The population of the Ukraine is composed of several races, which have more or less amalgamated with each other. The Scythians, or Cossacks, were the first to seize upon the lands and to defend them; but their nomadic habits, added to a thirst of predatory excursions, did not allow them to set a just value on these lands, which lay, for the most part, in fallow, or altogether uncultivated. Poland, accordingly, established therein colonies of veteran soldiers, whose services seemed worthy of a recompense; and whose posterity constitute, at the present day, the nobility of the Ukraine. Besides the Polish and Russian nobles that have long been established here amidst some Cossacks several families of the latter, tired of their unsettled and turbulent life, built dwellings and settled here, forming a class of small proprietors, much more numerous in the Ukraine than in any other part of the ancient kingdom of Poland. The grandees have at all times formed and still form, as it were, a separate caste. There are also many Jews in the various towns. The huts of the common people are formed of argillaceous loam, mixed with the hair of beasts, and covered over with glaize, or fine clay. These huts are cleaner and more convenient than those of the Russians; and they are generally surrounded with fruit trees.
The costume of the common people in the Ukraine, resembles that of the Cossacks. Their hair is gathered up behind into a tuft; and they wear loose trousers. The young women wear a corset, fitting close round the waist: their long flowing tresses, hanging over their shoulders, are tricked out with variegated ribbons; and there is much grace and elegance in the general features of their dress.
The celebration of the nuptial rites has been, from time immemorial, accompanied with singular and peculiar usages. In other countries, probably without exception, the softer sex are wooed; in the Ukraine, on the contrary, they are the wooers. When a young female has conceived an attachment for a youth, she goes to the house of his parents, where she tells the young man, in the presence of his parents, that " the kindness she beholds depicted in his countenance, and the good qualities of his heart, inspire her with the hope that he will prove a good husband, and under this impression she has come to beg he will accept her as his wife." If this initiatory announcement meets with hesitation or coldness on the part of the parents or their son, she sometimes renews her solicitation, either immediately or after the lapse of a few days; and then, if the young man assents to her proposal, the parents believe they would expose themselves to the wrath of heaven, should they withhold their compliance.
Then follow the ceremonies of the betrothal, which are more boisterous, more expensive, and of longer duration, than elsewhere. At the time of the sacred ceremony, the father of the intended inflicts upon her, during the administration of the holy sacrament, several slight blows with a kind of scourge, at the same time saying to her, " if to-morrow you obey not your husband, it will be he that will chastise you." On the day after the marriage, amid the prevailing mirth and festivity, attestations of the chastity of the new bride are attached to a board aiExed to the chimney-piece; and, if her purity is arraigned, there is neither dancing, nor music, nor rejoicing, but a mournful silence is observed; and amid this gloom, several females, with tears streaming down their faces, and one of them bearing a dead crow, suddenly appear sobbing, and lamenting the lost innocence of the unhappy maiden;
and all the family prostrate themselves before the All-powerful, beseeching him, in his divine mercy, not to visit the sin of the daughter upon the whole family. The bride is then publicly beaten by her father or nearest male relative; receives a number of strokes corresponding to the years of her age, and must observe a rigid fast for a certain length of time. This custom is not, however, in all cases, rigidly observed. There was an exception to this custom, if it was proved, by respectable witnesses, that the girl was too basely treated, during the invasion of some barbarous horde; a visitation at all times frequent in the Ukraine.
The nuptial ceremonies for a widow, though they are remarkable and singular, do not seem worthy of especial notice here. A woman, guilty of infidelity to her husband, was formerly buried alive up to the neck in the ground, and condemned thus to perish by starvation. This law, which was in force among the ancient Scythians as well as in Russia, still remains valid in the Ukraine, although it is not strictly enforced.