Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/75

 Serbian Habits and Customs. 43

There is a certain number of customs which died a natural death, and we only know of their existence from traditions and from some symbols which we still possess. They are barbarous, inhuman, brutal and immoral habits. It is because of their nature that the enlightened society had to abandon them. We find in the Serbian popular tradition the extermination of old people when these became a burden to their children ; and also the survival of stoning to death great criminals, etc. In some Serbian provinces the peasants still practise symbolic sacrifices ; viz., the burnt offering of a sheep and of a cock whose mixed blood is spread on the foundation of a great building. This ceremony replaced human sacrifice, which is much spoken of in the Serbian popular tradition. The old sacrifices of human beings for the fertility of the land are replaced by symbolic sacrifices. In some Serbian pro- vinces dolls with human likeness are, during the prayers of the processions, thrown into the river ; in other provinces it is the ofiiciating priest whom they pretend to throw into the water.

When the Serbs from Serbia and from Montenegro liberated themselves from the Turkish Government the old habits and customs rapidly weakened. Even before this liberation they were not so numerous or so potential as previously, and time made them still rarer. Of those which remained there were, however, sufficient for serious measures to be taken to crush them. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century the Montenegrin bishops and princes frequently took active steps against some of the remaining customs, especially any opposed to the State, to the Christian religion and to commonsense. In Serbia the chiefs of the rebellion against the Turks, Kara George (1804-1813) and Prince Milos Obrenovitch (1815-1839), were faced with great difficulties in suppressing the reinain- jng harmful traditions.

Since the period of deliverance, thanks to the influence