Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/121

97 There remains now, only one district in western Bohemia where it is possible to learn by personal experience, how a special mode of life and the nature of the soil have together evolved the fashion of dress peculiar to this part of the country. During a holiday one can meet somewhere near the Bavarian frontier not far from Domažlice (in German „Tauss“) in a mountainous and not very fertile country, walking in the extensive woods tall, lean old men wearing broad-brimmed black hats and longtailed white coats of home-made cloth. These are types of the old „Chods“; who even now remember well their privileged position which they only lost in the eigtheenth century, to become bondmen like the rest of the agricultural population of Bohemia. The women also appear in a dress of ancient cut and sedate in style, long skirts of red cloth in stiff rich folds, the short bodices embroidered with beads and trimmed with silver galloon, the collars of the chemises are sometimes embroidered in black to demostrate the mourning of the wearer for the popular hero Kozina a staunch defender of their privileges, executed at Domažlice.

From Domažlice, the tourist reaches Plzeň by the express in one hour, but though the distance is short, the contrast in the landscape is very striking. Instead of mountains,—deep forests and green meadows, a plain presents itself with its undulating fields of golden grain, and in contrast great fields showing the dark green leaf of the beetroot, everywhere there is evidence of the fertility of the soil and signs to cheer the heart of the farmers with the prospect of a bounteous harvest.

Here, only a few traces of the original dress of the country survive, but in former times the rich garments of the portly women from the extensive farms, harmonised well with the signs of the land’s fertility and the prosperity of the country generally which made life easy. They are not so tall as their neighbours from Domažlice, but rather stout and not so sunburnt.The peasant women near Plzeň used to wear a dress made under the influence of the

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