Kecskés Péter (szerk.): Upper Tisza region (Regional Units of Open Air Museum. Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1980)

1. LAND AND MAN

ters, turners, bootmakers because only certain crafts were practised in the villages, such as spinning and weaving by the women, plus wood-carving, peasant carpentry, smithing, or such crafts as basketry, or the weaving of rough blankets and coats called „guba". It must have seemed quite an excursion to go to a distant town to purchase more expensive wares, for intance to Nagykároly, where curly reddish „guba" could be bought, and where a whole row of boot-makers sold their goods under the stone vaults on Monday markets. The largest country fairs were at Szatmárnémeti; there were four every year, each lasting 11 days according to right acquired by the town in 1571. Not only did local and Transylvanian artisans bring their wares here, merchants also came from Poland, Germany and Vienna with goods which matched the wares of more than 25 kinds of local products including those of goldsmiths and jewellers, button- and braid makers and so-called „Hungarian" tailors. The villagers of Erdőhát used to journey for products also to their immediate neighbours; for barrels and bins they would go to Tarpa in County Bereg, for cart-wheels to Dobrony and Hetyen, and at the market of Fornos they would buy ragcarpets to supplement the home-made ones. Peddlers would occasionally turn up in the streets of the villages and bring such wares as baskets and containers, bee-hives and cartmating woven of bull-rushes from the march-land of Ecsed and the village of Tyúkod, wooden implements and vessels made by Ukrainians and Roumanians, while potters coming from the highlands brought earthenware pots for cooking and the potters of Nagybánya sold glazed pots for carrying food. There were gypsies selling wooden tubs, and gypsy tinkers with copper pans, cow-bells and smaller bells. Thus, in spite of the fact that the Erdőhát region was inhabited only by Hungarians, the products of other nationalities and peoples living in other regions did reach the villages. These commercial relationships have a history of many centuries and it is from the regions mentioned here that the objects exhibited in the Szatmár houses of the Open-Air Ethnographical Museum derive. The Peace Treaty of Trianon (1920) imposed new boundries which cut off the Erdőhát villages from their earlier administrative and commerical centres cutting off their railway-lines, too. The new situation of living along the frontier helped to conserve the former way of life. The Erdőhát houses therefore demonstrate a way of life with a background of many past centuries. 11