On the first Monday in Lent the women wash their knitting needles for luck in a stream which runs through Julfa. The children educated in the Mission schools laugh at these and many other superstitions.
The dress of the Armenian women is very showy, but too much of a _huddle_. Red is the dominant colour, a carnation red with white patterns sprawling over it, They wear coloured trousers concealed by a long skirt. The visible under-garment is a long, "shaped" dress of Turkey red. Over this is worn a somewhat scanty gown of red and white cotton, open in front, and very short-waisted, and over this a plain red pelisse or outer garment, often quilted, open in front, gashed up the sides, and falling below the knees. Of course this costume is liable to many modifications in the way of material, and embroidered jackets, heavily trimmed with jewellery and the like. As fashion is unchanging the acquisition and hoarding of garments are carried to a great extent.
There are two marked features of Armenian dress, one, the massive silver girdle made of heavy chased-silver links four inches long by two deep, often antique and always of antique design, which falls much below the waist in front, and is used to confine the ends of the white sheet which envelops an Armenian woman out of doors, so that it may hang evenly all round. The other is a skull-cap of embroidered silk or cloth, placed well back on the head above the many hanging plaits in which the hair is worn, with a black velvet coronet in front, from which among the richer women rows of coins depend. This, which is very becoming to the brilliant complexion and comely face below it, is in its turn covered by a half handkerchief, and over this is gracefully worn, when not gracelessly clutched, a _chadar_ or drapery of printed cambric or muslin. A white band bound across the chin up to the lips suggests a broken jaw, and the _tout ensemble_ of the various wrappings of the head a perennial toothache.
[37] I have written nothing about this fast-increasing sect of the _B[=a]bis_, partly because being a secret sect, I doubt whether the doctrines which are suffered to leak out form really any part of its esoteric teaching, and partly because those Europeans who have studied the _B[=a]bis_ most candidly are diametrically opposed in their views of their tenets and practice, some holding that their aspirations are after a purer life, while others, and I think a majority, believe that their teachings are subversive of morality and of the purity of domestic life.