Novák László Ferenc: Fejfa monográfia - Az Arany János Múzeum közleményei 16. (Nagykőrös, 2005)

III. Angol nyelvű összegezés

colourful ribbons (also the ornament of the brides man-stick) appear here as simplified requisites of former military funeral pomp. These requisites were thrown into the grave in the course of the funeral. Besides the requisites of military funeral pomp, also those of wedding ceremony were carried in the funeral procession if the deceased person was over his or her childhood - marriageable girls or eligible young men. They referred to ‘the wedding of the deceased person’ (as the young person could to live to see his/her wedding ceremony, it was held for the young persona as part of the funeral ceremony). At the head of the procession, a girl dressed as a bride or a young man dressed as a bridegroom advanced often carrying a candle broken into two pieces and rosemary on a cushion, which were thrown into the grave. The coffin was carried by young men dressed in their Sunday clothes and girls dressed as bridesmaids. The girls advancing near the coffin were carrying decorative flags. These flags were different from church flags and other flags, as they were not made of the usual fabric but from personal belongings. Colourful, woven scarves, which girls collected and stored up anxiously in their hope chest as wedding-dower, were pinned on linen bedsheets. The colourful flags had a sacrificial character as they were taken to pieces again after the funeral, and they were taken home (e.g. in the village of Pusztafalu in Abaúj county, in the villages of Kalotaszentkirály and Nyárszó in Kalotaszeg county, in the village of Tevel in Tolna county). At the head of the funeral procession, also a simple colourful flag was carried which belonged to the deceased person. However, it was not taken home, but it was stuck into the top of the wooden grave post at the end of the funeral. A similar ritual was performed with the flag on the spear in Korond - or is performed even in these days in the village of Sztána in Kalotaszeg county. The flag is nailed on the orbed wooden grave post and it will decay with time (in some places the flag is replaced by a new one). In the village of Kalotaszeg also a ‘three-branches’ were prepared from pine branches which were decorated with colourful ribbons. This is a cultic sacrificial symbol, which was called in folk-speech tebe or teve just like in the village of Diósjenő in the south of Hont sounty and in the village of Szokolya in Nógrád county. It was an important requisite of the wed dig ceremony. It was an important moment to lake it in the evening from the house of the family with marriageable daughter to the house of the family with eligible young. This custom appeared also in the funeral ceremony as the wedding of the deceased person. The ‘three-branches’ was carried at the head of the procession and it was put on the top of the decoratively carved orbed wooden grave port at the end of the funeral. This life-symbol on the top of the grave post is related to the custom of fitting the flagged spear on the wooden grave post or into the holder of the spear.

Consequently, the wooden grave post does not originate from a weapon, a lance or a spear. It is a relatively late phenomenon whose history can be traced back to the end of the 17th century, he wooden grave post became a general grave marker in Protestant, but in the first place in Calvinist graveyards after the edict of religious tolerance had been launched by King Joseph II. in 1781. Their use flourished in the last third of the 19th century and round the turn of the century i.e. after the defeat of the war of independence in 1848/49 which was followed by the compromise in 1867. This meant the end of the oppression of Hungary by the Habsburg (Austria). It was also accompanied by the strengthening of national identity, which found its expression in folk-ornamental art. The wooden grave post included also archaism in its ornaments and forms, which lived on in the millennial culture of the Hungarians.

Epitaphs played a peculiar role in military and non-military funerals and in the case of funerals of the gentry, of well-to-do citizens, of the social layer with ‘honour’. Text on the merits of the deceased supplemented with biographical data were engraved on a wooden board covered with ornamented precious metal, or on a simple wooden board, or on a slab, and placed on the grave. Epitaphs fixed on church walls together with decorative weapons (golden flag, decorative spear) were used not only by aristocrats but also by people of lower rank. According to historical data from the middle of the 17th century, a sepulchre was set up on a preacher’s grave in the

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