Antall József szerk.: Népi gyógyítás Magyarországon / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 11-12. (Budapest, 1979)
TANULMÁNYOK - Hoppáy Mihály: „Anya és gyermek" a magyar folklórban — A hiedelemvilág etnoszemiotikai megközelítése (angol nyelven)
¡§¡. Hoppá : ,,Mother and Child " in Hungarian Folklore 95 cades, and even for centuries. (For cross-cultural comparisons, see Yanez—Polo— Zaragoza-Rubira 1974, Nikolsky 1929, Biering 1973, Ohler 1972.) It has been established that beliefs and behavior are closely linked with each other. One might also say that beliefs work as a program in the cybernetic sense of the word in everyday life where culturally relevant information (or in another word: tradition) is stored by a great number of individual memories. And in the form of different texts (i. e. advice, prescription, prohibition, etc.). The different spheres of the everyday "knowledge" form different subsystem of the belief system. Analyzing texts and the relationships of the elements, it can be seen that the different subsystems overlap each other. Beliefs related to mother and child in Hungarian folklore clearly belong to the field of ethnomedicine and that of magical consciousness. (For Polish examples see Szychowska-Bøebel 1972:117.) A system-model (proposed by Blehr 1971:34—37) could be useful to approach the pragmatic aspects of the problem. Belief and the value-system have been intensively investigated by social anthropologists. To folklorists a belief refers to "superstition". However, the analysis of knowledge, belief, native categories, folk-taxonomies, and of ethnoscience form a coherent system. The proposed notion of network seems to be useful for discovering affinities between cultural units. APPENDIX — Texts collected by M. Hoppá — 1. In the old times they laid an old, used sheet on the floor and the woman gave birth kneeling on that. 2. In the last forty years they gave birth on the bed. 3. In order to have an easy birth they made the woman blow into a bottle. 4. Giving birth to twins brings luck. 5. Twins bring luck only if they are both boys. 6. Giving birth to twins brings bad luck, one of them is going to die. 7. About twins they thought, that if one of them was sick, the other, no matter how far he was, would feel it and would also become sick. 8. They believed about twins that if both were of the same sex, they would be barren. 9. If one of the twins is a boy, and the other is a girl, then neither of them will have children. 10. In the case of twins if the boy is born first, then the mother will be unlucky, if the girL is born first, then the father. 11. If a child is born with the umbilical cord wound round his neck he will be hanged. 12. They tied the umbilical cord of a child with a piece of string, after a few days it dried off, they put it away in a dry place. Till the age of seven he must not know about it, then they give it to him and if he can untie it quickly then he will be clever with his hands, if not then he'll be clumsy. 13. At birth the midwife was helping out, she did the first bathing of the child, she measured the temperature of the water with her elbow. 14. The midwife came to bathe the child every day for a week after birth. 15. They washed the mouth of the child with the first bath water. 16. At the first bathing they poured cold water on the hands and feet of the child so that he would not be chilly. 17. After the first bathing they dry the child with the wrong side of a pettycoat and they, put his shirt on him inside out.
