CHAPTER XXXVIII. 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.

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,
{286}
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.