Urisk Erzsébet: A viaszolt hímes tojás készítése a Muravidéken - Hogy ne menjen feledésbe 1. (Lendva, 2017)
Kazalo
Summary In Hungarian folk culture the decorated egg seen at Easter (pace egg) is one of the most widely known folk art objects, and is so highly esteemed as to appear in a number of folk sayings, such as ‘As beautiful as a pace egg’ or ‘Guard it like a pace egg!’ The egg is one of mankind's most ancient symbols of fertility and rebirth. Numerous folk mythologies have it that both the earth and life were hatched from an egg, and archaeologists occasionally excavate graves which contain eggs decorated using various different techniques. In the European cultural sphere decorated eggs have spread mainly in connection with Easter. The pre-Christian, spring greeting, traditions were adapted by the Roman church in the celebration of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. During the Easter festivities eggs are blessed as well as eaten. In some regions the young girls present love gifts of eggs to the boys who sprinkle them with water in the Easter fertility ritual, while elsewhere, such as in the Mura lands, eggs are given by godparents to their godchildren. The most common colour for Easter eggs is red: according to tradition coloured by the blood of Christ spilled for mankind. Decorated eggs are to be found in the folk art traditions of all the Central European peoples. The colouring of the eggs takes place in the run-up to Easter, usually during Holy Week. In earlier times the eggs were dyed plain colours (mainly reds, greens and yellows) using natural materials. The most common natural dye materials were onion skins, logwood, soot and oak bark. Often, the eggs were later decorated (or colloquially: ‘embroidered’) using a variety of techniques, including engraving and batik work; though etching and plant applique were also commonly used. This is the origin of the local, Hungarian name ‘himes tojás’ (“embroidered eggs’). The ‘embroidered’pace egg is one of the little treasures of the folk art of the Mura lands. In Ferenc Gönczi’s 1914 volume: ‘Göcsej s kapcsolatosán Hetés vidékének és népének összevontabb ismertetése’ (A Brief Introduction to the Land and People of Göcsej and Hetés), we find an extremely rich and lively tradition of egg decoration. By the 1960s though, when Slovenian ethnographer Niko Kuret noted the subject, the tradition was beginning to die out. That egg decoration has survived and that, today too, we can talk of a living tradition, is in no small way due to the key role played by the author of this book, Elizabeta Urisk. Elizabeta has been attracted by this fragile 45
