The pillars of Hercules

However extensive the culinary operations in the chieftain’s tent, they did not absorb the whole care of his household. Simultaneously were going on the plaiting of baskets, the weaving of stuffs, the churning of butter, the preparing of skins, and the casting of bullets. The mould is two pieces of slate for half-a-dozen bullets at a time. The bow and arrow of the Numidian hunter having given way to the musket, this might be considered, at least, a modern invention. But no, they were slingers as well as bowmen, and in the manufacture of leaden pellets, they were so expert, that, as Ælian tells us, Cæsar had supplies from hence. The dwarf palm presents them with materials for tents, ropes, baskets, dishes, &c. The plant is called Doum or Jumard; the fan-like leaf, Lyzaf, serves for baskets, and their dishes are baskets. From the fibrous substance round the stalk or root, Liff, they spin thread, which they weave for the tent-covering, and spread out upon the ground, passing the thread with the hand. The haïks are, of course, home-made: those for the women and children have sprigs or lines of bright and lively colour. The weaving is more ancient[272] than the “flying shuttle” of Job, and is done by hand, as the Cashmere shawls, or Arras tapestry. The warp, which is very slender, is suspended; the woof, thick and slightly twisted, is passed by the hand; when there are colours, there is a ball for each; every colour in the pattern, is one thread. After the thread is passed, a flat heavy iron with short spikes, protruding like a comb, is used to beat it down, when it gains the character of felt.

But this vestment is of too great importance in a domestic, manufacturing, political, hygeian, and picturesque point of view, to dispose of thus. We travel thousands of miles to see an old ruin. Adventurer after adventurer staked his life against a glimpse of the interior sands of Africa. Here is the swaddling bands of a race. Is it not worth turning over and handling, and seeing what it is made of, and how it fits?

THE HAÏK.

If Prometheus had set himself down to consider, not how many things he could invent for man, but what single invention would serve him most, he might have fixed on the haïk. It is not known in Arabia, Judæa, or any part of the East. It is mentioned by no ancient writer; yet on its intrinsic characters, I claim for it the rank of first parent of costume. It is found in Barbary. Who then shall assign to it a date? The region is a nook in the ocean of time, where the wrecks of all ages are cast up, and here, like the moon, these things are found, which are lost elsewhere.

A shuttle and loom to weave, pins to knit, scissors to cut, or needles and thread to sew, are requisite for every other dress; the haïk dispenses with them all. It is a web, but not wove (in the modern sense of the word); it is a covering, but neither cut nor stitched. When Eve had to bethink herself of a durable substitute for innocence, this is what she must have hit upon. The name it bears is such as Adam might have given, had he required it in Paradise, “that which is wove,” i.e. web.

It is only a web, yet is it coat, great-coat, trousers, petticoat, under and over garment, enough for all and everything in one. Being but the simplest of primitive inventions, it outvies in beauty, and overmatches in convenience the succeeding centuries of contrivance and art: it completes the circle, the last step being not to return to, but merely to perceive the beauty of the first conception, and yield a barren and æsthetic applause to the perfection of the primitive design.

It is the only costume to which the language of the Bible is adapted, or by which its metaphors are intelligible. When I had seen it, I understood “rending the garments;” “Justice as a garment;” “girding with power;” “robing with light,” “clothing with a cloud.”

Adam’s names were given, not only as a description but with perfect knowledge of objects, which seem removed from the ken of man, until long labour and accumulated experience had found the order and the purpose of nature. What can be more exact as a logical definition, or more striking as a poetic image than the “day,” (םוי)—an “agitator;” the earth, (ץרא from צד) a “runner.” The heart derives its name from its action, בבל; the lever, דבכ, from its weight.

The objection will doubtless be urged, that the Easterns do not change their fashions, or lose their habits, and if the haïk ever was in Palestine, it would still be there. I answer, two successive races have been driven forth from the Holy Land. The first three thousand years ago, the second nearly two thousand. Both of these, at present, wear it in Morocco. The Jews, when expatriated, adopted elsewhere the costume of the country wherein they settled, their own being proscribed; and those at present found in the Holy Land have returned thither with foreign usages, the very language being the Castilian. Thus, all that belonged to the Philistine and the Hebrew, has been swept away, and the original features of that most interesting of all countries have been, by Chaldean or Egyptian, Persian or Parthian, Greek or Roman, Pagan or Christian, utterly effaced.

The Jew under his common clothing wears a mystic garment. Why he wears it, or when the practice arose, neither wise nor simple can tell. In vain is the Rabbi appealed to, the Talmudist consulted to explain the Tisit, which from Archangel to Suz, every Israelite puts on in the morning and takes off at night; or of the Talith which he wears in the synagogue when he prays.[273] Yet the meaning is as plain as if printed in an Encyclopædia.

These names do not occur in the Old Testament, and no mention is made of them in the “Six hundred and thirteen Fundamental precepts of Judaism,” promulgated after the return from the Babylonish captivity to enforce and maintain the ceremonial law, and which continue to be their code of life and manners. No mention of them is made in the New Testament, or in Josephus, or Hecateus, or any writer who treats of the Jews. Yet as this practice is universal, its date must have been antecedent to their dispersion: what more clear than that, when forbidden to appear in their costume, they preserved it in the sanctuary, and in secret bound an image of it to their hearts? What more touching record of the sorrows of an exiled people?[274] Linked together by oppression, they have since clung to a practice which they have ceased to comprehend, and the token handed down by their fathers they respect as a religious observance or cabalistic sign, and venerate the stuff for its fringes,[275] not for its former memory or future promise.[276] The Tisit is a small Talith, the Talith a miniature haïk.[277] The only difference is in the distribution of the fringes, and in the borders: the haïk has the fringe at the ends and no border. A blue border was enjoined by the ceremonial law. The Abyssinians wear it still.[278]

I do not think that I need say one word more on this point; nor can I imagine, under the circumstances, any proof more conclusive that the haïk was the clothing of the people of Judæa. If this be not admitted, it will have to be shown, or supposed—the one as difficult as the other—that the successive emigrants, when they collected here, invented a new costume, and abandoned that which they had previously worn. I have already referred to the metaphorical language of Scripture, applying to loose drapery, and not to fitted clothes; such must have been the dress then worn: there is no Eastern dress of the present day to which it will apply. It is only by forgetting our own costume that any grave thought can be associated with the expression, “baring the arm:” tucking up the sleeves, or appearing in shirt-sleeves, would be a metaphor amongst us suited to a scullery or a slaughter-house. “Girding of the loins” is nonsensical, not only with our costume but with every other: the person is already dressed. If the girdle be part of the dress, it is already on; a supplementary one is not carried about. This absurdity has been felt by the translators; for when they make Christ “gird”[279] himself to wash the feet of the Apostles, they add, “with a towel.” The terms in Greek, περιζώννυμι, ὰναζώννυμι, are appropriate, and describe what a Moor would do, viz., draw the fold of the haïk, which hangs over the left shoulder, and passing it round the waist, bind the whole tight, and leave the arms free. In like manner the expression, “the sin that most easily besetteth us,” implies, “the fold most closely drawn around us.”

On the night of the flight from Egypt, the Jews were ordered (Exodus xii. 34,) to bind up their kneading-troughs in their clothes upon their shoulders. What clothes are requisite for carrying on the shoulders a kneading trough? The haïk.

Why kneading-troughs? The Jews did not carry ovens with them. Cakes are kneaded, one by one, on a board or stone, and then laid upon the hot stones or embers, or griddle.[280] Such is the practice of every nomade tribe: a kneading-trough would be of no use. It must then be something of the same description; of course the kuscoussoo tray. Not a tribe moves here that the women do not carry it “on their shoulders,” “in their clothes.” When that diet is used, that dish is of primary necessity; and on that account, as likewise by its dimensions, is worthy of being mentioned in this manner on the occasion of a sudden flight.

The haïk and the kuscoussoo are here united. If you heard of any other people having the one, you would inquire whether they had not also the other. Here in one sentence is it shown that the Jews, when they entered the Wilderness, had both.

If they wore the haïk in the Wilderness, they had it when they entered the Holy Land; for as they did not want new clothes, so would they not change old habits.[281] The people they drove forth were the Brebers, who wear it to-day. The Jews went to Egypt from the Holy Land; Abraham therefore wore the haïk; and having seen him in that dress, I can imagine him in no other.

It belongs but to a small portion of the human family to have a change of raiment for the night;—a striking peculiarity of this dress is its adaptation to both purposes. It is the costume for people who live in tents, and who cannot carry about with them bed and bedding; who must sleep in their clothes, and who prepare for their night’s repose as we do for a journey. Thus, the Jews were commanded, if any had taken the raiment of another in pledge, to restore it “By that the sun goeth down; for that is his covering only—his raiment for his skin, wherein he shall sleep.” Leaving free circulation of air, and not suffocating the body with its own breath, it is at once subservient to convenience and conducive to health.

The Hebrew terms of the Old Testament, the Greek translation of them, and the Greek terms of the New, are quite in accordance with the inferences I have drawn from the scriptural imagery and incidents. The words, “garment,” “raiment,” “clothes,” “coat,” are used at hap-hazard, and we can attach to the costume of the Bible only the most vague and confused ideas. In the Hebrew, however, there is no such disorder: none of the names now used are indeed to be found there, but those used, perfectly suit the Moorish costume, and by it they can alone be understood.

Morocco presents an infinite variety of pieces of dress. These are at first bewildering,[282] but may be reduced to the three vestures already mentioned—a tunic, a pair of drawers, and a haïk; to which is added as accessory, a girdle, a cap, and a pair of slippers. The drawers, shewal, are put on first. Then the sleeveless tunic, Inshwarwan, reaching over the hips; over this the richly embossed and embroidered belt, Indum,[283] and over all the haïk: the drawers and girdle exactly correspond with those mentioned in the Bible. For all other garments, two words only are employed, תנתכ, kitonet, whence the word “cotton,” and also “coat,” this is the χιτωὺ of the Greeks—the sleeveless tunic of the Moors, and הלמש, shemlah; this is the ἱμάτιον of the Greeks, the toga of the Romans, and the haïk of the Moors. It was woven among the Jews by men and women. It was in this that the Jewish women were to bind their kneading-troughs: it was in this the poor man slept, and therefore it had to be returned when taken in pledge “by that the sun went down.” The kitonet might be retained.[284]

The haïk was the dress, not of the Jews only, but of the Canaanites, including among these the Phœnicians; it was wholly different from the costume of the Egyptians, and—as we have now the opportunity of minutely knowing—from that of the great Assyrian empire, which lay to the east, and had spread over the north and west of Asia. Neither does it appear to belong to the Arabs. They wear it indeed now in Barbary, but not in their own country, and it is not likely that the change was there.[285]

The Greek robe was white.[286] It was put on as a clothing, and was at the same time a covering such as might be used to sleep in at night.[287] It was not put on to fit as a dress.[288] It was ample in its folds, and fell to the feet.[289] It covered them all over. But citation of authorities is superfluous. Look at the statue of Demosthenes.

But the Greeks may have invented it. The Greeks were copiers or copies; they improved what they received, but in the beginning they were wild and rude. This dress belongs to early simplicity, and to the people who from the first were pre-eminent in poetry.

But, taking it as if it were no more than letters or science, then if we find it both in Greece and Judæa, must we not hold it to be derivative in that country which in other respects has been the pupil, and primitive in that country which in other respects has been the mistress? Greece, when visited by the adventurers from the Holy Land, was in the rudest condition in which man could have existed, in regard to everything except the bright spirit of that race, the first light of which shone in aptitude for such teaching. Bloodshed was not the vehicle of “civilization,” nor lances the heralds of a faith. The fugitives and strangers who taught them how to sow and to weave, they made, while living, princes and chiefs, and worshipped when dead, as heroes. The Phœnicians introduced the costume of Greece, as they did her letters and her religion.

The resemblance is so evident between the toga and haïk, that the only question is, “Was it original or borrowed?” and if borrowed, “whence did it come?” As the Greeks stood to the Phœnicians, so did the Romans to the Etruscans. Critical inquiries had already traced that people to Canaan: recent discoveries have made us familiar with them. Their tombs, into which a lady has conducted us, transport us to the life and manners of the Old Testament. A traveller in Barbary might take them for the ancient sepulchres of this country. In the tombs you have over and over again the haïk.

The Etruscans were merely a colony: they recorded the date of their arrival, and kept the birth-day of their city. It has been a question recently raised—whence they did come. Müller brings them from the Alps: Mrs. Hamilton Grey, from Africa.[290] The toga must have been, of necessity, in the country from which they came, for they did not come naked. Had the haïk been then as now restricted to Barbary, I should at once admit the African derivation. But it is traced to Lydia.[291] A cast of one of the rock tombs in the British Museum, exhibits sculptured groups the size of life, with the colours still remaining, which shows us, as in a mirror, this ancient Phrygian people. There is the toga: it is worn over the head; men and women wear it alike. It is a group of Moors. Two boys appear; the head is shaved, with the exception of a tuft of hair on the crown! one of them carrying the oil-bottle and strigil. No other ancient people shaved the head; we only hear of it among the people of Mauritania, and that in respect to the children. The Moors, as I shall show, had the bottle from the earliest times. These boys are perfectly naked, while all the others are dressed. To-day, among Easterns and Mussulmans, and, to their infinite disgust, the Moors alone preserve the ancient practice of bathing naked.

The same peculiarity is observed in the Etruscan tombs: the noble youths served naked at their entertainments. Thus, with the strigil, the toga would serve to suggest Lydia or Lycia as the source of the Etruscans, if Herodotus had not recorded the tradition, or the Etruscans themselves had not claimed this ancestry. This tomb enables me to say that the manners of ancient Phrygia (I use as a general name that of the chief of the states of Asia Minor) are, at the distance of three thousand years, preserved with a fidelity of imitation, or an identity of character, in modern Barbary, such as at the interval of thirty years can scarcely be reckoned on in Europe. The toga and the strigil are indeed common among other people; but the shaving is a peculiarity, the value of which I will show elsewhere; and the preservation, singly in Morocco, of the whole of those features which this tomb presents, must go far to identify the ancient inhabitants of the western districts of Asia and Africa, or the Phrygians and the Brebers, and supports my derivation of the name Africa from Phrygia, which I imagine was given to the latter country, while Breber was given to the Phrygians; that is, that the names, severally preserved in Asia and Africa, were then common to the two countries and people.

Toga, from tego, to cover: ancient as is the epithet, it could not be original, for it was the coat of peace, and they commenced as banditti. They were not a nation, but a city of aliens and refugees. I know not what the Romans could call their own, save the master-spirit of selection and retention, as the Greeks had of curiosity (περιεργία) and embellishments.[292]

We have traced the course of the haïk along the shores of the Mediterranean; found it clothing Solomon, Hannibal, Pericles, Amalek, and Porsenna. We have carried it back to Hercules, to Abraham, and his fathers before him. Here is a monument of antiquity, to which the Propylæa of Memnon and Palaces of Ninus are modern structures. If in Pheleg’s time we know the earth was divided, when were the costumes? When the division took place, the original was reserved to the elder stock. If the clothes were varied with the tongues, then again must this one have kept its Edom dialect. Through Babel over the Flood, and dropping there all its associates from amongst the devices of man, or the works of his hands, it strides backwards alone till it reaches the first family’s solitary cot, where it grew between Eve’s soft fingers. We find it still the chief work in the far West of Eve’s fair daughters;—no pauper child has sighed over its fibres, nor have the spindles begun their turning to the dismal tinkling of the factory bell.

Haïks are like leaves of trees—you never see two alike:—as sentences are interminable, yet the syntax one, so have haïks their grammar. They are of all textures—of many substances—plain, striped, yet uniform. Silk and cotton are mixed together; both are mingled with wool; they are alternated in stripes. The texture varies from felt to sarcenet, from coarse blanketting to gauze; there is the massive fold defying the tempest—the gossamer wing trembling with a breath; colours are not excluded, gold is not forbidden. The most beautiful specimen of workmanship and taste I ever saw, was a white haïk with a deep border of gold.

The haïk of the men is absolutely and undeviatingly white. Colours are reserved for children, sometimes also for women, but they are associated always with the idea of indulgence and distinction. Thus was distinguished the daughter of David, Tamar, and this was what aroused the jealousy of Benjamin’s brothers, and when the last of the Ptolemies was saluted king of the Romans, he too received from the senate a coat of many colours.

To put on the haïk, it is dropped on the ground; one corner is lifted and brought over the left shoulder, and held upon the breast by the right hand. Then, by stepping backwards, the fold passes behind, and is brought under the right arm round in front. Another step across it, and it is behind again; then taken by both hands outstretched, it is brought over the head, measured so as to be left hanging low enough on both sides for the play of the arms. The end is then thrown over the left shoulder and hangs down the back. There are no ties, no buttons, no separate parts: the drapery is wrapped round with the sole fastening of its own folds. Dispensing with so many adjuncts, it supersedes all intermediaries. It is made under the tent; there is no tailor wanted; no shopman, no dealer, required; this is the link between a national costume and a people’s well-being. The Spaniard’s cloak, of which the style consists in the lap thrown over the left shoulder, is a mixture of the haïk and the bornoos: to this day the Spaniard looks upon the want of a cloak as the want of decent covering;—to be without a cloak is, as it were, to be naked.

Great as is the distance between the attire of Europe and that of the East, not greater is the distance between its magnificence and the dignity of that of Numidia. The excellence of all other costumes resides in their own composition. There is not one which does not strain or coerce the human frame into its own design. The excellence of this is, that it follows nature, neither designing to embellish nor endeavouring to conceal; it reveals, but does not expose; it covers, but does not disguise.

The antique is, however, only present where all the subsidiary garments disappear, and the haïk remains the sole clothing: there protrudes an arm and part of a leg, or the breast is heaved, or sometimes the whole outline of one side is visible; for the drapery is shifted in all conceivable ways, and according to their occupations; so that there are passing before you, and called up, as you look around, all the celebrated statues or groups of antiquity. One of these, which has remained most strongly in my eye, occurred in a boar hunt. While watching in my cover, a rustling called my attention to a neighbouring clump, and there stood an Arab; his gun resting on an edge of rock, his haïk unwound from both shoulders, and secured by a cord of plaited palmetto over the shoulder, as is often seen in the ancient statues; the drapery falling behind and extending over the ground; the left limb advanced, slightly bent, and exposed to mid-thigh, where the drapery swept to the ground. Here was a statue, and yet a man; not a model set up in a studio, and the form of the antique adapted to a modern musket!

We admire the mechanism of a joint, and then invent clothing which shall deprive it of its play, and ourselves of its use! Here nothing interferes with the freedom of the limbs, or disturbs the mechanism of the frame and its action. It is plastic to the hand, to relax or gird, as the occasion may require. Each figure as he stands before you is a statue, and each change of attitude, a study.

When we raise a statue to a hero, we eschew our own dress—the dress he wore. Our fancy weaves for him a haik: we borrow the majesty of its large folds, although we have never beheld the splendid simplicity of its dead colour. It is the dress for kings and patriarchs.[293]

The exposure of the body to the air does not give the impression of cold in the way that those whose clothing has a similar character or integuments will suppose; whoever has worn the kilt will know this. The fact is, that the air supplies warmth, and when freely circulating round the body, a sort of respiration takes place through the skin, which, while conducive to strength and health, supplies that light and agreeable sensation which belongs to a costume, where there is clothing enough to secure warmth, and freedom enough to admit air. Of the value of this freedom we have a striking illustration at home, and to which no other country in Europe affords a parallel. The butcher-boys and the Blue-coat school boys go about without that covering to, or protection for, the head, which for all other degrees, and in all other countries, is deemed essential to health and comfort. Do they suffer from being bare-headed? No. What then is the value of our prophylactics, and what do we know about the management of ourselves? Nay, children suffering from all sorts of diseases and weakness are cured, and they cease to complain when their heads cease to be covered. As to comfort, they all prefer it, as every one does prefer the simplest things, when, by some accident, the chain is broken of that servitude of manners which we have forged for ourselves.

Now that we have our portraits taken by the sun’s rays, and numberless scientific men are tracing the effects of light on the functions of animals and the growth of plants, separating the parts of rays, and finding in them agencies of so many, so powerful, and such distinct kinds—it may not be absurd to speak of the merit of a costume that admits to the body light, as well as air. We are always in the dark. On light and heat a series of experiments have been reported to scientific societies by fifty philosophers; but none of them has ever thought of letting his own toes see the sun. Modern science always overpowers me with melancholy—so much light in the focus, and such darkness in the hemisphere! Contrast the majestic ignorance of primeval times; then, grand with so much ease; now, with so much toiling, mean.

Those members which have to support the weight of the rest, deserve peculiar care, and might even claim exclusive favour, but they are more wretched than the rest. Our poor feet are doomed to a dark dungeon, from the cradle to the tomb. Never are they suffered to look upon the sun, never allowed for a moment to touch the earth; once a day, perhaps for a few moments, they get a glimpse of the subdued light of a closed chamber, or perceive round corners of a table, the artificial glare of a wax taper; that respite over, they are straight again, rammed down into their cases. After this, they are vilified; their very name is mentioned with repugnance, and their sight associated with indecency. No revolution is to set them free, no change of fashion to break their chains: hopeless drudgery, unrequited toil, supercilious scorn are their fate, and the care which is bestowed upon them is to pervert their nature, to disfigure and deform them, and make them even to themselves a shame. The man is no gainer, who treats his feet with such injustice; and the costume no slight benefit which prevents him from doing so.

If the standard of taste sink, we expect from the gifted spirit an effort to raise it. Alas! it is they who weigh upon and degrade it. The workshop of the artist:—does one recall the figures which adorn a Moorish encampment.

But the heaping up of drapery, and the loading of gold “for effect,” which the royal academician steps back to admire, leaves the end of costume out of view. That end must be attained in all perfection. It must be a clothing for the figure, as well as a drapery for the eye; and of this no artist—and indeed no master—has had the thought. As to colour, it is the same, with the exception of the appropriation of blue and white in the Spanish school to the vesture of the Virgin. There is no more discrimination exhibited in a gallery of master-pieces, than in a tailor’s or a milliner’s shop, and, in fact, the cant of the virtuoso has passed to the showman in the shop.

How different the Greeks! Their draped statues still exist: their paintings have disappeared, but a Roman critic bewailing the same confusion, points out to his compatriots, the primitive[294] colours of the master-pieces of Apelles, Protogenes, Zeuxis, and Theron.

But the sensitiveness of the poet may have supplied the blank left by the artist, or virtuoso. I take one as a specimen. “The Greek,” says Schiller, “is to the greatest degree accurate, true, and circumstantial in his descriptions; but he shows no more heartfelt interest in the beauties of Nature, than in the account of a dress, a shield, or a preparation for war.” No more! If he felt for the beauties of nature, as he did for his costume, his armour, and the great event of war, how immeasurably would he have left behind the modern German’s whining sentimentalism about rainbows and groundsel. To this the German and the modern are reduced, because war has become a secret and a trade; our weapons a matter of commissariat and costume—a covering fit for apes.