Girl's Ramble Through Europe Impressions By The Way

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 205, 15 September 1937, Page 14

Girl's Ramble Through Europe Impressions By The Way

(From a Special Correspondent.) TT is so early tha£, from this tiny village built along a shelf of Swiss mountainside, I look down upon the valley, still a deep, mysterious twilight green as though down upon the depths of the ocean. A door belonging to one of the chalets creaks open and a little girl comes out, shivering slightly, with an empty basket in one hand. She walks to the end of the village and takes the steep path leading upwards from it. There seems to be hardly ioothold enough for a goat, but she scrambles her way up, by the side of small brooks and rivulets, stop■pirig whenever she eatches sight of the glimmer of deep, midnight blue between the stones. Each gentian petal seems set with diamonds, and the sun, now showing above the shoulder of the mountain, tinges them a soft pink. Now the basket is full, and the girl/ begins to scramble, half sliding, downwards- again, and sounds of early morning life greet her from the village. The chalet shutters are open, and from the window of each a red mattress sticks out. Some distance further down from the village, she takes a seat in the small cable railway and swings into the valley, her fingers, still wet and cold, clasping the basket upon her knees. , ' The smart flower shqp opposite tlie Hotel Bristol is hardly awake yet. A sleepy young woman empties the basket, gives the child a few sous, and rearranges the flowers in another basket, a gilt one, with a deep blue ribbon tied about its handle. The sun rises higher, beats upon the lake, lures a few languid sun bathers towards the strand. About twelve o'clock the plate-glass doors of the hotel revolve, shooting out into the road two women, dressed with expensive simplicity, wearing thited glasses to keep out the glare. They glance into the florist's shops and pause a moment. "My glasses make everything look grey," one says, removing hers. "Those gentians are rather nice, though. Out of the basket, I mean." "They are fresh gathered this morning, Madame," says the shop woman, making a posy of them and pinning them on to her customer's shoulder, where they make a blue poem against the dazzling white of her suit. "Wait till you have been out here a little longer," says her companion, "You will get tired of them; they're so frightfully common."

They drift again, yawning (the fancy dress ball took it out of them the night before) and turn towards the Casino gardens, where the flower beds are ablaze with expensive, imported colour. Daughters of Mary. ' On summer Sundays the road between Budapest and the village of Mezokovesd is thronged with • cars . bearing tourists eager to, see the butterfly brilliance of the most famous costumes in Hungary. Mezokovesd is a wealthy village and a large one; therefore, the display at church ' parades is more colourful iri its massed i effect, more dazzling in its h'ead-dresses 1 ahd' embroideries of artificial jewels and , tinsel, than can be found elsewhere in Europe. From early moming the great Baroque church has been full of kneeling peasants whose multi-coloured petticoats spread ; themselves like flower petals on the floor about them. Before High Mass begins, i the unmarried girls troop through the ( village, wearing white and silver, re- ] lieved by a touch of blue— the Virgin's ' colour. Their pleated muslin skirts sway out from tight little bodices with old- ; fashioned peaked sleeves, and on their ( heads are towering coronets of massed ; white artificial' flowers. ) Against tliis purity, the richer tones i of the young married women's costumes glow like jewels: Glitterihg old brocade 1 bodices and skirts— handed down for ] generations— provide backgrounds for the ] heavily embroidered aprons worked on ' sateen in the Matyos stitcli peculiar to 1 the district, creating a riot of flowers 1 in the brightest colours— red, golden yel- : low and jade green. The aprons, too, haye long black silk fringes which sway j alluringly as their wearers walk. The bells ring out again when the ■ service is over, and the gay costumes spill over the Church porch into the ( village street, there to parade to and j fro, after the fashion on Sundays all i the world over, before the admiring eyes of the spectators. £ The little restaurant is soon crowded c with tourists whose midday meal is in- 1 terrupted constantly by the wiles of the i beautiful Matyos girls who offer their J embroideries, their quaint little heart- j shaped, fringed pin-cushions, from table i to table. * £ Chauffeurs are starthig up their en- c gines in the Square. Soon the last r tourist car leaves, and the dust begins ' to settle again.

Then, "church alike over, Mezokovesd proceecls to enjoy itself. The gipsy orchestra arrives; strikes dust rises under dancing feet, this time. But now the only audience is a handful of old women, black-shirted and aproned, hooded in black like crov/s, who watch regretfully tlie movements of the white-and-silver Daughters of Mary; the swaying colours of the wives, themselves debarred from ever wearing such costumes again.