Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 2. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1974)

J. Vorák: Kolompár Kálmánné kiskunhalasi cigányasszony kézimunkái

given as engagement presents also among the Hungarians of Kiskunhalas. The latter were worn as pieces of holiday attire by young wives or even by older women up to the time of World War 1. Mrs. László Jakab, our 60 years old informant living in Cserepes in Kiskunhalas remembers these cloths as follows : „There was that large silk shawl which when put on reached down to the ankles; in it the gipsy brides went to w

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ed. The gipsy bride also had a wreath. Her mother-in-law and also her father-in-law gave her such shawls if they could afford it but others could give them, too. To wealthy gipsy brides many such shawls were given." She knows nothing about any Kiskunhalas gipsy woman who would have made and presented as a wedding gift a cloth resembling Mrs. Kolompár's one, a cloth having the same meaning and bringing luck. On the other hand, she does know of another kind of smaller head shawl which was red as a rule. This was bought by the future mother-in-law for tying up the bride's hair. Against the first allegations of Mrs. Kolompár, Mrs. László Jakab asserts that also the Kiskunhalas gipsies used some kind of a cloth at christenings, if they had their children christened at all. These cloths could also be old christening covers acquired from the Hungarians. Yet the gipsies could hardly get at these, since the covers were being jealously guarded after the children had been christened. „They took them to church in what they just had. In most cases it was just a piece of linen torn off a pillow-case or a piece of bed-sheet and they did not even hem it." — Mrs. László Jakab was similarly unaware of the existence of burial cloths amongst the gipsies of Kiskunhalas, at least of the circumstance that our gipsies in Kiskunhalas would have connected some belief with them. Besides the head shawls of dead gipsy women, Kamill Erdős also had knowledge of another sort which was bound under the chin of the dead. „ ... if one can steal a small piece of the cloth holding up a dead person's jaw and sews it into the clothes of the one she loves then — till he is wearing those clothes — that person will always have good luck." — „The one whose hand prickles in the presence of a dead person, should wipe his hand into the shroud." -— In the same work Erdős mentioned the „interruption of mourning" done with a cloth.

6 We do know of the two kinds of cloths used at weddings, of the cloths for covering the child at christenings, of the shrouds and winding sheets used at burials by the Cserepes gipsies, — however I could not obtain any information about a function of these that would be connected with any kind of gipsy belief. Of course, this does not mean as if there had not been or were no such beliefs. Our gipsies become rather mistrustful when asked any such queftion. The reports of Erdős permit the assumption os the existence of such beliefs connected with cloths among the gipsies. On every one occasion of giving information, Mrs. Kolompár insisted on having „sewn good luck" into her cloth. Later she accompanied her „baptismal" and „gift-cloths" given as presents to the Museum with similar statements. For these she already accepted small sums but just the fact that the sums were small and that she could not count even upon these in advance, render any trickery improbable. The interpretation of the drawings on the cloths was made difficult by the fact that Mrs. Kolompár told the denomination of their figures on several occasions during recent years but regarding most of the designs she merely insisted upon their being propitious besides naming them, telling that they meant „good luck, very good luck and that one means even better luck", etc. To the question why the represented figure meant luck, she in most cases gave no answer at all, or if she gave one- it was by an incidental lapse of the tongue. Part of the drawings stitched into the cloth are of a kind that they can be understood as wishes of good luck also in their primary meaning, as the famele figure pushing a perambulator, which she embroider ed on the cloth made for the wedding. Similarly, it was easy to interpret the stork as a symbol of wishing the birth of children. That she drew a house with garden and flowers, is but natural. She intended to wish wealth by it. According to the same interpretation the cart and horse in another of her cloths can be understood. Among our gipsies these express wealth. Her assertion that a child (a male child) means the best luck of all but that also girls mean luck, must be admitted as obvious. Similarly, we have to accept that sour cherries and cherries taste good and that poplars give cool shade. All these are good things in themselves. They can be completed by trees, flowers, large frilly leaves „just to make it nicer". Even so, 6 Kamill ERDŐS: Gipsy burial — NK. III. No. 4. 1958. pp. 107—127. 183