# Herdsman and Outlaw Songs

While not large in numbers, there is a well defined goup of folksongs related to herdsman songs (pásztordal), and these are mostly related to outlaw songs. Herdsmen lived among somewhat better conditions in the past century, and it appeared that they even received a greater share of freedom than peasants or the agricultural labourers of the large estates. Therefore, in many cases they were as heroes to the people of the villages and feudal manors, who liked to take up and sing the songs about them. The reverse of this practice was not frequent, because newer songs, especially composed songs, did not filter through to the isolated world of the herdsmen, or did so only rarely. Thus, the wealth of songs about herdsmen and outlaws are much more archaic than that of the village peasantry from the point of view of lyrics and melody.

263. Betyárs, or outlaws.
Detail of a salt-cellar Transdanubia

Naturally, many songs speak of the livestock that was entrusted to the herdsmen, of their care and troubles, of the pasture, watering, guarding–i. e. of everything that fills up the major part of the herdsman’s day:

{495.} Down around those triple hillocks
Cattle graze with calves and bullocks.
Let ’em graze, if graze they want to:
It’s the herd my rose attends to.
Last year we’d a drought that parched us,
All my cattle starved for pastures.
Rough time of it we were having,
Lots of nights we spent in waking.
Plenty rain will fall next summer,
All my cattle will have pasture.
No more nights we spend in waking,
Thirst in pubs we will be slaking.
Broke the well-pole–what I oughter
Do my herd at noon to water?
Fasten on the pole a ribbon,
Come what may I’ll water give ’em.
Ormánság (Baranya County)

Water or watering is the greatest problem of the herdsman, especially in the Great Plain, and so it is in the Hortobágy. Therefore the appreciation of water reverberates through many songs:

{496.} Debrecen town has a river,
Hortobágy’s the name we give her.
There’s a stone bridge spans athwart it,
Piers and arches nine support it.
Debrecen town has a river,
Hortobágy’s the name we give her.
At the edge a water-mill stands,
Cattle graze near in the lowlands.
Hortobágy

The love songs of the herdsmen mostly begin with an image taken directly from their environment, but the majority are less shaded than the love songs of peasants:

Evening’s fallen, dark the fields grown everywhere;
Do you love me still so true, my sweetheart fair?
I have plucked this red rose for your lovely hair,
Yours shall it be Carnival time for to wear.
Kiskunhalas (Pest County)

A certain system of rank developed among the herdsmen over the entire linguistic region. Shepherds were the wealthiest, swineherds the poorest. The latter were looked down on and mocked even in songs:

If a man lives merrily,
It’s the shepherd verily:
In the greenwoods, on the lowlands,
Walks he, pipes he, plays the flute;
Ambles, stops and shuffles foot.
If a man’s lot’s misery,
It’s the swineherd’s verily:
All the winter, all the summer
Tends his pigs out on a limb;
Shepherd lads poke fun at him.
Balatonboglár (Somogy County)

The horseherds thought themselves at all time to be the best among the herdsmen:

Look at me a horseherd,
Pride of Hortobágy land.
Cowherd, though he looks good,
After me he must rank.
Rarely will I hobnob
With some hook-staff shepherds,
Even less palaver
With some dirty swineherds.
Hortobágy

However, the life of the herdsmen was completely vulnerable, since it always depended upon the owner of the stock. They were at a disadvantage {497.} at the time of hiring and firing, and even when wages were paid. It is no wonder that herdsmen often complain about their low esteem in songs:

Cheap is here the herdsman,
Unesteemed by masters,
Commonly they call him
Just a worthless bastard.
If he should have something,
People say he plunders.
If he has got nothing,
That he drinks and squanders.
When he goes to buy bread,
Well, the weight is shorter,
When he goes for bacon,
Loses by a quarter.
All the wheat he gets is
Bottom of the mortar.
For the wretched herdsman
Has a hard time ever
Do he whatsoever
Never can he prosper.
Békés (Békés County)

The territorial division of herdsmen’s songs is different from that of others. We find them in greatest numbers in places where at one time great extensive husbandry went on, that is to say, primarily in the Great Plain. Within this area, most herdsmen’s songs derive from east of the Tisza, while there is rarely a trace of any in the more eastern linguistic territory.

Although the main genre of outlaw poetry is the ballad and not the song (cf. p. 539), it is very difficult to draw a boundary between the two, since ballads contain lyric parts in a fair number, as do the songs epic characteristics. The betyár songs stand close to herdsman songs in both form and content, and frequently herdsman and outlaw appear together, just as in life.

In much of the 18th century the word betyár (outlaw) itself meant a manual labourer who wandered about looking for work and was employed for a longer or, more often, a shorter period. Young men more and more mixed with these men driven away from their birth place by the tyranny of the landlord or by the ever-increasing burden of feudal obligations, and men escaping army service. These were pursued by the authorities and were thus willy-nilly confronted with the state authorities. As a consequence, they tried to acquire a means of survival by violence.

264. Mirror-case with sealing-wax inlay, 1885
Nagydobsza-Istvánmajor, Somogy County

However, the betyár and the bandit were differentiated by general folk wisdom. The latter were ordinary robbers and murderers, while the former only took away what they absolutely needed, and took even that from the lords, the rich–primarily, that is, from the exploiters of the poor. Therefore it comes as no surprise that many supporters could be found for them among the social strata from which they derived. It was {498.} mainly herdsmen, labourers, and poor peasants who saved and hid these people. Stories circulated about their deeds and lives, and these soon found composers who put them into poetic or song forms, thus further disseminating this poetry.

The increasingly vigorous growth of peasant farms in the Great Plain during the first part of the 19th century favoured them, while the forests of Transdanubia and the north provided good hiding places. Most herdsman’s dwellings and the taverns admitted the outlaws. They lived in groups, often under military discipline. Besides bands consisting of 2 or 3 men, the most numerous were of 10 to 15 men, although contemporary records also mention bands with 50 to 60 or even more members. Their activities were revitalized in the late 19th century, and showed a definite anti-Habsburg tendency, which increased the sympathy towards them and lent further romantic colouring to their figures.

The poor peasantry idealized the outlaws at every period, feeling that they behaved towards the rich and the landlords in a way they themselves would have liked to. Poor people often looked upon some of the outlaws as heroes, although in reality they could hardly be considered as anything but ordinary robbers. In 1848 the most famous outlaw, Sándor Rózsa, joined the War of Independence together with his band and caused considerable losses to the Imperial troops. That is why the outlaws appear in songs and ballads as defenders of social justice and liberty:

{499.} Thus the Lord said when he made the Universe:
Let’s the World with betyár outlaws intersperse.
If the World were lacking all its betyár boys,
Godly masters would not know their prayer’s joys.
Nagysárrét (former Bihar County)

People also liked to recall that outlaws easily and quickly became soldiers of liberty:

Betyár I am, betyár called by everyone,
Yet ashamed I won’t be before anyone.
Time may come too, and it might be soon enough,
That the country needs hussars and soldiers tough.
Kiskunhalas (Pest County)

265. Shepherd lad. Detail of a razor-case, 1842
Bakonybél, Veszprém County

For most outlaws, life had taken a bad turn somewhere, and there was good reason why each of them had got into trouble; others blamed their parents for not raising them strictly enough:

I have had my horse lost
In a cedar forest.
I have torn in searching for it
Both my buskin boots best.
“Do not go and search it,
For the horse is pound’ in.
In a stable new with floorboards
Are its bells resoundin’.”
“Well I ken my own horse
When I hear its bells ring,
Street and stye I ken my true love
By her prideful stepping.”
“Oh you were my mother,
Why did you not learn me?
I was but a tender tree shoot,
Why did you not bend me?”
“I did try to bend thee,
But thou proved’st the harder;
With the betyárs and the cowherds
Drank you in the csárda.
Kiskunhalas (Pest County)

The outlaws were not only pursued by the pandours and the gendarmes, but they also had to fight the elements, rain, storm, and snow:

Drink up, betyár, summer’s over!
Can’t be long a lawless rover:
Poplar leaves are starting to fall;
Where then betyárs go and hide them?
Soon the burdock sheds its leaves all,
Outlaws wrap their leaves around them.
Tiszaladány (former Zemplén County)

{500.} Outlaws could be best encircled and captured in the winter and they were often hanged on the first tree without the verdict of a judge or a court of law:

There’s a poplar stands beyond the common,
With a betyár one of its boughs hung on.
When he drops the beasts will come and eat him,
And the birds of heaven will be weepin’.
Oh my God when I do look around, too,
What’s my life worth, what has it all come to?
I shall end up drying on the gallows,
Wither like the green grass of the fallows.
Nagyszalonta (former Bihar County)