Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 2. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1974)

J. Vorák: Kolompár Kálmánné kiskunhalasi cigányasszony kézimunkái

The self-made ,,zsaba" (differing from the traditional ones) of Mrs. Kálmán Kolompár. (Thorma János Museum, ethnogr. inventory No. 67.14.1.) Figure 3. Made in 1966 by Mrs. Kálmán Kolompár, gipsy woman of Cserepes in Kiskunhalas. Meaning of the figures according to Mrs. Kálmán Kolompár in June 1967: 1. Young man, calls the girl. 2. This was on it before, I made it this way because it is nice and flowery. 3. Girl: a bride. Stands under the cherry tree. 4. Cherry tree. 5. Sour cherry-tree. 6. Mug, that's where prople pluck sour cherries in. 7. Hare. 8. Horned bird. After I had the communications had repeated at wide intervals, I had the controlled denominations of the figures on hand. That the bird figuring in most primitive representations became now a goose then a duck, that the dog became occasionally a little hare or the other way round, and that the shepherd having a good time with his mate turned to a man who made love to his wife did not suprrise me, neither could it divert me from further searching. I had to bear in mind that after years no one could have given the denominations of these drawings without mistake and identically every time. They have no individual marks referring to geese, hares, dogs or bears, as have frogs or tortoises. Together the figures of the three cloths give a characteristic picture of all what mean good, desirable, nice: „lucky" things to their maker. Summing up the definitions given on all figures of all three cloths and of the ,,zsaba" at each communication as to their meaning, the figures suggest the following classification : a) Figures got into the cloths without any meaning, just out of the momentary caprice of their maker, like the circus monkey riding a bicycle of the ,,good-luck cloth". Maybe they were drawn just for the pleasure of drawing or to show that: ,,I can draw also that!" b) Figures with an expressly adorning character: „Big, curly forest trees, flowers just to make it nicer. — I had to put something there, too . . ." c) Representations of things desirable and good in themselves: house, carriage, child, horse. d) Simple symbols generally known and used or, owing to their simpleness, to be interpreted by anyone: girl with perambulator, stork meaning childbirth. e) Drawings to be understood as symbols of more complex character, to the comprehension of them one only can make an attempt when in the knowledge of the gipsy beliefs in Kiskunhalas. We had enough reason to suppose that Mrs. Kolompár connected to quite a few of her figures a meaning which had its roots in some gipsy belief. It can be hardly found out about Figure 5. of her first „wedding" cloth whether it represents a boy or a girl. According to Mrs. Kolompár's statement made in June 1963, it is a girl with a can who is standing under a weeping willow and is sad. Subsequently this girl becomes a boy with a can three times. On one occasion he had a can in his hand because he was watering the flowers, another time because „the can is good, it means good luck" and, eventually, he carried the can quite full of red wine so that those for whom the cloth had been made should have luck. — Mrs. Kolompár designated the figure in best faith when she said it was a girl and also when she declared that it was a lad watering the flowers and a young man carrying red wine in a can. The significance of the figures can be understood in both ways. The figure occurs, namely, in a cloth made for a wedding. Taking an analogy from the world of Hungarian beliefs: in the Bakony Hills people believe that „Sad brides become merry young wives". Mrs. Matthias Mátrai née Rózsea Varga recorded as a superstition of the Szarvas region: ,,. . .at dawn on Good Friday the girls go to the banks of the Körös river under a willow, there they undo their hair and comb it round and downwards in the way the branches of the willow bend. Each time they make a stroke with the comb, they say: snakes, frogs get you behind our house. They say it threee times in succesrioa. No slanderous tongue, no gossip will get near them and their household after that." — If, on the other hand, the figure means a boy with a can, and even more if it represents a young man congratulating with a can full of red wine, then evidently a comparison presents itself with either the Hungarian belief of Kiskunhalas that every vessel has to be full at weddings so that the young couple should never be in need of anything at any time, or but with the wedding belief of the Kiskunhalas gipsies when the young people returning home are greeted with a can full of red wine to bring them luck. Mrs. Kolompár also referred to the significance of the young man greeting with the can of red wine herself. As I could infer from her repeated communications, in the solution of exactly the figures to be ceonnected with gipsy beliefs 1 could not count on Mrs. Kolompár herself. I could only draw conclusions from her blunders. Besides a repeated mention of good luck, she gave evasive answers or no answer at all to the question why the thing repeatedly declared by her as such was lucky. There was only one solution: I had to enquire gipsy informants of Cserepes in Kiskunhalas (without showing them the cloths or mentioning their existence) about the meaning of each figure to be connected with gipsy beliefs. As an approach to this I could, however, only apply the analogies of the Hungarian beliefs, since I did not know the gipsy ones. Even if this way of approaching meant a difficult job, a comparison of the beliefs prevailing in a variety of Hungarian regions, of the Kiskunhalas beliefs corresponding to these and eventually of the Kiskunhalas gipsy beliefs proved to be useful after all. The comparison often had an agreement or result or at least differences, which pointed to a presumable common origin, in some cases expressed contrasts among the single Hungarian beliefs could be found, and in one or two instances it issued in a quite different belief of the Kiskunhalas gipsies, not even comparable with any Hungarian one. For a clear survey's sake I grouped the figures presumably referring to gipsy beliefs as follows : birds (or rather, taking also the bat in consideration: winged animals), animals without 193