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

pally distilled from plums and the women used honey to make them more tasty. The wells yielding mineral water and the springs with good tasting water were held in high esteem. 7. The folk costume was subject to continuous change during the past hundred years, and today only the oldest generation still has certain traditional elements. In the early part of the 20th Century both male and female dress was quite traditional (Fig. 55-63), and it was first the men, who left the villages more often, whose dress shifted towards the urban styles. The undergarments of both sexes were made of homespun linen, the men wore linen aprons and short linen trousers which were wide in the leg and pleated. In winter they wore tight broadcloth trousers embroidered with decorative threads and black boots. The women preferred red boots and slippers. A characteristic garment of the men was a loose broadcloth cloak, mantle (szűr), a short sleeveless jacket of lambskin (bekecs) and a sheepskin cloak (bunda) reaching down to the ankles (Fig. 56-58). Young women wore bonnets decorated with long ribbons (Fig. 60-61), as well as head shawls of expensive silk (Fig. 63-64). The women wore their hair in buns, at one time held in place by large wooden combs (Fig. 62). One specific of women's dress in the Barkóság was a short outer skirt (Fig. 63) but in the 19th Century skirts down to the ankle were still in fashion. There was a very strict order of dress for women which told of the age and marital status of the wearer, and adjusted to the rhythm of holidays and working days, as well as to the change of seasons (Fig. 65-67). In winter women wore sleeveless vests of lambskin and coats with sleeves (ködmön). Another characteristic garment was a broadcloth coat with a fox collar, called the mente (Fig. 68). There were many small differences from village to village, particularly in women's dress, and the people of the region kept account of them. A lace, a ribbon of a different colour, the form of a bonnet told the onlooker the village from which the wearer came. 8. The rural society of the Barkóság was one of small, comparatively homogenous local communities. The tiny villages had no more than 200 to 400 inhabitants, while from 500 to 1000 people lived in the medium sized ones, and there were only four or five settlements where populations exceeded 1000. In the feudal societal pattern the different groups consisted of the lesser nobility, the serfs and the landless cotters. The vestiges of this stratification can be found even today. However, in the past 100 years the separation of the factory workers, the miners and the peasants became more important. In 1900 the ratio of people farming the land declined to 50 to 60 per cent of the population while nearly half of the people lived off industry. 13 193