Paládi-Kovács Attila: A Barkóság és népe (Miskolc, 2006)

Angol nyelvű összefoglaló

Sheep and swine were kept on the grazing lands grouped principally on a family or clan basis. Buildings were constructed there for the stock and the herdsmen (Fig. 8-10.). Milk production was not significant and up until the early 20th Century it was used principally for self-supply. Ploughed lands were increased at the expense of the forests and shifting from one piece of land to the next for cultivation lasted from the Middle Ages until the turn of the 20th Century. Steep slopes were cultivated with a hoe (Fig. 6), for it was impossible to plough every area. Rye was the principle grain. The traditional harvest was done with a sickle with a toothed cutting edge, and was the job of the women. The sickle was only replaced by the scythe somewhere between 1910 and 1920. Most of the traditional farming tools were still in use up to the 1950s (Fig. 14-19). Rye was threshed with a hand-flail, while wheat and barley were threshed by having horses stomp on it. Women processed hemp, including both spinning and weaving, up until the early 1960s. The most important cottage industry in the Barkóság was the production of hemp linen. Handicraft industry in the villages was insignificant, at the most one or two smiths and wainwrights subsisted from it. Water mills and iron forging workshops were set up alongside the larger creeks. Forging iron in the Barkóság goes back to the Middle Ages. Brown coal mining, modern iron manufacture and metallurgy became important in the mid-19th Century. 4. One characteristic carrying implement of the Barkóság is a canvas sheet which women packed things into and carried on their backs. Women also used back-packs (Fig. 28, 30-31) and back-baskets. They used shawls of various sizes for carrying bread and a long canvas sheet to tie their infants onto their shoulders. They carried pottery cooking vessels in carrying nets (Fig. 32). The men on the farm used wooden frames for carrying sacks, and racks for carrying manure. In some places they also used yokes to carry water, and also carried little barrels and wooden vessels on them. They only used sleighs in the winter when there was snow. They were pulled by horses or oxen. The woodcutters used small sleighs with double rods to drag in the tree stumps, cut into lengths of about one meter. Not every village had two-wheeled carts. They were only used by shepherds, the landless poor and gipsies. The peasant farms only used four-wheeled wagons. The more wealthy farmers had three to four different wagons, each for a different purpose. They used a long wagon to transport hay and grain (Fig. 35) and a shorter one for every-day freighting. The third wagon was a light, decorated carriage used to go to market and transport passengers. In most villages the horse-drawn carriage had completely replaced the ox drawn variety in the first half of the 20th Century but in some villages the fields were ploughed with oxen, and oxen were used for freighting up to the 1960s. The oxen and horses were used in pairs. At the turn of the century there were still many carriages drawn by hour-in-hands. Neck-yokes were fitted onto the oxen while breast-traces were used for the horses. The Barkó people were famous stock-traders, a renown going back for centuries. They bought their oxen and horses in the region by the Tisza River, and sold them in the area called the highlands (today a part of Slovakia). They also acted as dealers for sheep and swine. The women brought food, principally milk products, eggs and poultry, to the industrial settlements to sell (Fig. 36). 5. The way of life in the Barkóság was that of the tiny closed village. Settlements were scattered and there were no towns in the region. The villages were all located in valleys, along the banks of creeks. The village lay-out was rows of streets, while the