Andrásfalvy Bertalan: A sárköziek gondolkodása a XVIII. és XIX. században (Dunántúli Dolgozatok 3. A Pécsi Janus Pannonius Múzeum Kiadványai 3. Pécs, )

Jegyzetek

IL ANDRÁSFALVY: THE HUSBANDRY OF THE SÁRKÖZ PEOPLE IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURIES Between the small river Sárvíz and the Danube there lies an area of about 100.000 cadastral acres, consisting mainly of tide lands, called Sárköz. In this area only a few island-like ridges remained as dry land at the time of a flood. On these villages have been settled, their population cultivated the land on the level free of inundations. In course of the past centuries alluvial deposit caused the rise of the highwater mark, so we may suppose that the territory saved from the flood and also the extension of agriculture were larger in the Middle Ages than later. The period of one and a half centuries of Turkish wars and occupation led to the devastation and depopulation of this part of the country too. The Sárköz territory consisted of more than thirty villages of old but only those settled on the marshy, shrubby, wood-covered islands of the inundation area have survived, whence the inhabitants could flee into the moorland in the time of danger. The Sárköz people subsisted mainly on livestockbreeding, fishing, fruit-growing and apiculture, as hardly one tenth of the area was suitable for agriculture. However, stock-breeding on the inundation area was made possible by the neighbouring flood-free chain of hills and plateau only, where the animals could be driven in the case of inundation. As early as in the Middle Ages large earthworks and planting of trees have provided the defence of the driving paths and dipping places against wind and water. The regular driving of herds from the hill-country to the inundation area and back have left its traces also on the toponyms of the Age of the Hungarian Conquest; one finds pairs of identical place-names on the hills and in the flood area. The natural surroundings, unchanged for centuries, enabling man to the extensive use of natural resources only, have preserved ancestral techniques and legal customs of stock-breeding, pasture, fruit-gathering and apiculture. Horses, cattle, swine were kept in the open all over the year. During the winter the hay, harvested in the meadows gaines by the clearing of forests, bushes and reeds, was consumed by the animals on the spot, then they were driven further to the next hay-field. Leafage and fresh reed have played an important part in foddering in olden times. Pigs subsisted on self-collected food all over the year; they grubbed wild fruit, acorn and roots even under the snow, they were fed also on fish amassed in waters desiccated in the summer. Also agriculture was a subordinate of animal keeping: if all fodder has been consumed in the flood-free area on account of a protracted inundation, animals were allowed to graze in the green crops as well. Legal customs, protecting the interests of the community, dropped in other parts of the country for long, survived as late as the end of the last century. E. g. the meadows, gained by the hard work of clearing, were regarded as private property till the end of the mowing only. But if the cattle of an other entered the place at any time, causing damage, and if it perished by falling into the well dug in the meadow, the proprietor was bound to pay its price. (For the reason that he did not fence round the well, dangerous for animals, carefully.) The fruit of a grafted tree was divided among the direct descendants in equal parts ; the tree itself may have belonged to an other person than the place where it stood. To promote traffic in this area, everybody was entitled to use the boats kept in the river branches, lakes and waters freely, with the proviso that he had to restore them to the former place after use. In the middle of the past century a husbandman possessed 8 to 16 horses, 5 to 6 cattle and the same number of pigs in average. The head of the family, the eldest man stayed with the animals, absent from the village all over the year, living in abodes and thatched huts constructed in the meadows. He was assisted in keeping the animals by the unmarried young men of the family. Only young couples, women and children remained in the village, they cultivated the land, they performed the corvée down to 1848. The old people came to the village to get clean linen and food once a week, or they were provided by another with these. These aged men lived a separate social life in the faraway abodes. They spent the evenings in one or other of the huts, cooking and chatting. The process of anti-inundation work changed an ever increasing number of one-time pastures of the flood area into plough-land. The emphasis of husbandry has been transferred to agriculture. The old breeds, kept in the open, have been replaced by new species of animals, kept in stables and cow-sheds. The peasantry of the Sárköz became rich, the arable land has grown to seven times as much than before in a few decades ; thus the families, having only a few children, were forced to hire field-hands and day-labourers from among the poor of other regions, in or-