Introduction. 7 



scriptures into their language. These missionaries added 

 several particular signs to the common Greek alphabet, to ex- 

 press all the sounds of the new language they were to adopt. 

 As to the word Valaque or Wallach, German, it seems to 

 come from the Sclavonian word Wlach, pronounced nearly 

 Valaque, and which signifies an Italian : just uj the words 

 Walen and Wallon, in the middle ages, designated a people 

 whose language had affinity to that of the Romans. 



The Wallachians are, in general, little and robust j of an 

 aspect rather lively, but of a brutal and perverse character. 

 Their hair is black and clotted together, and of all the tribes 

 in Hungary, they are the most remote from civilization. The 

 men are naturally slothful, and if they can find means to satisfy 

 the most urgent wants, are with difficulty excited to labour. 

 Hence, they ever appear filthy and ill clothed, and they must 

 drag out a miserable existence. From this indolence and 

 wretched condition, De Sacy derives their name. He con- 

 ceives that the Greeks, who first made mention of them, de- 

 signated them by the name of Blax, which denotes idle, 

 contemptible. The women, on the contrary, are very active; 

 we never see them unemployed, and if we meet them in the 

 highways, it is always with the distaff or knitting in their 

 hands. It is they who manufacture all the clothing for the 

 family; they assist, and often become substitutes for their 

 husbands in the labours of the field. In their cabins they 

 manage the household business, while the men are smoking 

 their pipes, or reposing sluggishly in some corner of the tene- 

 ment or garden, or waiting till their meal is brought them. 

 This activity gives to the Wallachian women an advantage of 

 an exterior more engaging than that of the men, attended at 

 times with a certain elegance, and their costume in general 

 has nothing in it disagreeable. They wear no petticoats, but 

 their chemise, often embroidered with different colours, is 

 always very long, and they spread over it two aprons set off 

 with fringes, one before and the other behind. Their head- 

 dress consists in a sort of little bonnet tucked out and rumpled, 

 or in a handkerchief folded somewhat like a turban ; the young 

 women have their hair plaited, and sometimes pretty neatly 

 combed. 



Maize forms the chief article of sustenance with the Walla- 

 chians j of this they make a soup called memelige, and a sort 

 of bad bread ; they have scarcely any thing else but milk and 

 its produce, with leguminous plants and roots. The men are 

 immoderately addicted to drinking brandy. Their national 

 character is that of crafty, vindictive, pilfering, and superstiti- 

 ous, with no fixed principles of morality or religion. To 



