Takács Péter (szerk.): A jobbágylét dokumentumai az úrbérrendezés kori Szatmár vármegye Nyíri járásából - A nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum kiadványai 66. (Nyíregyháza, 2010)

A jobbágylét dokumentumai az úrbérrendezés kori Szatmár vármegye Nyíri járásából

The households of the villains and certain squires possessing only a single plot practised, somehow or other, fifteen-twenty crafts during their lives. They substituted the masons and the carpenters when they built houses for themselves and their families. They ploughed the fields. They were shepherds when they tended and healed their animals. They drove carts when they were ordered for transportation, when they went to the mill or the market and when they transported salt from the salt mine to the salt deposit and when the villains accomplished a long-distance carting for their landlords. They were postmen when they carried their landlords’ letters from the village to the town, from one relative to the other. They were butchers when he killed and skinned pigs, calves, poached game or the sheep, the goat or the rabbit they themselves had raised. And also when they smoked the ham, the bacon and the sausage of the pig, or when they slaughtered oxen, cattle and steer in the street for the benefit of village. They were innkeepers when they sold their landlords’ wine and when they sold beer, wine and brandy for the village.

Men were also gardeners. They planted and tended fruit trees, and they cultivated soured and stored the cabbage for the family.

The head of the family distilled brandy from his own plum and that of his relatives and neighbours in the still for which he had to pay a charge of one or two forints. He was also miller and mill carpenter in the dry mill for which one forint was charged a year. If he had a mule or a horse that was used to walking in a circle, he could grind wheat or rye of 8-10 Pozsony mérő a day. He was a carver when he carved handles for his axe, adze, spade, hoe or other tools and the yoke-beam for yoking four oxen. He was a master in it and could produce wheels, ploughs and yoke as well.

He was carpenter when he carved beds, trestle-tables, benches, chairs and stools, board for noodle making and distaff for his fiancée or wife.

Most of the men were also fishermen, hunters, loachers, bee-keepers. They worked as tanners and furriers when they tanned the pelt of the animals they had skinned, they processed it and prepared footwears and slippers from it.

We shall not continue the work they did to substitute various masters since their wives and the females of the household knew even more crafts than men. They guarded and brought up the children instead of kindergartens. The knowledge of women accumulated during millennia was passed from generation to generation. They were cooks, bakers, confectioners, they prepared preserved food and marmalade. They daubed the houses instead of house renovators, and whitewashed the walls instead of painters.

All the young women, brides and women knew how to spin and many of them could weave. All of them could knit, crochet and embroider. They replaced spinneries, dressmakers’ shops, tailors, needlewomen, cloth menders. They dressed their families in linen and cloth dresses they themselves had spun, woven and sewn.

Where the family had a dairy cow, sheep or goat, the women were the milkmaids. These housewives supported the family dairy plant: they prepared sour cream, cottage cheese, butter and cheese as the family economy afforded and needed.

Every housewife was client of market-women and itinerant traders. She took the surplus of the kitchen-garden and the small livestock to the weekly markets. She exchanged

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