A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1969-1970 (Debrecen, 1971)

Néprajz - Ujváry Zoltán: Rain-Making Fertility Rituals

Spring and wish good luck to the people living in the houses they visit. They are given presents and they, in turn, give one or two of the green boughs they carry and also of the boughs covering Zeleni Juraj. The master of the house then digs these boughs into the ground in the garden or in the fields, occasionally in the stables or in the bee-hive, or he keeps them for protection against lightning. To illustrate the connections of functional questions we bring a parallel custom from Rumania which was described among Rumanians living in Transylvania. On St. George's Day at daybreak the young men go to the forest and there one of them is decked with green boughs. The boughs of willow or birch-trees cover him from head to foot. They place a kind of hat made from bark on his head and stick a little green bough on top of it. A sheep-bell is fixed on his back. This figure is called gocoj. Attended by his followers he goes back to the village. The lads play flutes, blow horns and shout with the gocoj jumping about in front of them. The leader of the group keeps shouting: if the people do not pour water on the gocoj, they will have no yield in the fields. Someone from every house, usually the housewife or a girl, comes out with a pail water and pours it him over. The Zeleni Juraj in Croatia and the Rumanian gocoj exhibit a surprising degree of similarity, although a direct connection between them is completely out of the question. Disguised figures clothed in green leaves crop up in popular tradition all over Europe. W. Mannhardt and J. G. Frazer maintain that such figures appear to personify vegetation. Recently E. Schneeweis expressed an opinion in which he considers such figures the humanincarnation of the spirit of vegetation. M. Gavazzi has pointed out that the custom Zeleni Juraj is a magic ritual which aims at the fertility of land, the protection and health of animals. In his opinion the Zeleni Juraj is the representative of the force of vegetation, a representative whose apothropeic function is the most important. Its connection with agrarian rituals is clearly shown by the circumstance that the people hide the boughs received from Zeleni Juraj and his companions, dig them into the ground to protect their wheat from harmful and evil powers. The connection of this custom with agrarian cult is beyond doubt. The motif of drenching with water is the dominant factor in the Rumanian custom called gocoj. Functionally speaking, this is the most important feature of the custom. Drenching with water obviously refers to the magical control of the weather and the crops. The customs described above, with plenty of dancing and dramatic elements are undoubtedly connected with agrarian rituals. Drenching with water is a form of magical ceremonies by which people want to see the same thing happen to the fields as happens to the person symbolizing them. The songs accompanying the custom also tell about the purpose of the custom. In the songs the people sing for rain in order to have more wheat, maize, grapes, etc. The ceremony, the dancing and singing all serve this purpose. This custom is of special importance also because rain-making, drenching with water is a generally practised ceremony in the agrarian cult. The man or woman who carries the garland made at harvesting time is drenched with water in order to bring down rain on the fields and have more crops. Occasionally they do the same with men who go to the fields to plough and sow. To illustrate the point a number of examples are given. In my paper I discuss two customs: dodola (Southern Slavs) and Paparudá (Rumania). Descriptions of these customs were published in Hungarian newspapers and learned journals as early as the end of the 19th century. These articles have escaped the attention of experts abroad up till the present day. Records from the 19th century testify that these customs have spread over to Hungarian territories bordering on Rumania and regions inhabited by Southern Slavs, but in Hungary the custom was practised mainly by gypsies. Various other ways of rain-making are known as well. E.g. in Hungarian popular tradition the church-bell or an expectant mother is ducked in the water of the river in order to invoke rain in time of drought. A cross (crucifix) from the cemetery is placed in the river in order to have rain within nine days. If a person was buried prior to the drought who was thought of as one practicing witchcraft, he or she was made responsible for the lack of rain. Then they digged this person out of the grave, stuck a pitchfork into his or her body, put garlic in the mouth and buried again with the face towards the bottom of the grave. Among the rain-making fertility rituals I also describe the custom when the harvesting garland is drenched with water in Hungarian popular tradition. 474