Juhász Antal: A Duna-Tisza közi migráció és hatása a népi műveltségre (Szeged, Móra Ferenc Múzeum, Csongrád Megyei Levéltár, 2005)
Summary
4) A smaller group of land owners bought plots on puszta areas stricdy as a way of investment. They were citizens of agricultural cities or Jewish merchants. Their manors were led by farm managers, and farm-servants cultivated their land. Most of them had their manors parcelled out at the beginning of the 20 th century, contributing to the last wave of migration directed to the puszta before 1945. In this chapter the author presents the society of some settlements on the puszta during the 20 t h century, as well as the role of congregations in community life, and the situation of education in schools for children living on detached farms. VI. The effects of migration on material culture Adjustment to the natural circumstances, as well as the poverty of the settlers preserved certain traditional building methods and techniques, such as building houses in the ground, the usage of sod of grass or skeleton mudwalls. After distributing puszta lands the characteristic settlement pattern in the region was scattered, with permanently inhabited detached farmsteads. Most of the settlers built a house on the farm in spite of the fact that building sites were distributed also within village boundaries. Several inhabited puszta areas (Páhi, Tázlár, Szank) were declared settlements lacking any kind of village-like centre. Contemporary documents referred to these as "theoretical settlements". The majority of the population continued to live on farmsteads, even after intensive village development took place on puszta areas. The first setders worked extremely hard so that they could bind the soil. They made sandy soil productive with the help of inventive devices, partly made by themselves: for levelling the ground they used the so called "hegyhúzó" (figures 75-78), others used so called "bakity", or "rakocás kocsi" or a barrow to carry sand away (figures 79-82). In the 1870-90s phylloxera caused serious damages in the Hungarian wine regions. When grapes grown on sandy soil were realized to be immune from phylloxera, sandy plots of the studied region became more valuable. The earlier remarkable vine-stock planting was prospering, wide-spread cultivation improved the living standard of settlers. In some villages landlords planted vinestock on territories of several acres, where poor peasants called " szakmányoi' were hired to work. In 1935 the proportion of vine-growing areas was 17% in Pusztamérges, 15% in Csengőd and 13,9% in Öttömös, which was an extremely high proportion even on nationwide level. The author also deals with differences in the folk culture of setders (such as costumes, nutrition traditions), what they preserved and how the different communities influenced each other. Nonetheless, research of the kind has become difficult recendy, due to ever tightening sources and to the quick process of cultural integration. 391
