This year my A to Z theme is Small Town Legends. I am exploring folklore from villages and small towns around Hungary, bringing you the most entertaining bits. You can plan your next visit around them!
 |
| Image from here |
Ecsed or Nagyecsed is a town of about 6,000 people in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, northeastern Hungary. In the local folklore there is a very memorable figure: that of the strong woman Csáky Julcsa.
Here is the story:
Csáky Julcsa lived around 1870; she was the daughter of a teacher. On her wedding day she ran away with her groom's best man Bába Szántó János, and lived with him for the rest of her life. He had the reputation of quite the strong and clever man (he spoke several languages) but Julcsa ruled the household anyway with an iron fist. She was quite the strong and large woman; allegedly, she easily lifted about 300 lbs of grain.
It happened once that Count Károlyi who lived nearby wanted to open up a road for his cattle so they would not have to walk through the village. He prepared to take part of everyone's plots of land along the way. Everyone was afraid of the count's power, and the 200 Austrian soldiers he mustered to take the land by force. Since Bába Szántó's land was also in the way, he went out to confront the soldiers, to show resistance. He was strong enough to yank the captain off his horse and throw him to the ground - but in the next minute the rest of the soldiers had him captured and tied up. A child who saw the whole thing ran to tell Julcsa.
Julcsa ran out after the soldiers with a big knife tucked into her boots. She stood in their way and yelled at them. She was so loud and so strong that no one dared stop her when she cut her husband free and marched him home. In the end, the cattle road was marked out in a way that it avoided their plot of land.
(Collected from Szűcs Lajos in 1954. Source in this book)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment