Buza Péter: Spring and Fountains - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)
about the derivation of the name, though there are several plausible explanations. For example, we can be sure that the name of the area, Zugliget [Niche Grove], contains a hidden reference to boars, even though this reference is not easily recognisable in its present form. The region was a popular boar hunting area in King Mátyás’ time. (It was called Sauwinkel, which is German for boars’ corner or boars’ hideout. The initial “S” was then dropped and thus the word became “Auwinkel”, which means Grove-Niche, the reverse of Niche Grove-Zugliget.) It is not impossible either that the water welled forth through a cranny in a rock resembling a boar’s head, which was later replaced with a carved stone. Whichever explanation is true, it is for sure that the place was already a famous spot hundreds of years ago. According to one authority, the spring, which yields 3-10 litres of water per minute today, flowing down the hillside was channelled into an artificial terraced cascade, whose carved stone traces could be seen standing out of a cart road in the 1920s, even though its sides had been eroded. When we consider the modern history of the spring, we find that Disznófő became famous again with the discovery of the Zugliget region in the 1830s. Judge Zsigmond Kovács purchased the area, and he intended to open a medical institute in the hills to be called Priessnitz Sanatorium. There being no traces of it, we can presume that the project came to nothing. However, there did open a restaurant, which was to become the scene of May Day festivities attended regularly by the youth of Pest and Buda, who kept the place alive even after the tradition itself became defunct. In 1857 a fantastic sounding news item appeared about the Disznófő Well in Hölgyfutár, a magazine devoted to social life. The article reports: Small boats and gondolas have been launched on the pond by the Disznófő Well in Zugliget, so now Quiet night by moon-light shining Barcarole is heard resounding! A pond on the hill? With gondolas on it? Mock Venetian paddlers singing barcaroles? Besides these few lines, no other memory survives of this episode in the history of Disznófő. Hardly any trace except a few stone fragments remains of the ornamental fountains in the Castle, which, for the first time since the Roman era, had made water the source of aesthetic pleasure. 18
