THE SZEKLERS AND ARMENIANS.
Of the Hungarians in general, who constitute something less than the
third part of the total population of Transylvania, it is not my
intention to speak in detail. Hungary and Hungarians have already been
exhaustively described by abler pens, and I wish here to confine myself
chiefly to such points as are distinctively characteristic of the land
beyond the forest. Under this head, therefore, come the Szeklers, as
they are named—a branch of the Magyar race settled in the east and
north-east of Transylvania, and numbering about one hundred and eighty
thousand.
[Illustration: SZEKLER PEASANT.]
There are many versions to explain the origin of the Szeklers, and
some historians have supposed them to be unrelated to the great body
of Magyars living at the other side of the mountains. They are fond
of describing themselves as being descended from the Huns. Indeed one
very old family of Transylvanian nobles makes, I believe, a boast of
proceeding in line direct from the Scourge of God himself, and there
are many popular songs afloat among the people making mention of a like
belief, as the following:
A noble Szekler born and bred,
Full loftily I hold my head.
Great Attila my sire was he;
As legacy he left to me
A dagger, battle-axe, and spear;
A heart, to whom unknown is fear;
A potent arm, which oft has slain
The Tartar foe in field and plain.
The Scourge of Attila the bold
Still hangs among us as of old;
And when this lash we swing on high,
Our enemies are forced to fly.
The Szekler proud then learn to know,
And strive not to become his foe,
For blood of Huns runs in him warm,
And well he knows to wield his arm.
There is also a popular legend telling us how Csaba, son of Attila,
retreated eastward with the wreck of his army, after the last bloody
battle, in which he had been vanquished. His purpose was to rejoin the
rest of his tribe in Asia, and with their help once more to return and
conquer.
On the extreme frontier of Transylvania, however, he left behind him
a portion of his army, to serve as watch-post and be ready to support
him on his return some day. Before parting the two divisions of troops
took solemn oath ever to assist each other in hour of need, even though
they had to traverse the whole world for that purpose. Accordingly,
hardly had Csaba reached the foot of the hills, when the neighboring
tribes rose up against the forlorn Szeklers; but the tree-tops rustling
gently against one another soon brought news of their distress to their
brethren, who, hurrying back, put the enemy to flight.
After a year the same thing was repeated, but the stream ran murmuring
of it to the river, the river carried the news to the sea, the sea
shouted it onward to the warriors, and again quickly returning on their
paces they dispersed the foe.
Three years went by ere the Szeklers were again hard pressed by their
enemies. This time their countrymen were already so far away that only
the wind could reach them in the distant east, but they came again, and
a third time delivered their brethren.
The Szeklers had now peace for many years; the nut-kernels they had
planted in the land beyond the forest had meanwhile sprouted and
developed to mighty trees with spreading branches and massive trunks;
children had grown to be old men, and grandchildren to arms-bearing
warriors; and the provisionary watch-post had become a well-organized
settlement. But once again the neighbors, envying the strangers’
welfare, and having forgotten the assistance which always came to them
in hour of need, rose up against them. Bravely the Szeklers fought, but
with such inferior numbers that they could not but perish; they had no
longer any hope of assistance, for their brethren were long since dead,
and gone where no messenger could reach them.
But the star of the Szeklers yet watched over them, and brought the
tidings to another world.
The last battle was just being fought, and the defeat of the Szeklers
seemed imminent, when suddenly the tramp of hoofs and the clank of arms
is heard, and from the starlit vault of heaven phantom legions are seen
approaching.
No mortal army can resist an immortal one. The sacred oath has been
kept; once more the Szekler is saved, and silently as they came the
phantoms wend back their way to heaven.
Since that time the Szekler has obtained a firm hold on the land, and
enemies molest him no more; but as often as on a clear starry night he
gazes aloft on the glittering track[68] left of yore by the passage of
the delivering army, he thinks gratefully of the past, and calls it by
the name of the _hadak utja_ (the way of the legions).
* * * * *
Recent historians have, however, swept away these theories regarding
the Szeklers’ origin, and explained it in different fashion. The most
ancient records of the Magyars do not date farther back than the sixth
century after Christ, when they are mentioned as a semi-nomadic race
living on the vast plains between the Caucasian and Ural mountains. A
portion of them quitted these regions in the eighth and ninth centuries
to seek a new home in the territory between the rivers Dnieper and
Szereth. From here a small fraction of them, pressed hard by the
Bulgarians, traversed the chain of Moldavian Carpathians, and found
a refuge on the rich fertile plains of Eastern Transylvania (895),
where, living ever since cut off from their kinsfolk, they have formed
a people by themselves. According to the most probable version, these
fugitives would seem to have been the women, children, and old men,
who, left unprotected at home in the absence of the fighting-men of the
horde, had thus escaped the vengeance of Simeon, King of Bulgaria.
“At the frontier,” or “beyond,” is the signification of the Hungarian
word Szekler, which therefore does not imply a distinctive race, but
merely those Hungarians who live beyond the forest—near the frontier,
and cut off from the rest of their countrymen. One Hungarian authority
tells us that the word Szekler, meaning frontier-keeper or watchman,
was indiscriminately applied to all soldiers of whatever nationality
who defended the frontier of the kingdom.
Later, when the greater body of Hungarians had established their
authority over this portion of the territory as well, the two peoples
fraternized with each other as kinsfolk, descended indeed from one
common family tree, but who had acquired certain dissimilarities in
speech, manner, and costume, brought about by their separation; and
despite sympathy and resemblance on most points, they have never quite
merged into one nationality, and the Szeklers have a proverb which says
that there is the same difference between a Szekler and a Hungarian as
there is between a man and his grandson—meaning that they themselves
came in by a previous immigration.
The Szeklers had this advantage over their kinsfolk in Hungary proper,
of never at any time having been reduced to the state of serfdom.
They occupied the exceptional position of a peasant aristocracy,
having, among other privileges, the right of hunting, also that of
being exempted from infantry service and being enlisted as cavalry
soldiers only; whereas the ordinary Hungarian peasant was, up to 1785,
attached to the soil under conditions only somewhat lighter than those
oppressing the Russian serf. Curiously enough, though the system of
villanage had already been formally discarded by King Sigismond in
1405, it was taken up again some years later; and, in point of fact,
up to 1848 there was scarcely any limit to the services which the
Hungarian peasant was bound to render to his master.
Not so the Szeklers, who have always jealously defended their
privileges and preserved their freedom, owing to which their bearing
is prouder, freer, nobler than that of their kinsfolk. The Hungarian
peasant, as a rule, is neither wanting in grace nor dignity. But
freedom is just as much a habit as slavery; and as one writer has aptly
remarked, “A people does not fully regain the stamp of manhood and its
own self-respect in a single generation,” so the man who can count back
eight centuries of freeborn ancestors will always have an advantage
over one whose fathers were still born in bondage.
Like the other Magyars, the Szeklers are an inborn nation of soldiers,
and rank among the best of the Austrian army. It was principally on
the Szeklers that the brunt fell of resisting attacks from the many
barbarous hordes always infesting the eastern frontier. When the
Wallachians fled to the mountains at the approach of an enemy, and the
Saxons ensconced themselves within their well-built fortresses, the
Szeklers advanced into the open plain and ranged themselves for battle,
rarely abandoning the field till the ground was thickly strewn with
their dead.
The Szekler, who has usually more children than his Hungarian brother,
is well and strongly built, but rarely over middle size. His face is
oval, the forehead flat, hands and feet rather small than large. With
much natural intelligence, he cares little for art or science, and has
but small comprehension of the beautiful. Even when living in easy
circumstances, he does not care to surround himself with books like
the Saxon, nor does he betray the latent taste for color and design
so strongly characterizing the Roumanian. His inbred dignity seems
to place him on a level with whoever he addresses. He is reserved in
speech, with an almost Asiatic formality of manner, and it requires
the stimulus of wine or music to rouse him to noisy merriment; but on
occasions when speech is required of him, he displays inborn power of
oration, speaking easily and without embarrassment, finding vigorous
expressions and appropriate images wherewith to clothe his meaning. The
Hungarian language has no dialect, and each peasant speaks it as purely
as a prince.
The Hungarian’s character is a singularly simple and open one; he is
simple in his love, his hatred, his anger, and revenge, and though he
may sometimes be accused of brutality, deceit can never be laid to his
charge, while flattery he does not even understand. It is his inherent
dignity and self-respect which makes him thus open, scorning to appear
otherwise than he really is. You will never see a Hungarian bargaining
for his money with clamorous avidity like the Saxon, nor will he accept
an alms with humble gratitude like the Roumanian.
He uncovers his head courteously to the master of his village, but he
will not think of uncovering for a strange gentleman, even were it
the greatest in the land. Hospitality is with him not a virtue but an
instinct, and he cannot even comprehend the want of it in another.
A Hungarian who had stopped to rest the horses in a Saxon village came
wonderingly to his master. “What strange people are these?” he said.
“They were sitting round the table eating bread and onions, and not one
of them asked me to join them!”
On another occasion a gentleman travelling with an invalid wife was
overtaken by a storm near a Saxon village, and wanted to put up there
for the night. There was no inn in the place, and not one of the
families would consent to receive them. “You had better drive on to the
next village but one,” was the advice volunteered by one of the most
good-natured Saxon householders. “Not to the next village, for there
they are Saxons like us and will not take you in; but to the village
after that, which is Hungarian. They are always hospitable, and will
give you a bed.”
The Szekler villages, of a formal simplicity, are as far removed from
the Roumanian poverty as from Saxon opulence. The long double row of
whitewashed houses, their narrow gable-ends all turned towards the
road, have something camp-like in their appearance, and have been
aptly compared to a line of snowy tents ready to be folded together at
the approach of an enemy. The Magyar has a passion for whitewashing
his dwelling-house, and several times a year, at the fixed dates of
particular festivals, he is careful to restore to his walls the snowy
garment of their lost innocence. This custom of whitewashing at stated
periods is still said to be practised among the tribes dwelling in the
Caucasian regions.
In the midst of the village stands the church, whitewashed like the
other houses. It is slender and modest in shape, neither surrounded by
fortified walls like the Saxon churches, nor made glorious with color
like those of the Roumanians. Near to the entrance of the village is
the church-yard, and in some places it is still customary to bury the
dead with their faces turned towards the east.
There are few Roumanian villages in Szekler-land, neither do we find
here the inevitable outgrowth of Roumanian hovels tacked on to each
village, as is usual in Saxon colonies. The Roumanians do not thrive
alongside of their Szekler neighbors, because these do not require
their aid and will take no trouble to learn their language. The Szekler
cultivates his own soil without help from strangers, whereas the Saxon,
whose ground is usually larger than he can manage himself, and obliged
to take Roumanian farm-servants, is compelled to learn their language;
and it has often been remarked that a whole Saxon household has been
brought to speak Roumanian merely on account of one single Roumanian
cow-wench.
The greater number of Szeklers have remained Catholics, the population
of the western district only having adopted the Reformed faith, while
the Unitarian sect, which has made of Klausenburg its principal seat,
and counts some fifty-four thousand members, is chiefly composed of
Hungarians proper.
There are not above a dozen really wealthy Hungarian nobles in
Transylvania, and of many a one it is jokingly said that his whole
possessions consist of four horses, as many oxen, and a respectable
amount of debts. The same sort of open-handed hospitality which has
ruined so many Poles has also here undermined many fortunes.
The conjugal relations are somewhat Oriental among the lower classes,
the position of the wife towards the husband involving a sense of
social inferiority; for while she addresses him as _kend_ (your grace),
and speaks of him as _uram_ (lord or master), he calls her thou, and
speaks of her as _felsegem_ (my consort). In walking along the road it
is her place to walk behind her lord and master; and at weddings men
and women are usually separated, and if the house have but a single
room it is reserved for the men to banquet in, while the women, as
inferior creatures, are relegated to the cellar or to a stable or byre
cleared for the purpose. Bride and bridegroom must eat nothing at this
banquet, and only in the evening is a separate meal served up for them,
and, like the other guests, the new-married couple must spend this day
apart.
If we are to believe popular songs, of which the following is a sample,
the stick would seem to play no unimportant part in each Hungarian
_ménage_:
“O peacock fair, O peacock bright,
O peacock proud and high!
I fool! for though of lowly birth,
A noble wife took I;
But nothing that I e’er could do
Would please my peacock high.
To market once I went and bought
A pair of blood-red shoon.
I placed my present on the bench—
’Twas at the hour of noon.
‘Thy duty bids thee call me lord,
My darling wife,’ quoth I.
‘Nay, nevermore, that will I not,
And though I had to die,
For gentlemen of noble birth
Sat round my father’s board,
And if I said not “sir” to them,
How should I call thee lord?’
“O peacock fair, O peacock bright,
O peacock proud and high!
I fool! for though of lowly birth,
A noble wife took I;
But nothing that I e’er could do
Would please my peacock high.
Again to market did I go
And bought a kirtle fine;
’Twas growing dark as on the bench
I laid this gift of mine.
‘Thy duty bids thee call me lord,
My darling wife,’ quoth I.
‘Nay, nevermore, that will I not,
And though I had to die,
For gentlemen of noble birth
Sat round my father’s board,
And if I said not “sir” to them,
How should I call thee lord?’
“O peacock fair, O peacock bright,
O peacock proud and high!
I fool! for though of lowly birth,
A noble wife took I;
But nothing that I e’er could do
Would please my peacock high.
The moon was shining in the skies
When to the woods I sped;
I cut a hazel rod full long,
And hid it ’neath the bed.
‘Thy duty bids thee call me lord,
My darling wife,’ quoth I.
‘Nay, nevermore, that will I not.
And though I had to die.’
Then in my hand I took the rod
And beat my bosom’s wife,
Until she cried, ‘Thou art my lord!
My lord for death and life!’”
The Armenians deserve something more than a passing notice at the
fag-end of a chapter; but having had little opportunity of being thrown
together with these people, I am unable to furnish many details as to
their life and manners.
Persecuted and oppressed in Moldavia during the seventeenth century,
the Armenians were offered a refuge in Transylvania by the Prince
Michael Apafi, and came hither about 1660, at first living dispersed
all over the land, till in 1791 the Emperor Leopold granting them
among other privileges the right to establish independent colonies,
they founded the settlements of Szamos-Ujvar (Armenopolis) and
Elisabethstadt, or Ebesfalva. This latter town, which counts to-day
about twenty-five hundred Armenian inhabitants, is renowned for the
good looks of its women—pale, dark-eyed beauties, with low foreheads
and straight eyebrows, whose portraits might be taken in pen and ink
only, without any help from the palette. They have the reputation—I
know not with what reason—of being very immoral, but in a quiet,
unostentatious fashion.
In the men the pure Asiatic type is yet more clearly marked—the
fine-shaped oval head, arched yet not hooked nose, black eyes, jetty
beard, and clean-cut profiles betraying their nationality at the first
glance. In manner they are singularly calm and self-possessed, never
evincing emotion or excitement. They are much addicted to card-playing.
In many parts of Hungary the Armenians have so completely amalgamated
with the Magyars as to have forgotten their own language, but where
they live together in compact colonies it is still kept up. There are
two languages—the popular idiom and the written tongue, the language
of science and literature. Their religion is the Catholic one, but
their services are conducted in their own language instead of Latin.
Like the Hebrews, the Armenians have great natural aptitude for
trade; and it is chiefly due to their influence that the Jews have
not here succeeded in getting the reins of commerce into their hands.
The bankers and money-lenders in Transylvania are almost invariably
Armenians.
A Saxon legend explains the origin of the Armenians by saying that when
God had created all the different sorts of men, there remained over two
little morsels of the clay of which he had respectively moulded the
Jew and the gypsy; so, in order not to waste these, he kneaded them up
together, and formed of them the Armenian.
FOOTNOTES:
[68] The Milky Way.