Gecse Annabella et al. (szerk.): Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 18. (Szolnok, 2009)
Néprajz - Bódán Zsolt: A magyar parasztság és az öngyilkosság
Zsolt Bódén Hungarian peasantry and suicide Suicide cannot be classified as one of the traditional research themes of ethnography. The literature provides us with diffuse data only in relation with this topic. This paper attempts to summarise these data, and draw a comprehensive but at some instances quite fragmented picture of the attitude of the Hungarian peasantry towards suicide. The vast majority of these data can be attached into two major categories: beliefs and mortuary customs and traditions. Based upon the beliefs, suicides took place with the active cooperation of the devil; the souls of the victims suffered eternal damnation, and in many cases as restless ghosts haunted others. A self-murderer was not allowed to receive traditional burial ceremony, and was inhumed outside the cemetery or in the ditch of the graveyard without ecclesiastical activities. This definitely depreciative attitude could be made more complex with studying other elements of the traditional popular culture. Some pieces of our treasure of ballads show, for example, that next to denunciation, in some cases taking the given situation into consideration sympathy and mercy could also play a role in connection with suicides; however, this did not really modify the fundamentally rejective standing-point. This more or less unified point of view, however, has become outdated by now. It has changed alongside with the other changes of traditional popular culture, and its elements can only be tracked down in traces with emphasis on the most archaic regions where the Hungarian language is spoken.
