Kecskés Péter (szerk.): Upper Tisza region (Regional Units of Open Air Museum. Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1980)

3. THE MUSEUM VILLAGE

already on the first plot, but in a more pretentious version. Its posts, called „masts" („árboc"), are inserted into a mortise, and its carefully hewn roof is covered with wooden shingles. At the end of both plots stands the mutual barn („csűr"), brought from the Rákóczi farm near Kispalád, originally built in the second half of the last century (1—8). The construction is of wood, its sides are of nailed boards, and the building was situated lengthways. Its high roof with long rafters is covered with trodden hay. The treading out of wheat by horses was still carried on upon its threshing ground at the turn of the century. The corn was then winnowed, being thrown into the air with a wooden shovel so that the wind should blow away the chaff (111. 33.). The second plot is fenced off from the street with horizontal boards inserted into the mortises of the posts. The gate is a copy of a so-called „gate with an idol" („bálványos kapu") such as existen in Botpalád around 1880 (2—7). It is remarkable how similar the gate-posts are to certain graveposts in county Szatmár, with the „crowned head" on the larger gate and the round „heads" on the posts of the smaller. According to local imagination, the two-gates fastened together with iron clasts „cannot release each other as no more can man and woman". The two gates are compared to a couple, it is said, „the small gate is for the woman to run out, the big gate is for the man with his cart". The third plot The third yard is far larger than the previous ones, and its fence is of boards („palánk-kerítés") covered with wooden shingles, this being a superior form of fencing. There is a large plain gate for carts, and a small gate („kiskapu") (3—9) with a tiny roof also covered with shingles, made by a carpenter of Milota, Master Sándor Tóth, the inscription gives the date (March 20th, 1906). Well-to-do houses of the Erdőhát region were proud to have little gates with wroughtiron clasps and iron door-knobs looking like a leaf. The present farm ranks highest among those exhibited, showing the way that a man of noble descent, owing 90 Hungarian acres („magyar hold" = 0,57 hectares), used to live. (111. 34.) The main building on the plot, the dwelling house („ház"), derives from the village of Uszka (3—1), and was originally built by a noble family in the 1860s. The walls are of adobe; the roof was covered with wooden shingles until the end of the last century, 47