Siklódi Csilla szerk.: Tradicionális sportok, népi játékok (A Sportmúzeum Kincsei 2. Budapest, 1996)

Mozgásos népi játékok Hajdú-Bihar megyében (Vajda Mária)

Mária Vajda Movement oriented folk games in Hajdu-Bihar County (Summary) The topic of the paper is the movement oriented folk games, and especially the different skill and strength games. Among these we can find the well known movement teaching games of small children connected to different ditties, but also the games of smaller and elder children, boys and girls and even adults that require strength, skilfulness, nice movement or fastness. The child imitates his or her environment on a level and in a form that correspond to his or her physical and intellectual skills in the different ages. This activity helps to learn the different movements and works. At the beginning the adults are active while calming and distracting the child, but the playing exercise endures until the child leams to clap, to shake hands, to go, to crouch, etc. The different imitating games represent mostly different elements of the work by the expressive rithm of joining the hands and moving together. A certain differentiation of the movements imitating the male and the female work reflects the division of labour determined by the role of the sexes, but sometimes there are overlappings, too. An interesting group of the movement teaching games is that of the animal imitating movements. Children like to match their skills. They always want to prove and this is reflected in their games as well. The most respect has the one who is the most skilfull and the strongest. The skill games were not only among the children, but also among the young men very popular. Here I want to mention the fact that the games of the adults mostly escaped the attention of the researchers, and they were not recorded but occasionally as accessories of different customs. We also find but a few references that child games were played sometimes by juveniles and adults too. The typology of the games played by the adults is not made yet, we still have to work on it.