Vankóné Dudás Juli: Falum, Galgamácsa (Studia Comitatensia 4. Szentendre, 1976)

Juli Dudás Vankó: GALGAMÄCSA, MY VILLAGE (Summary) This volume which presents folkloristic and ethnographical material from the beginning to the end is an undertaking on the part of the editor of the Series which no doubt will arouse interest. Its illustrations, at the same time, will delight the researchers of naive painting. In this book a peasant woman of 57, Juli Dudás, the wife of Imre Vankó, described and depicted everything she knew about her birth-place, a village located at a distance of 40 kilometres north-east of Budapest. Juli Dudás is a versatile folk artist, who has been painting, singing, making embroideries as well as leading a group of folk-singers and dancers for the last forty years. The Introduction rounding out and commenting on the chapters was written by Ildikó I. Sándor, the ethnographer on the staff of the Ferenczy Museum in Szentendre. She edited the author's manuscript and prepared it for the printers and also selected the illustrations to the publication. Her preparatory work which spanned several years went parallel with a collecting of objects as a result of which almost all the items mentioned in the book — primarily clothing — have been deposited in the Szentendre Museum. The indexes to the volume have also been compiled by Ildikó I. Sándor. The Introduction (BEVEZETŐ) presents the village on the small river Galga which has preserved its own ethnographic relics to this day. The group of 8 to 10 villages in the region lying along the Galga forms an ethnic unit, which is an extension of a larger ethnic group, the „Palóc", living on the north, amongst whom more research has been conducted so far. This book is about the life of Galgamácsa, a village safeguarding its traditions, as it is viewed from the inside, by a person, who lives there like every other people in the village. The Introduction is complemented by an ethnographical bibliography concerning the village. Essentially the first chapter: „My Village and My Life" (I. FALUM ÉS ÉLETEM) forms part of an autobiography in which the author makes us acquainted with her childhood spent in poverty, the years of schooling in the village, the consecutive periods of girlhood, wooing and marriage. In addition to an account of her everyday work and later on of her artistic experiences (her successes and failures) the author describes the events of family and village life, and even includes historical events such as the war, followed by liberation and the organization of co-operative farms. Juli Dudás gives a detailed account of her drawings, the important commissions she received (e. g. the mural paintings in hotels in Balatonfüred, Dunaújváros, Budapest and Tokyo) as well as of the films made of her and of the exhibitions that presented her art. The second chapter is entitled „Father, Mother, People and Memories" (II. APÁM, ANYÁM, EMBEREK, EMLÉKEK). In the first section of this chapter the author writes about the motives of her own particular life separated as it was from customary village life; she describes how she became herself a guardian of the village traditions influenced by the example of the researchers of folklore such as Bartók, Kodály, Gönyey and others. 320