A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 4-5. - 1961 (Nyíregyháza, 1964)

Erdész Sándor: „Evening-making” in winter in a village of the Nyírség

Szabolcs). It does not show any essential difference in comparison with the other villages in its neighbourhood. The old occasions to tale-telling were attached to tobacco work more than anything else. The stitching (i. e. of the leaves) and especially the bundling wasn't realizable but with tale-telling. Of the traditional work with fun, the spinning ("fonó", "fonóka"), there is nothing more alive but its memory; as late as the end of the 30-es even the last distaff went by the board, up to its loft

... There are, however, other gatherings too, wich form integral part of social life in village. In winter, when men hardly ever have to do anything else than to chop wood, to tend the animals and — by and by — to repair tools and implements, when even women are not busy but at home, this is the time when people don't retire for the night together with the setting sun, but come together today at this tomorrow at that family, acquaintances, kinsfolk, to entertain one another by chatting, singing, and tale- or story-telling. The name of these turn-outs without work is: "estézés" i.e. (about) evening-making. The scene of evening-making is always changing but the participants are almost always the same. The evening-makers detach themselves generally by streets, parts of street as well as their social strate — yet, in the same time, there is a formation of group among them also by age. In the evening-making circle we were observing for years and years it never came to any telling fairy-tales; all the more there were trufas and other droll stories followed by one another. Besides funny tales and obscene yarns there were personal experiences told too, as well as adventures happened to the fabulist himself. By nobody were these fabulists — more exactly: entertainers! — taken for tale-tellers, even by themselves not; this circle of eveningmakers was in effect neither more nor less than a collective of trufa-tellers and trufa-listeners. The members of it: simple farmers; and as to vein of narrating none of them was superior to the rest. To evening-making go the men — in the amusement, however, are also the female members of the host's family present. In the beginning, talk rus on life at one time, problems of farming and living, and it isn't but at the end, when tone already elate, that jesting edges a word. It's very informative that every man has some trufas-stories of his own, wich, even several times a winter, will be delivered on the occasion of evening-makings. The heart of the droll stories — as they call them: „true stories" — really has its root in fact that is in deeds and happenings occurred here or there once. Just these real elements are in steady polishing by that much renewal —in order to be formed to some kind of popular short stories — that very kind of trufa ... — after all. Of the material of a farmer trufa-teller — Gábor Nagy fi894— 1960) — there are 30 stories taped now. Neither with his knowledge nor with his trufa-performing did he excel among his mates. Publishing ten selected stories of his repertoire we should like to throw light on matter and essence of the evening-making circles. S. Erdész 128