Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/80

 48 Serbian Habits and Customs.

A pretty custom exists also in Serbia, which consists in meeting- in the monasteries, in the churches, and in the holy places of the villages {zapisi) to pray in common ; after this they amuse themselves in the beautiful natural scenery — they dance, they sing popular ballads, celebrating the heroic past and other exploits of their ancestors. This custom is called sabor.

There are also many Serbian popular customs which are more or less preserved. There is a custom which remains intact everywhere up to the very borders of the Serbian country, and is most sacred and venerated, and extremely characteristic of Serbian nationality. It is the Slava, Krsiio tjne, Svfi!, Svcti dau, as the Serbs call it. Slava — that is the old worship of the ancestors which, with the estab- lishment of Christianity, transformed itself into worship of the saints (very often St. Nicholas, St. Michel Archange, St. Georges, St. Demetrius, St. Jean). The cult of the Stava is practised in many different and ordinary cere- monies. The most important are the family prayers, the share of the communion pain bcnit {Slavski Kotac), the preparation of cooked wheat that they eat, and the festival at which all friends are guests. The Stava is a sacred custom for each Serb. It is transmitted from generation to generation like a precious inheritance and will disappear only with the extinction of a family. All the Serbs having the cult of the same Shix'cx consider themselves as relations. The Sta^ur is a custom so essentially Serbian that the Roman Catholic Serbs also practise it. Even the Mahometans who, to conform with the precepts of their religion, had to forsake it, still know that it was their Stava, and on a certain da)' make offerings to the Christian churches. There is a Serbian proverb : " There where is the Stava is the Serb" {Gdc je stava, tii je Srbin). Which means that whoever practises it is Serbian. By this custom we can say that the frontiers of the Serbian country are defined.