the formation of the communications between gods and men, and by them they preserved the health and healed illnesses. This time refers to a very distant period when, instead of the Serbian Government, there existed only primitive tribes, each having their personal interests and their personal government; when, instead of the Christian religion, there existed only primitive beliefs in divine beings and nature; and, instead of the written laws, there existed only the customary rights. It is the time of the full opening of the Serbian traditions and customs.

The Serbian people did not remain very long in this primitive state. Their tribes became Serbian States in the common interest. In the State the social habits of the tribe could not exist any longer, and the Serbian State of the "Middle Age" eliminated them little by little, and, at last, the Emperor Dusan's Code (1331-1355) abolished them completely and submitted them to the interests of the Serbian Government.

The introduction into Serbia of the Christian religion dates from about the period of the formation of the Serbian State—a religion entirely opposite to the pagan religious habits which, so far, had ruled the religious communications between gods and men. The struggle between the Christian Church and the national habits ended in different ways. Sometimes the Church has defended, condemned, cursed them, specially the exhumation and the cremation of corpses, which they believe to be vampires, magic, and sorcery. Sometimes she has permitted them to join in her rites—for example, the nuptial habits have remained, but the union is only valuable to the eyes of the Church as far