Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/117

95 king manner the national characteristics in art and manufactures.

The loss of Bohemia’s independance and the determination of the government to germanize her people, were the causes that alienated the great mass of the population from the cultured class which was educated in the higher german schools so as to forget their nationality and sink their individuality, while the country people on the other hand, lived their own old national style of life.

But the peasants in Bohemia were even during those times of serfdom, the owners of the soil they tilled, and they possessed so much innate energy and creative power as to make for themselves sufficiently cultured and artistic surroundings, that they raised themselves above the dreary monotony of daily drudgery and preserved their national character.

The state of civilization here described belongs to the past, the upper classes of the nation are once more now in sympathy with the people and powerfully aid in raising the intellectual standard of the country, and recruiting from the masses the best artists and men of letters. They now regard the traditional art of the peasants with pride as their own inheritance, seeing in it also the many links that bind together the various branches of the great Slavonic race

More than fifty years ago the peasants of Bohemia began to discard their pretty showy costumes, and only in the southern parts, far from the industrial centres and the high roads of commerce, have the forms of the ancient life been preserved. Thus, in the south-west in the Bohemian border district where the people are called „Chodové“ plural of „Chod“, (pronounced Khod i. e. „Walker“)—as they had to patrol the border-land between Bohemia and Bavaria in consideration of certain special privileges granted to them: Here continue to the present day, the old-time customs and to a considerable extent the wearing of national costume. Thanks to the favourable influence of the more educated classes who have succeeded in convincing the people that they would lose much of their individuality by discarding their national costumes, they have been prevailed upon to continue to wear their national