Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 21. 1981 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1984)
Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Lukács László: Kakasütés a Dunántúlon. – Rooster beating in Transdanubia. p. 209–220. t. LXXIV–LXXVI.
ticipants danced a quick czardas as a bridge's dance with the bride chosen for the occasion. The just initiated band leader received the money collected during the bride's dance. After the bride's dance the ball lasted until morning. In Köveskál on Mangled Thursday in 1940 the rooster beating was repeated in the same way for the initiation of József Szabó Réka Junior as band leader. This time the bride was Jolán Varga. In Szentbékálla on Carnival Sunday in 1941 they accepted László Horváth, a nineteen-year-old gypsy, as bassplayer into the band at Kapolcs with a rooster beating. In Mozsgó they chose the First Lad of the village with a rooster beating on Easter Monday afternoon. The older peasant lads already started to prepare for the rooster beating before Easter. They appointed the organizers of the game : the buyers of the rooster, the lads to engage the gypsy musicians, boys to gather the money, the boy to blindfold the lad, those to hold the flail, and the leader of the game. They bought the most beautiful rooster in the village. On Easter Sunday the two moneytakers knocked on the door of every house in the village to sell tickets for the next day's event. Easter Monday morning they prepared the church square for the afternoon's competition. In the middle of a ten meter circle they dug a pit for the rooster. By early afternoon the entire village encircled the site. At the signal of the lad who lead the game, the gypsies struck up the band. "They're bringing the rooster!" the audience cried out. Accompanied by a crowd of children the organizers brought the rooster decorated with paper ribbons down the middle of the street. They buried it in the hole in the middle of the circle so that just its neck and head were visible. The game organizer then shouted: "We will begin the rooster beating! Please come forward to beat! Entry fee twenty fillér! Put your money in the hat!" The boys who came forward were given numbered tickets and they could try beating the rooster in the order of their tickets. They blindfolded the boy's eyes with a homemade cloth used to wrap bread in. They surrounded him in the circle formed by the audience and twirled him around several times. The flail holder handed him the flail ceremoniously, which he immediately twirled over his head. "You can go!" shouted the game leader. The lad then started off, trying to explore his way by sliding his feet along the ground. From time to time he swung the flail toward the crowd to frighten them. The circle widened and narrowed, since an accidental "hit" would have caused membrable black and blue marks. The audience took sides, shouting: "Hit it! Hit it! Don't! Don't! Listen to me, don't hit it!" One could only strike once. The boy who struck the rooster's head triumphantly lifted the bounty high. He became the hero of the day, the feted of the Easter ball, the First Lad of the village. On Easter Tuesday the invited his male friends to his wine-cellar in the vineyards, where they cooked a stew out of the rooster. After the liberation of the Szigetvár region from the Turks, the Batthyánys, landowners in the region, settled Mozsgó anew with Hungarian, German and Croatian serfs. According to Elek Fényes (in the middle of the nineteenth century), Mozsgó was a Hungarian —Croatian —German market town. In this century the majority of the national minority inhabitants became hungarianized, or moved through marriage to neighboring settlements of national minorities. Rooster Beating as a Wedding Custom. At the turn of the century, among Germans of Lajoskomárom (Fejér County) they intoxicated a rooster with wine and brandy at dawn of the wedding-day, then placed it in the middle of the room underneath an inverted earthenware pot which had holes in the bottom so that the rooster's head stuck out. A lad who volunteered was blindfolded, handed a stick and lead to the room. Amidst the laughter and merriment of the wedding guests the lad first lashed all around the pot, then, shoving the blindfold aside, he smashed the pot to pieces, along with the rooster, in one great blow. Thereupon one of the guests jumped in, grabbed up the rooster and the person he threw it to had to buy him a brandy. In the end the musicians were given the rooster. In 1803 Lajoskomárom was settled on the initiative of Lajos Batthyány. According to Fényes, by the middle of the nineteenth century, of the inhabitants "nearly half were German speakers, three-tenths Slovak and two-tenths Hungarian speakers." Rooster beatings at weddings existed in Oskü (Veszprém County) all the way up until the 1920s. At the dawn of the wedding-day the best men stole a rooster in the village. The guests paraded to the square in front of the church, where the best man tied the rooster to the wheel of a wheel-barrow or a ladder. The witness announced the rooster's death sentence in a Slovak language poem: Tento kokas tag robival, aj susedom chodivával, aj planticku kutrivával, aj na mater si lozivával, hoden je ten tedi smreti, a ti brate daj ti kosu, a odrez mu ti krki. This rooster was such That he often frequented the neighbors, And scratched out the plants, And he often pestered his mother, He is now deserving death, and you Mate, give a scythe, And cut off his neck. After announcing the sentence, the best man cut off the rooster's head with a bad scythe. At the wedding house they made lunch out of the rooster for the new couple, witness and best men and maids. In Tordas (Fejér County) the rooster beating closed the wedding on Sunday morning. Before the First World War an old man beheaded a rooster tied to a rod in front of the wedding house. The band also marche out ; the wedding guests danced and made merry around the rooster. At a table taken out to the street an older man impersonating a judge passed judgement on the rooster. The old man who played the executioner drank a liter of wine, then cut off the rooster's head with the blade of a scythe. "Later they just made a game of it all, and after the old man died, they competed over who could hit the rooster's neck after drinking a liter of wine, on top of having a hangover from the wedding. I too took part in one of these: István Gyuga was the judge; he spoke with a gypsy accent. The wedding came to an end with the rooster beating." This is the way János Bradák (born in 1902), an informant from Tordas, characterized the practice of the custom between the two world wars. After the Second World War they no longer had rooster beatings in Tordas. In Tárnok rooster beatings (kokasovi krki zeV— aV ) also occurred on the morning following the wedding. According to E. Fényes, in the middle of the last century, Öskü was a Slovak village beginning to become Hungarian; Tordas and Tárnok were inhabited by Slovaks. Slovaks arrived in Öskü in 1718 from Zólyom, Nyitra and Pozsony counties, in Tordas in 1713 from Pozsony, Nyitra and Túróc counties and to Tárnok in 1739 from Trencsén County. The inhabitants of Hungarian settlements in the vicinity of German and Slovak villages in Transdanubia did not borrow the custom of rooster beatings, despite the fact that the rooster plays a significant role in the wedding customs of the Transdanubian Hungarian populace. The folk culture of villages of national minorities wedged between Hungarians in Transdanubia was so viable that two centuries after their settlement here they preserved customs they brought with them. But because of their dispersion and isolation their culture could not be expansive to such a degree that, by transferring aspects of their customs, they could have significantly influenced the folk culture of Hungarians living in large groups in the vicinity. This is why I only came across traces of rooster beating in originally German or Slovak settlements in Transdanubia. The rooster beating held at musicians' initiations in Hungarian villages in the Káli Basin belongs to the realm of customs of a trade and is a late, isolated phenomenon. Nonetheless, it roused the entire population of these villages. Its preservation and further practice was prevented primarily by the Second World War. It is worth our attention that the national minority population of Transdanubia living in isolation preserved the custom of rooster beating over more than two centuries following thenresettlement here. In the first half of this century, in the period of the strong advancement of linguistic assimilation they still practiced it as a characteristic element of their system of customs. It follows that within a group certain elements of folklore or material culture have much deeper roots, are more enduring than linguistic elements. L .Lukács 218
