CHAPTER V.
WE ARE MET BY OUR GUIDE.
In a country where so many nationalities exist it is not easy to travel without some one who can speak at least three or four languages unfamiliar to civilised ears; and as we purposed travelling not only through Central Hungary, but through Transylvania and the Northern Carpathians also, a guide was absolutely necessary, who, in addition to German and Magyar, should be able to speak Wallachian and Slovak.
Besides the letters of introduction given us by the merchant at Paris, we received before leaving England another to a gentleman residing in one of the midland comitats (counties), which before starting we forwarded with a letter from ourselves, asking the favour of his recommending a trustworthy person to accompany us on our journey, and if possible to send him to meet us here.
We were seated at breakfast the morning after our arrival at Fűred when a little group of persons entered, a tall woman of forbidding aspect, leading a child by each hand, followed by a very small man, who, handing us a letter, proved to be one of our Hungarian friend’s own servants, whom he had sent in the capacity of guide, the letter assuring us he was thoroughly experienced in travelling, knowing how to make arrangements at country inns, etc. etc., and, in short, well versed on all subjects concerning what “to eat, drink, and avoid.”
It was somewhat alarming, however, to witness this little man’s belongings, and we began to wonder whether, amongst other strange things of this strange country, it was the custom for the guide’s family likewise to accompany the traveller. The bundles and small luggage also, which not only the woman but both children carried in their arms, and the travel-stained appearance of their garments, showing they had come from a long distance, were likewise circumstances tending to strengthen our very natural supposition. But our minds were soon set at rest on this matter by András himself, who informed us that his wife had relations in the neighbourhood of Fűred, with whom she purposed remaining with her children until his return.
András was a good-looking man, with a bright and intelligent countenance. He wore white gatya (trousers) fringed at the edge, a braided hussar-jacket thrown across one shoulder, and a small round felt hat and feathers. On our asking him to what nationality he belonged, he drew himself up proudly until he almost stood on tip-toe, and with a look expressive of triumph replied, “Én Magyar vagyok” (“I am a Magyar”), and went on to inform us that he was the grandson of an unfortunate noble whose lands had been forfeited, but whose descent could be traced to the honfoglalás, as the conquest of the Hungarian fatherland by Árpád in the ninth century is called,—an event regarded by the Magyars in the same light as we ourselves view the Norman Conquest. At this juncture he was overcome by his emotions, but whether awakened by the remembrance of his defunct grandsire, or simply that of his own greatness, it was hard to say.
Our guide’s wife was a head and shoulders taller than her lord and master, and could easily have carried him about like a baby had she been so minded. She was a fierce-looking woman with beetling brows, an appearance by no means lessened by her peculiar style of dress; for, besides her Turkish-looking head-gear, short skirts and top-boots, her sleeves were padded at the shoulders, which, by increasing the width of her already broad chest, imparted to her a mien truly Amazonian.
Whilst András provided for the exigencies of the journey, we occupied ourselves in making short excursions in the neighbourhood. The lake, though fifty miles long, is at no point more than nine broad; whilst at Fűred it is even narrower still, the peninsula of Tihany, which stretches halfway across it, almost severing it in two. Besides the fogas, already referred to, it contains several kinds of fish—the fogas, which is found only here and in the Nile, being esteemed by epicures as the very best fresh-water fish in Europe.
The people living round Fűred are principally farmers and graziers. The houses of the former are clean; but those of the földművelők, or cultivators of the soil, synonymous with our agricultural labourers, are often little better than hovels, where the children, the goats, the poultry, and the pigs dwell together in happy-family parties. In one of these hovels we saw, suspended for safety to a beam under the roof, a baby lying in a trough in which the pigs had just been feeding; whilst in others we found the common sleeping-place to be a little nook behind the hearth, where the whole family huddled together in contented fellowship.
One of the quaintest and most amusing things in the neighbourhood of these villages is to watch the kine returning at sunset from the plains whither they have been driven for pasture at break of day. At the sound of a horn, no matter how numerous they may be, each makes for its own village, some with slow and stately gait, others running, but one and all finding their way home unaccompanied to the very bosom of the family.
It is then that these villages, so silent and deserted all the livelong day—during which the inhabitants have been working in distant fields or been otherwise busily occupied—are full of life and animation. The women, sitting at doorways, sew or knit, whilst the men, lounging on the benches beneath the gables, smoke the pipe of peace; meanwhile, in ragged and irregular procession, the kine come flocking in, together with the pigs, each scenting with discriminating nostril its own particular stall or stye, and making for it with glad, unhesitating stride.
Wandering along the lake in the direction of Tihany, we find numerous shells of no known existing species, resembling goat’s hoofs, and by which name they are called by the peasantry. There is a singular tradition concerning the origin of these fossils, to which the imaginative Hungarians cling with characteristic tenacity.
In the remote days of King Béla (1061), when the Tartar hordes pressing from the East menaced the country, the King, followed by his courtiers and the royal flocks and herds, fleeing for safety across the Danube, took refuge in the fastnesses of Tihany. The Tartars, however—so runs tradition—having overtaken him even here, compelled him to retreat still farther. Unable to save his flocks and herds, yet unwilling they should become spoil for the enemy, he caused them to be drowned in the lake, and the fossils found in it to-day are said to be the petrified remains of the hoofs of these animals!
The rocks of Tihany also contain numerous other fossils, imbedded in the limestone; whilst in some portions of the plains, transported from the trachyte or volcanic hills, are deposits containing scoriaceous and earthy matters, in which not only pumice, but fossil and organic remains are found, consisting of opaline wood with impressions of shells and plants of various kinds.
On the last day of our sojourn at Fűred, whilst F. went off to visit the monastery, accompanied by András, I sallied forth with my sketching apparatus for a climb over the hills.
At our feet slumbering calmly, like an infant surrounded by diaphanous curtains in a downy cradle, lay the azure lake enveloped in a transparent veil of mist. Near the shore, the little fishing-boats floating on its surface in the direction of Sió-Fok appeared poised in mid-air, and, looming pale through the mist, looked like birds of morning or phantoms of themselves. To our right the abbey-crowned promontory of Tihany with its hermits’ cells was half hidden by a long stratum of vapour, which seemed to sever it in two; whilst Fűred, with its colonnades and white porticoes, looked like some fairy palace that must soon dissolve into thin air.
Just as I had seated myself comfortably, and was about to make a sketch of the broad landscape beneath, the lake with its fringe of pampas-grass and flights of wild fowl, which frequently rose from the dense cover—for, the mists by this time having fainted away in the sun’s beams, the lake now reflected the deep sapphire of the arc above—I suddenly remembered that I had left my binoculars behind on one of the tables in the hotel restaurant. To go back for them and return in time to finish my picture would be impossible, and I did not like the idea of remaining alone in these wilds by sending András.
Informing him of my dilemma, the good little man declared his willingness to descend the hill at once, but added that if we could only light upon a czigány, pilfering Herrschaft as they were in ordinary, he could be safely entrusted with the delicate mission.
“Spricht man vom Teufel, so sieht man ihn gleich!” exclaimed he, in the sentiment of our own familiar aphorism concerning angels and their wings, as looking behind him he descried a band of gipsies advancing in the distance.
What a picturesque group they form, wending their way slowly along—three men, two women and half-a-dozen mop-headed children, the smallest of whom, seated on a heap of tent paraphernalia, is carried on the back of a shaggy brown pony, the very type of its owners!
The moment they catch sight of us there is a general run, the women and children with hands outstretched—supplicating in whining, plaintive but importunate tones for kreuzers. A few choice expletives, however, administered by András in their own tongue in a commanding treble, soon send them to the right-about; and the whole party having passed in picturesque file, they begin to pitch their tent on a piece of level ground not far below us.
András soon picks out his particular czigány for the errand, a tall thin man of about forty years of age, with a roguish countenance and legs like spindles, who certainly fails to inspire me with the slightest confidence in the safety of the commission entrusted to him, as nimble of gait he flies down the hillside like a spider descending by his web, and is out of sight in no time.
Meanwhile it is intensely amusing and interesting to watch the pitching of the tent, and its smoky, rich brown canvas forms a picturesque bit of foreground to the beautiful lake in the distance. In the fervour of their occupation they have evidently forgotten our presence, for, hark to the ringing laughter of these free, unwashed, bare-breasted, bronze-faced gipsies, as they utter their half-barbaric language, which defies the wisdom of philologists to interpret and the precise origin of which is unknown!
No sooner is the tent pitched than the conventional tripod is erected, from which an iron pot is suspended. How the wood crackles and the sparks fly upwards as the little naked children, dancing like demons round the fire, throw on sticks to increase the flame! what shouts of laughter resound through the air from these sad melancholy-looking people who have no equivalent for the verb “to dwell,” and in whose vocabulary there are no words to express joy, happiness, or prosperity, although they have many indicative of sorrow, pain, poverty, and woe!
Their mid-day meal of porridge flavoured with garlic is soon cooked and disposed of, but ere this our gipsy messenger has returned with my lost possession in perfect safety, and been cheaply rewarded and made radiantly happy by the bestowal of a florin for his pains. From the look of astonishment that rose to his large, sad, glistening eyes as I put the coin into his hand, he seemed to think himself the richest man in all the country; and as he descended to his people tossing it high in air and catching it again, there was general acclamation and rejoicing.
Presently, waxing bold by degrees, one of the gipsies I had sketched came and stood behind me. He was a delicious specimen of pictorial tatters mellowed by every vicissitude of wear and weather. His brawny chest lay bare to the elements, whilst his broad and slouching felt sombrero, dragged into every possible degree of limpness, shading but not concealing his beetling brows, rendered him a fitting study for a Rembrandt. What a rich mingling he too forms of black, brown and amber, and how beautifully he “composes” with the background of azure lake! Holding it towards him, I called his attention to the representation of himself and his surroundings, which appeared to interest him greatly, and with wondering admiration he at once recognised the faithful rendering of a long tear in the sleeve of his outer garment.
Of all the gipsies in Hungary the Sátoros czigányok, or those who wander about with tents, are supposed to be the very worst specimens of the race, and are compelled by government to change their place of bivouac every twenty-four hours. After the musicians, the most respectable members of the community are those who take up their permanent abode on the outskirts of villages, and are the recognised blacksmiths and farriers of the country.
Whatever be the origin of this singular people, many of their customs are completely Hindoo, and the similarity of their language to Sanscrit is a well-known fact, their very name “Czigány” being taken, it is said, from a Sanscrit word. The Sanscrit name for snake is “nága,” “nag” being the one used by our English gipsies. The mouth they call “mui,” which in Sanscrit is “mukha.” “Shaster” (Hindoo Bible) is the only term they make use of to denote any kind of book, and “Shulam!” their form of greeting, is evidently taken from the familiar Oriental one “Salaam!” Whilst a horse, which in Hindustani is “ghoṛā,” is called by the gipsy “grea,” and so on ad infinitum.
At various periods philanthropists have endeavoured to civilise these wandering children of the desert, but without success. Towards the end of the last century, Joseph II., hoping to induce them to relinquish their vagabond lives, dignified them with the name of “New Peasants,” and caused houses to be built for them; but instead of living in them, they used them as stabling for their wretched horses, and either pitched tents or erected hovels for themselves outside. Since then many benevolent and sanguine individuals have done their best to win over the offspring of these Bedouins to a decent mode of life, by taking them from their parents when very young; but so strongly implanted in the gipsy is the love of vagrancy, that no sooner are the little urchins old enough to break through restraint than some fine morning they are certain to be missing—gone back to their own or some other band of wanderers.
No matter whether young or old, the orthodox thorough-going czigány is a creature not to be civilised, and he clings with the greatest tenacity, not only to his nomad, vagabond existence, but to all the ancient superstitions of his race.
He believes the woods and forests are inhabited by gnomes, elves and evil spirits, but he has no God. For him death is annihilation, absolute and complete. He regards death with horror, and after the pandúr (policeman) it is the thing he most dreads. Like his English brother, the Hungarian gipsy pretends to be ignorant of all laws, and, though seldom or never guilty of great offences, he entertains an innate horror of this functionary, regarding him as the obnoxious embodiment of some superior power, the precise nature and essence of which he professes not to understand. But whilst maintaining his universal character for pilfering, the czigány has many redeeming qualities. He is strongly attached to the aged as well as to little children: and during the troublous wars which devastated Hungary in the last century, many instances of self-abnegation are recorded of these poor outcasts, and many romantic legends are possessed by the Magyars concerning them. But however much he may differ in his surroundings, in his consistent habit of humbugging and love of necromancy he is the same as elsewhere; and whether wandering over the great Alfőld or Felfőld of Hungary, or bivouacking as of yore in the green lanes of pastoral England, he is the same mysterious and mischievous waif, getting a living somehow, anyhow, by fair means or foul, as it suits his purpose at the moment.