Paládi-Kovács Attila: A Barkóság és népe (Borsodi Kismonográfiák 15. Miskolc, 1982)

survival of traditional culture. In the regions bordering on it to the north and east the inhabitants have been Calvinist since the 16th Century, and in the 18th Century religious conflicts were keen. In the latter half of the 19th Century the most significant metallurgical industry in the country was set up in the centre of the Barkóság, in Ózd. A small number of Slovak and German skilled workers were brought into the region to work in the modern factory industry and in the coal mines. Within a generation they were assimilated. Industrialization did not cause any shock or sudden explosion in the life of rural society. The transformation was gradual, development was organic and many elements of the traditions have been retained to this very day. 2. The dominant trees in the forests which determine the ecological nature of the region are oak, Turkey oak and beech. The feudal form of forest ownership and use changed after the liberation of the serfs in 1848. The peasant communities of land have been maintained to today. In the villages of the lesser nobility the common ownership of the forests was changed to individual ownership in the middle of the 19th Century (or earlier, in some places). The boundaries of these privately owned lands were indicated by property marks carved into the trees. In the peasant and lesser nobility forests the owners themselves felled the trees, while on the larger estates woodcutters were employed. The latter preferred to work by twos because the earned best that way but they also worked in groups of four to six. They produced firewood, construction wood and industrial wood (mine supports, railway cross-ties) alike It was a custom to remove the bark from the young oaks in early summer. A large amount of charcoal was fired in the region during the 18th and 19th centuries for the local iron industry. The big companies brought in a good amount of Slovak charcoal burning workers from Gömör County. There are still a few words in the language to preserve the memory of this period (e.g. lavenka, plésa). Forest industry only burned lime on the southern edge of the Barkóság, in the Bükk mountains. And this ancient method continued in this form until 1950 when it was reorganized within a factory framework. The sap of the birchtree and oak, tapped from the tree itself is a popular beverage among people who spend a great deal of time in the forest. They tap the tree with axes or drills (Fig. 1.). The sap of the oak is called boza and it is also used as a medicine. In the 19th Century wolves and wild boar were hunted by trapping them in pits, while roe-deer, and hare were hunted with snares, spring-traps, and foot-traps. They were also acquainted with the spring188