# Songs of Wandering and Captivity

The songs of wandering (bujdosóének) stand in close relationship with the corresponding songs of the Kuruc period; at other times they harmonize with the outlaw and soldier songs. There are many songs of pseudo-folk origin among these as well, songs which more or less became folklore and spread over larger or smaller areas. These half lyric, half epic works tell about the sorrowful feelings of various people excluded from society (deserting soldiers, orphans, disappointed lovers), usually in the first person. When the text speaks of a strange environment we do not need to think directly of a foreign country, since most of them sing only about the bitter parting from the place of their birth.

As to the content, many songs sing the sorrow of parting, of the separation from country, lover, and family, and of the feeling of uncertainty in a strange land:

I did leave behind my country,
Famous dear old little Hung’ry;
As I looked back, half the way gone,
From my eyes the tears did roll down.
Woe my dinner, woe my supper,
Woeful is my every hour.
As I watch the starry heaven,
Of my crying there’s no ending.
God I beg you give me lodging,
Tired I have grown of wand’ring,
Living aye a lonely outcast,
Day and night my tears roll down fast.
Gyula (Békés County)

This song is known, at least in its components, from the beginning of the 18th century; it exists in many versions, primarily in the eastern half of the linguistic region.

Criminal offence often figures among the reasons for wandering, something that has no remedy:

Murky, foggy weather, bracing winds a-blowing,
Time when but an hour thousand years is showing.
Up among the clouds, the moon is brightly riding,
Over hills and dales, a boy goes there a-hiding.
{492.} Father, mother oft would warn and bid me do good,
Yet I turned a deaf ear like a naughty boy would:
Leaving home I went out, outlaws’ life to lead there,
Of a robbers’ gang I soon became the leader.
Palotsland

This was recorded in the 1840s, and the influence of one of Petőfi’s folksong-like poems is strongly felt in it. We often encounter in these songs a sense of longing for the lost lover, mentioned as a bird:

Bonny bird it goes a-hiding,
Calls at every wood, alighting.
Such a poor and lonely critter,
Just as mine, its lot is bitter.
Bonny bird it goes a-hiding,
Calls at every wood, alighting.
Now you see, they cast me out too,
Sweet, I wander all without you.
Vojlovica (former Torontál County)

Variants of this song known throughout the country barely differ from one another. Sending mail by birds is very frequent in wandering songs, which we can often trace to the 16th and 18th centuries:

Yond a cloud is coming, dark, so black and stormy,
There she preens one corbie, black as black she can be.
Bide you raven, come down, take my letter, fly ye
To my folks and also ringed betrothed bridie.
If they ask about me, say that I am ailing,
In a strange land hiding, no more than a strayling.
Those that I have loved so, if but once could see them,
That would give my sorrowing heart quick and soothing balsam.
Diósad (former Szilágy County)

Sometimes the hope of returning glimmers through; at other times the wanderer returns to visit the parental home in a sort of vision:

Dear old home, my land beloved,
Wish I saw the borders of it!
Skyward, dimly, in the distance,
Smoke I see arise in wisp thence.
Light the candle, light it, mother,
I shall see you, wait me supper.
Boil some sweet milk, now your son comes,
Put into it fresh-baked bread-crumbs.
{493.} Let me have a cheerful supper,
Such as none makes but you, mother.
Székelyland

The songs of captivity (rabének) and prison songs (börtöndal) are related to the songs of wandering, and we can trace certain of them back to the 18th century. These also speak in the first person, grieving about the sorrow of prison life and about the separation from homeland, family, and beloved. The songs are often related to outlaw or soldiers’ songs, although they may be considered an independent group because their permanent framework is the prison and loss of freedom. There are also epic features in them, especially as they tell about the judicial trial and everyday life of the prison. Prisons of the past century were important places to learn songs, and among these songs, prison songs were naturally the first acquired. Some songs give an account of the beginning and end of prison life with epic authenticity in three stanzas, but with the idioms of folksong:

’Twas when I to Komárom town
Came in fetters, hands and feet bound.
All the girls they wept like raining,
When they spied me iron chains in.
Don’t be crying, little shy ’uns
That you see me put in irons.
Day will come when they release me,
Not for aye shall I in jail be.
When the clock strikes and has struck one
To the door the gaoler will come.
“Get your things, rogue, go you, get hence,
You have done your lawful sentence.“
Alsóegerszeg (Baranya County)

In general, the reason why the prisoner suffers appears only infrequently in prison songs.

However, once in a while it does come up:

In my life one mishap right another follows,
Day to day my heart is filled with woes and sorrows.
Day to day my heart is filled with woes and sorrows,
’Cause my life free till now, knows no free tomorrows.
Cast am I in dungeon all for six wild cattle,
Clink my iron fetters for some steeds with saddle.
All the lamp I have is eyes of snakes and paddocks.
For to cover me in, prison walls with padlocks.
Do not marvel, darling, at my face so sallow,
Nine twelve-months I have been rotting in this cellar!
Nine full years I’ve spent here, down this gloomy dungeon,
Now eleven years more I have got to serve on.
Sárköz (Tolna County)

{494.} The following song is a virtual summary of prisoner songs. Its first stanza is a lyric cliché from the Middle Ages, while the second derives from one of the oldest Hungarian prisoner songs, and the third stanza has lines from a song about an outlaw languishing in the prison of the county hall, of which there is a wealth of similar songs:

Tisza fleed, Danube fleed, if all ink they could be,
Leaves in the green forest, if all paper could be,
Blades of grass in meadow, if all quills they could be,
And the stars in heaven, if all scribes they could be,
Still my griefs could no one never set down fully.
’Twos in County Bihar that they took and catched me,
Then to dungeon dark they right away dispatched me.
Prison roof will do me as a winding-sheet well,
Jangling of the gyves as ringing of my death-bell,
Glare of serpent’s eyes as lighting in my death-cell.
Down flew then the peacock, lighted on the gaol’s well,
For to free the poor lads, free them from the gaol cell.
“Captive ay, captive, I long to get my freedom,
God knows when they free me, when it chance to please them.”
“Sick at heart I shall be while you are in fetter,
When they free you, sweetheart, I shall be much better.”
Nagyszalonta (former Bihar County)

Prisoner songs were generally collected in the same places as herdsmen’s and outlaw songs. The greatest numbers come from the south Great Plain, where between 1868–1871 the outlaw-exterminating court of law of Count Gedeon Ráday operated. This area coincided with that of the most intensive early folksong collecting. It is true that prisoner songs have also turned up from Transylvania and Moldavia, from places where outlaw songs occur as an exception, but their atmosphere and form is of much older style.