A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 3. - 1960 (Nyíregyháza, 1963)

Nyárády Mihály: The Grave posts from the Cevetery in Szatmárcseke

A joiner of Nyíregyháza, while wandering in Transsylvania, found the moustache on shelves for dishes („tálas"), cradles, bed-heads and shelves in libraries. Further,, on yokes too. Yet there, the ornament was called ox-horn (ökörszarv"). Dezső Malonyay and George Ráth alsó mention these ornaments, again and again. 5. My further researches yielded anew interesting results. In the town of Békéscsaba, for instance, short and complicated ornaments concordant with the ornaments of the edges of grave-posts of Szatmárcseke are similarly called „hungarian moustache", $ Also on the peasant-houses of Baroquing types in Szatmárcseke one can find ornaments of „hungarian moustache" as well as „lace"-indents. Yet here they are not present but on the side-faces of the posts. (Table XX, 1 and 2, Table XXI. 1.) In Fülesd I found such an ornament also on the edge of a post of a house. (Table XXI, 2.) As a carpenter — namely Lewis Jakab — said, the shorter „hungarian moustache" was used for decorating shorter objects, and the long and complex one — for longer ones. On the other hand, both were used by carpenters more on faces and by wheeler more on edges. For controling the results till now, I chose Napkor, such a village, the inhabitants of which, in their overwhelming majority, are of Roman or Greek Catholic religion. Both denominations are now, as to their mother tongue, represented by Hungarian, the former by ones of German origine, respectively, the latter ones of Ruthenian origine. In this village there appear as forming places for the „Hungarian moustache" the lintels („szemöldökfa") in the wicket-doors as well as the veranda-posts („tornácoszlop") of the houses. I came to see on them carving similar to those of Baroque consoles. In a garden and court-yard of the Kossuth Street there were the doorpests of the wicket-door adorned not only with „doubled hungarian moustache" but also with orbs (Table XXII, 2). The ornament is called „hungarian moustache" in Napkor too. And it is used also for other objects. E.g. for the „dents" — segments divided by denting — of racks of carts. In the churchyards of the village, however, they can't be found anywhere! Not even in the churchyards of reformed people immigrated-into later. Consequently it's impossible that in Napkor the „hungarian moustache" ornaments would have been copied from the churchyards. Trustworthy people of the village told that these ornaments were made by local carpenters having been apprenticed by certain artisans of a town. 6. There were other ethnograp hers too,dealing with the origine of the grave-posts in the reformed churchyard of Szatmárcseke. In 1930. by an article of him in the Hungarian Journal Ethnojraphia, A. Solymossy compared them with the ancient relics of the Vogule (chanty) and Ostyak (manysy) people and declared the graveposts ofSzatmárcseke to be of human face and the memory of the ancient use of Hungarian people to bury in boat. Solymossy' s conception was disbelieved already by S. Bátky. As to an ancient Hungarian burying in boat he demanded archeological, traditional, and linguistic facts of him! At the same time, he recommended to his colleague to look for a Hungarian boat similar to the grave-posts of Szatmárcseke because such a one ought to be regarded — as anything entirely new. These objections of Bátky were published in another journal and became wellknown only for people of the line, however, not for all even of them. (For instance, not for G. Lükő.) I don't think as needless, to publish this paper of mine, all the more because — as I know — neither Solymossy nor Bátky have ever seen the grave-posts of the reformed churchyard of Szatmárcseke. Solymossy's work is full with contradictions in other respects too. From my objections of eight point in all, I mention here only so much that he wrote about as if the dolls of Voguls and Ostyaks deads would have been of boatshape — without having it documented; moreover, he did not document also that the dolls of dead were of grave-post character; on the contrary, 80 pieces of such idols standing closely near each other in a park, are in themselves enough to clash with that the Ugrian idols would have been used for marking any grave. 217