Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)

Interethnic spaces

Between cultural and geographical borders 157

look at the original Czuczor’s text, we find that it does not coincide with Botka's view:

Mátyusföld [...] is the region originally ruled by the famous Máté Csák of Trencsén at the beginning of 14th century, and includes the area spreading along the Váh River from Trencsén to Komárom and the areas lying on the right side of the Hron River. Hungarians living outside Csallóköz, in Pozsony county, and those in Lower-Nitra county, Udvard district of Komárom county, and Párkány district of Esztergom county still regard themselves as people of Mátyusföld. The people of Csallóköz, in most of the cases, consider the region between the Nádszeg or Érsekújvár branch of the Danube and Váh River as the Mátyusföld region.5

(Czuczor-Fogarasi 1862-74: IV, 144)

Here, Edit Féľs finding, made during her fieldwork conducted in Marcelháza (Marcelova in Slovak) in 1943, must be mentioned. According to her, inhabitants of Marcelháza did not regard themselves as people of Mátyusföld. Those living in Mátyusföld called them “Palóc", but they did not feel to be “Palóc”, either. Who Edit Fél or the people of Marcelháza regard as natives of Mátyusföld is, however, not presented in the paper.

The linguist, Gyula Zolnai, who shares Gergely Czuczor’s view, when mapping the dialects of Mátyusföld, chose Pozsony and Párkány as respectively the eastern- and westernmost parts of the region (Zolnai 1891: 2). However, he did not manage to prove the linguistic unity of the region. The problem is further complicated by Vilebald Danczi’s view who, while presenting the dialectal peculiarities of Kürt (Strekov) village, writes that “the village is situated in Mátyusföld, so it belongs to the Palóc dialect area” (Danci 1939: 7). In contrast to this, János Mohos, the scrivener of the neighbouring village of Kisújfalu (Nová Vieska), in his answer to a placename collector, Frigyes Pesti’s questionnaire in 1860, adds the following remark: “Mátyusfölde - includes towns and villages along the Váh River from its head to its entry into the Danube. The region was named after Máté of Trencsén whom this land formerly belonged to” (Pesty Frigyes Helynévtára: undated).