Agria 40. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2004)

Zábrátzky Éva: Történeti mondák Bakó Ferenc gyűjtéséből

Éva Zábrátzky Historical Sayings from the Bakó Collection The interests of ethnographer Ferenc Bakó, one-time curator of the István Dobó Castle Museum, although mainly restricted to Heves County, covered an unusually wide area. While his main field of research was folk architecture, he made some important findings in the field of social ethnography and folk customs. His papers, which came into the possession of the museum, provide a body of information giving an interesting insight into the way he worked and the phases into which his academic career can be divided. Bakó spent an enormous amount of time engaged in fieldwork, something evident in the numerous transcribed interviews he left us. The historical sayings to which we now refer can be found among the Bakó documentation. The most recent catagorisation of historical sayings were those made by Ilona Dobos at the conference of the International Society for Folk-Narrative Research held in Budapest in 1963. We will therefore be using the following categories during the course of our investigation: A) Sayings connected with the origins of ancient sites B) Sayings connected with places a) Sayings explaining place-names b) Local sayings C) Wars D) Sayings connected with heroes The sayings, originating from thirteen settlements in Heves County as well as the village of Sajónémeti in neighbouring Borsod County, put a special emphasis on historical events and personalities considered important by the local inhabitants. As the product of an oral tradition, the specifically local references also contain motifs found elsewhere in the country as well as abroad. Apart from stories connected with datable events, there are also sayings resembling those referring to the origins of sites which, like those referring to the Csörsz Ditch, are set in an unspecified period. The sayings which survive in the collective memory trace the history of the local landscape from the Hungarian Conquest to the Tatar and the Turkish wars, and the Rákóczi War for Freedom to 1848-49. The Turkish presence left a deep impression on Heves County, something seen in the large number of stories relating to that particular period. Of the great Hungarian monarchs both (St) Ladislas I and Béla IV appear in the sayings connected with the origins of ancient sites and 345