Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 2. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1974)
J. Vorák: Kolompár Kálmánné kiskunhalasi cigányasszony kézimunkái
drawing it that the girl would wash the clothes of the old man in it. She drew it to help the girl in her work. The schooling of our gipsies in Kiskunhalas began as late as in the early 50s. Till that time no one went to school from the Cserepes gipsy row. Still there were quite a few among the men of the Cseerepes gipsy row who gave evidence of a surprising craftsmanship with their most primitive, self-made tools. In the study quoted above, Kamill Erdős mentioned László Jakab, a gipsy blacksmith of Cserepes who had made a „gold" wedding ring of a copper coin before the said author's eyes. The blacksmith even stamped the hall-mark on the ring. On the other hand, most of the women were averse to even the simplest work of sewing. When Mrs. Kolompár was young, the families roamed over the country from spring to late in the autumn. While the gipsies wandered from village to village, the duty of the womenfolk was to collect the pottery to be mended, walking from door to door. They had to procure food and to cook it. A manner of life like this did not permit sewing, neither did they sew in winter, not in the tents or later in the hovels. Also Mrs. Kolompár's mother was a woman ofthat kind. According to her daughter she was able to cut and sew a skirt or a blouse, still she did not do either if not compelled to, not even for herself. Not as if the gipsy women of Cserepes had not been able to do the simplest operations of cutting and sewing but because, owing to the w 7 ay of life they had to lead, they were averse to sewing. Ferenc Bakó published data on the metal-working gipsies of Tiszaigar whose mode of life resembled the one of the Cserepes gipsies of Kiskunhalas : „ . . . the women worked by far less than the men. They participated in the work of providing for the family mostly by begging or wending certain articles. Yet occasionally they undertook daubing, whitewashing, mud-plastering. Besides housework their only productive activity to be considered permanent was tying bent-grass." 3 This is a work demanding great skill and much toil, a hard labour. Still the gipsy women of Tiszaigar used to do it. About the gipsy women of Cserepes in Kiskunhalas we cannot say even that much, except that recently some of them are making abode together with their families in summer. Neither can they be ranged with the gipsy women of other tribes in Kiskunhalas not living in the Cserepes who help their husbands in hollowing troughs with surprising skill. I tried to find one among the women of the gipsy row who had a disposition for decorating and drawing like Mrs. Kolompár. I could find none. This disposition of hers should be considered individual in the Cserepes gipsy row of Kiskunhalas. Mrs. KOLOMPAR'S BODICES The three bodices of Mrs. Kálmán Kolompár can jointly represent the origin, prototypes and perfection of their maker's adorning activity, singular in the Kiskunhalas gispy row and still specifically gipsy. It is a commonly known, general phenomenon to be observed everyday that our gipsies complete by foreign, in most cases secondarily applied accessory adornments the articles of clothing they have received as presents or bought in the second-hand market or in shops. When chosing this accessory adornment, an attraction towards vivid, most staring colours is characteristic of them at all times. The men like yellow or red boots and fabrics with shrill pattern. Both with men and with women this accessory adorning may not be there. In such cases the otherwise common garments express the specific taste by the manner in which they are worn. The simplest manifestation of applying such accessory elements: the printed cotton of vivid colour is bought in a shop, cut in the „gipsy way" by a Hungarian seamstress, and to the border of the ready skirt the gipsy women sew a two fingetbreadths wide red ribbon (or often even several of them.) It should be mentioned that they have a taste for buying and also wearing without alteration the Kalocsa bodices got to Kiskunhalas through dealers of old clothes. The exceedingly vivid colours and gaudy decoration of these attract them irrestisibly. On the whole, the cutting of their bodices complies with the simple, everyday linen blouses also worn by our peasant women in Kiskunhalas ten or twenty years ago. Also our simpler peasant women of Kiskunhalas and even the better-to-do ones in the detached farmsteads wore these between the two World Wars. As to their cutting, the Kiskunhalas peasant bodices can be considered 3 Ferenc BAKÓ : The metal work of the gipsies of Tiszaigar. — NÉ XXXVI. 1954. pp. 239—256. 178
