Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 2. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1974)
J. Vorák: Kolompár Kálmánné kiskunhalasi cigányasszony kézimunkái
8. Bodice. Costume generally worn by Kiskunhalas peasant women till 1920. Adornments on the shoulder patches and on the middle of the bust embroidered by Mrs. Kálmán Kolompár Thorma János Museum, 64.3.2. 8. Ingváll. 1920-ig általánosan viselt kiskunhalasi magyar paraszt női viselet. Vállfoltok és mellközép díszítése Kolompár Kálmánné kivarrása. Thorma János Múzeum, 64.3.2. the series of drawings conveys some kind of a group of good wishes which the gipsy woman who could not read or write did in this way because she was unable to express in any other manner what we would make known by a letter or a lengthy cabled text of congratulations. Naturally, even if one took the symbols on the cloths apprehensible at the first glance one after the other, their meaning could not be translated word by word. As to its meaning such a symbol can hardly be designated by a single word. There are not words behind the symbols but full conceptual contents. Quoting Jensen in her work: The Mystery of Writing, Elisabeth Herring counts this most ancient mode of communication with the pictographic symbols of stone-age man. She finds that such conceptual writing substantially reproduces but the meaning and never the most differentiated text which could be translated word by word. 7 Besides the designs which had got an acccptabe meaning by their mere denomination, as early as when information was obtained for the first time about the first cloth, among others the ,,horned bird" was left over. Mrs. Kolompár said about it that it meant the best luck of all. Why this was so, she did not want to know anything of, not even of where it could be found or what it was like. Nothing was left to me but to inquire about the horned bird among the inhabitants of our gipsy row in Cserepes, without mentioning the cloth to anyone. So it was that three informants told me that the horned bird was a bat. They knew this and also that the bat meant luck. Could it be possible that Mrs. Kolompár who stitched the horned bird into the cloths was 7 Elisabeth HERING: The Mystery of Writing — Budapest. 1966. p. 35. 184
