The Eighth Tribe, 1980 (7. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1980-07-01 / 7. szám
Page 4 THE EIGHTH TRIBE July, 1980 WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITION Reprinted from a book “A TRANSYLVANIAN LEGACY” written by Fredrick H. Barth — 302 pages — Price $11.00. (Use the Order Coupon on last page.) The bacon sides hanging in the “Speckhammer” (bacon room) and the lard in the huge grease pots provided our family with a year’s supply of fat. We didn’t know about any other type of fat for cooking, such as cooking oil, butter or margarine. Even though the bacon and lard was supposed to last until the next hog was slaughtered, it happened sometimes that my mother ran out of bacon before slaughtering time, in which case she had to borrow fat and bacon from some neighbor or relative. After we had slaughtered our next hog, the borrowed fat was returned. Just a few hours after the hog was slaughtered, large amounts of coarse salt were rubbed into the still warm bacon sides. The heavily slated bacon was supposed to withstand maggots during the summer season, but the salt did not always keep the maggots out. There was hardly ever a year without any maggots at all, but a smaller amount of them could be tolerated or ignored. We simply scraped them off with a knife when we ate our lunch. When my mother added a chunk of bacon to the cooking beans in the pot, some maggots escaped from being scraped off and disappeared in the cooked beans. One particular year, however—it could have been the year 1923—the summer was extremely hot and dry. The maggots thrived and multiplied to the point that we became worried that they might finish up the bacon before we did. When we opened up the door to the bacon room, one could hear maggots eating and moving around in the bacon. My mother was very much concerned about the prospect of losing the bacon, which was our main supply of food. One evening I overheard my mother, in a conversation with her good friend Sari Sester, mentioning the maggot problem. “Gefadder,”1 she said, “if I cannot find a way to get rid of these maggots, they will finish up my bacon before the grape harvest. Then what are we going to do until we slaughter a hog?” “Why don’t you talk with the old ‘Omfrah’2 and explain your problem to her,” said Sari Sester, “she knows all kinds of tricks in witchcraft, more than any one else in the village. Did she not take care of the vineyards last fall, when the birds were just about to eat all our grapes in the Kesslgrund vineyards? If she could take care of the birds, by putting the spell on them, she can take care also of these miserable maggots.” “Perhaps you are right,” said my mother, “I will go and talk to her tonight. There is nothing to lose if she refuses to help, or if she fails to get rid of them.” A short while later my mother went to see the old midwife woman. When she returned she brought with her the old Omfrah who held in her folded apron some things that she was probably going to use in her attempt to kill the maggots. The Omfrah went into the bacon room and locked herself in. After about an hour she came out. She forbade anyone to enter that room until the next morning. That evening we could talk about nothing else but the maggots and what the old witch might have done while alone with the maggots. Would she have talked them into dying, or what? Would she really be capable of killing those noxious parasites? On the following morning my mother was up first. The first thing she did was to go into the bacon room to see what had happened there. We heard a loud cry as my mother called my brother, “Come and see, Martz, the maggots are all dead.” I jumped out of bed and witnessed what had happened. The floor under the bacon was covered with a layer of dead maggots. The insects had dropped out of the bacon and died on the floor. My mother took a broom and swept the mess into a shovel and dumped it on the manure pile. Whatever the old woman did in the bacon room, I have never been able to learn. It didn’t seem important to us at the time what she had done; we were satisfied with the results. Not only did she kill the maggots—they could have died inside the bacon and stayed there—-but it seemed as if the parasites had hurried to get out of the bacon before they died. During my return visit to Seiden, forty years after the maggot incident, I brought up the subject of witchcraft with my relatives. “Listen, Martz,” I said to my nephew while we were walking up the street, “when I was a young boy there was a great deal of superstition here in our village. People believed in “Trudden”'5 and all kinds of mysterious things. But now I think that these things belong to the middle ages. You as a young man wouldn’t believe anything like that any more, would you?” Martz lowered his voice, and almost whispering, said, “Uncle, one shouldn’t talk about them very much, we have a witch living just a few houses up the street.” I was thus informed that there are still Trudden in Transylvania. I couldn’t help bringing up the subject again when the entire family was sitting around the supper table that night. Ziri, my sister-in-law, then took over the conversation and I taped her story of an experience with the “Trudd.” “Our yellow cow gave a buc
