Horváth Attila – H. Tóth Elvira szerk.: Cumania 4. Archeologia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1976)

Matolcsi J.: Táltosló az Izsák-baláspusztai honfoglalás kori sírban

ving a magic hoise. Without wishing to get entangled in the details of the old religious ideas delt by S oly mossy® and Diôs^egï^ we want to point out that the early Hungarian shaman could have less convincingly performed his magic trances, meetings with spirits, changings into animals, fights in the air, prophesyings dashing along causing wind or storm, etc. without this magic horse. The folk tradition holds that a shaman has to be born, nobody can be a shaman purely by training.

35 Dienes who calls the old Hungarian faith shaman religion summarizes the traditions and descriptions of the ways someone could become a shaman as follows : "The shaman (táltos) was appointed to his vocation by supernatural beings, as a sign of which he was boin with some additional bone or tooth, or more than ten fingers. The man thus elected to the high calling of shaman might remonstrate in vain — if he resisted he lost his life or became a cripple. The shaman novice then contracted a grave illness while still in his youth: it was believed that on such occasions the spirits snatched him away and took his body to pieces in search of the superfluous bone that proved fit for office. When after this ordeal he revived, he already possessed his magic power. It was then that his initiation took place before the whole community, the most important event being the climbing of the shaman tree, symbolizing the World Tree, when the young shaman introduced himself to the heavenly powers. The symbolical ascent won him his magic drum with the aid of which, in a ritual trance, he could conjure up the spirits for the rest of his life, or could bring his drum to life and turn it into a magic steed swift as the wind to take him to distant lands if he so desired."

36 But let us see how a shaman gets his shaman horse? For the answer we have to turn again to Ipolyi whose following description will help us understand why we might consider the horse found at Izsák-Balázspuszta to be a shaman horse. "The shaman is generally a serious, thoughtful and sad man. — He has to fight a bull and when he fights it he also becomes a bull. When they clash, burning-hot flames come out 33 SOLYMOSSY S. : Magyarság Népr. (Hung. Ethnogr

.), IV, 402-449. 34 DIÓSZEGI, V.: 1967. 35 IPOLYI A.: 1854. (See DIÓSZEGI, V., ed., 1971. 254.) 36 DIENES I. : 1972, 50. of their mouths. If the shaman defeats the bull, he will go for wanderings in order to find a magic horse for himself. The magic horse is always bad and skinny up to the time when the shaman buys it. If the shaman finds such a horse, he will first ask about its price. If it is offered at a cheap price, he will leave or not buy it until the owner wants the proper price for it. If he gets such a horse, he will dash on it fast as thought. Swords or bullets cannot hurt a shaman . . ."

37 A fragment of an ethnographical article vividly describing the outer characteristics of the shaman horse fits well here: "The most important outer characteristic of a shaman horse is that it appears as a crippled horse. It is ill, skinny, scabious, ugly, spasmodic — the most unsightly horse in the royal stables and studs. Also, popular sayings refer to this: from hell comes the magic horse; folk tales even stress it mentioning, that it is turned out to graze on the rubbish-heap, it lives on dung, sometimes it is even sunk into the dunghill being half-rotten. Its torn saddle and dirty gear hang in the loft of the hen-pen or on the crocked willow. But the hero recognizes it even in this form, and in turn the magic horse begins to speak : I have been standing for you here and lets him know about its supernatural force. After being washed and rubbed down it has golden hairs, silver and diamond hairs, golden shoes, golden bells hanging from each of its hairs; sometimes it has supernumerary members on its body, nine legs, five legs, three heads; or obversly it has sometimes only three legs."

38 Since the objects of archaeozoologic 1 studies are animal bones unearthed at archaeological excavations the scholars in this field of science cannot describe the outer characteristics of the shaman horses in such a colourful way as the folk tales. On the other hand they have an advantage in that while the folklore deals primarily with the mythic traditions collected in the last 100 to 150 years, the bone studies revealing their osteological pecularities. Such pecularities were first discovered by Bökönyi in the Avar cemetery of Keszthely,

39 where the skeleton of a stallion, the remains of a shaman horse, was uncovered w

T

ith a supernumerary 37 IPOLYI A.: 1854. (See DIÓSZEGI, V.: ed., 1971, 254255.) 38 IPOLYI A.: 1854. (See DIÓSZEGI, V.: ed., 1971, 212.) 39 BÖKÖNYI, S.: 1974, 290-292. 207