# Life in the House and the Farmyard

While describing the interior of the house and the yard, we have often referred to the life and work that went on there. It is impossible to give a survey of this for the entire linguistic territory, since the differences are great not only in regard to the division of the house, but also as regards life style and the work carried out there. However, we can determine one thing: that the house itself, especially during summertime, is only a temporary place of rest for both men and women, during the intermissions of work in the fields or the yard. Work moves into the house during the winter, primarily around the fireplace, which meant woodcarving and repairing of tools for the men, but only when cold weather prevented them from doing it outside. Besides the cooking and baking, the women also did the washing there, processed the hemp and flax, and did numerous daily or occasional chores.

Daily work started at early dawn. The farmer and his sons rose at four o’clock, but before they went out to the stables they lit the fire so that the women could get up as soon as they left. Only the children and the old people rested a little longer. Breakfast followed after feeding the stock, cleaning out the manure, and a brief clean-up for themselves. Then the {190.} men and, if the work demanded it, the girls and women as well, went out to the fields to work, or did the daily chores around the house. They fed and watered the stock again at around three in the afternoon, after which they themselves ate. In wintertime, there was a little peaceful period left before bedtime, during which they talked, visited neighbours, and told stories and adventures to each other.

In the house, not only the daily life but the process of infrequent or unusual events were regulated as well. Thus they whitewashed the entire house inside and out, usually at Easter, or in September. They carried out the furniture and scrubbed it, replastered the clay floor of the house, and where it was made of planks, they thoroughly scrubbed it, chores which added mostly to the burden of the women.

Women also had to cope with the various vermin, first of all with mice and cockroaches. At the same time the protecting of the house snake was also one of their tasks. The belief that in the walls of every house lives a snake who protects the inhabitants of the house from trouble and sickness prevailed almost throughout the entire linguistic region. Its destruction, whether intentional or unintentional, was believed to bring misfortune on the whole family or on one of its members.

Among the big events of life, weddings turn the familiar order of the house and the yard upside down the most. At such times all furniture is carried out of the larger room and benches are set up along the walls, and in front of them tables made of planks are laid on sawing stools and chairs. Room is reserved for the musicians in the corner, around the fireplace. Even from the back room the furniture is put into the shed or granary, and that room is where food and wine are served. When the dancing starts, the older folk withdraw here for drinking and talking. The cooking is usually done outdoors or under the sheds. During the summer, they usually put up a large tent in the yard for the guests.

There is no such great rearranging of the house at the time of death. They lay the body out in the clean room with the face toward the door. The mirror is covered, the table is taken out, and the bier is surrounded with benches and chairs, providing a resting place for those who keep vigil with the body. Leave-taking and lamentation take place in front of the house, in the yard. Food and drink are offered to those coming back from the cemetery to the burial feast out of doors, or the table is set in the other room. If there is no second room, then they ask the neighbours to provide room for the funeral feast.

The godparents are generally the only ones invited to the baptismal feast, and this barely causes a change in the order of the house. When a spinning room is set up, usually just the table is taken out and benches and chairs are brought in so that more people can sit down. However, if as a conclusion to the spinning, or for some other occasion, a ball is arranged, then everything has to be hauled out just as at the time of a wedding. However, the next day the house is whitewashed, and the kicked up floor is plastered anew. During the summer, balls are held in the yard or, in the eastern part of the linguistic territory, even in the barn. There is no need to rearrange the furniture when people are invited to strip feathers, but more sitting room is provided.

The porch, the yard, and perhaps the granary are the scenes of some {191.} jobs carried out by mutual assistance. The most frequent among these is corn-husking and beating out the sunflower seeds, called bugázás. At such times people not only work, but tell stories and sing, and finally have a dance.

The dog defends the yard from unauthorized entries, but dogs are never let into the house. At best a dog can seek shelter in the barn, under a shed, or in the granary, or dig himself a warm resting place in the haystack.

Fire was the greatest calamity of the overcrammed villages and adjacent barns, and often created rubble out of entire sections of villages. If fire was caused by lightning, milk was first poured on it, in the belief that water would not extinguish it. The whole village runs together at a fire and tries to put it out and keep it from spreading, women by using bucket chains, men by quickly beating off the roof.