# The Outskirts of the Settlement

46. Farmstead
Kecskemét

47. Farmstead
Székkutas, Csongrád County

Today, the határ, an outskirt of fields, surrounds every closed settlement, village or town. The Hungarian term határ means both boundary and the whole territory within the boundary–fields, forests, pasture, etc.–surrounding the houses and their lots. Hungarian settlements came into existence in the early Hungarian Middle Ages, and in many cases written sources from the 11th century already make reference to these. Archeological excavations prove that settlements, consisting of a few houses and dug-out dwellings sunk into the ground, often changed location and that their firm siting came about only from the 13th and 14th centuries. We know more about the history of towns and villages beginning with this period. Many settlements of the Great Plain became uninhabited during the Turkish rule. After the retreat of the Turks at the end of the 17th century, boundaries around the numerous, now completely resettled towns developed anew and solidified only gradually. Beginning from the Middle Ages we can already often read about határjárás, the inspection of landmarks, when the connecting {121.} boundaries of the villages involved were determined by the landlord or by a committee formed by the county. A small mound was raised on the connecting points, especially if three boundaries ran together, and a stone placed on top of it. Often written documents fixed the boundary mark, an event made even more memorable by flogging some of the young men who were present with switches, so that they should remember this event and the exact place of the border even in old age. These hills and stones were held to be the meeting places of witches and troubled spirits, and it was hoped that boils could be cured by rubbing them with a handful of soil taken from here.

The outskirts of the villages slowly changed into cultivated areas, first of all, in the immediate vicinity of the settlements. The virgin sod was broken, forests were cut down, the swamps were drained, and the dried-out areas put under the plough. The process of clearing can be traced from the Middle Ages almost to the present day. Under feudalism the spirit of enterprise was further encouraged by the fact that for a certain length of time after reclamation the serfs did not have to pay duty and do labour for the reclaimed fields. On the other hand, the landlord could always redeem the reclaimed land for a small sum and could attach it to the estate under his own control. In many places permission from the landlord was required to clear the fields, and if this was not given, the land could be taken away without compensation.

Two ways of clearing fields were known. In the case of slash and burn (égetéses irtás), the bark was cut from the trees all the way around and when the trees had become desiccated, fire was set to the entire forest. At other times the forest was cut down completely, leaving perhaps only the branches which, after they dried out, were burned along with the bushes. The big stumps were generally left to rot in the ground for several years, because it was easier to remove them this way. Clearing was extremely hard work. Clearing one hectare occupied forty to eighty days of a man, depending on what kind of trees the forest consisted of. The cleared areas were first used as pasture and hayfield, and only after a few years were put under the plough.

The tools used for clearing were the axe, pick-axe, two pronged hoe and {122.} flat hoe. Characteristic were the billhooks or slashing hooks, with which they cleared the shrubby areas, and cut the branches of the larger, felled trees. First hoed plants were put into the cleared area and only afterwards did they plough and sow it with grain. In Western Transdanubia, they cultivated clearings for six to eight years, then used them as forests again for thirty to fifty years, so that the poor soil would regain its fertility. The cleared fields that had good soil slowly amalgamated with the cultivated fields of the settlement, and were used as grazing land or left fallow for a few years only if the soil needed rest.

Clearing of swampy and boggy areas was different. These had to be freed first of all from the standing water and protected against the returning floods. On their own, the peasants could carry out this big job only on small areas. For larger areas they had to rely on co-operation or, from the first half of the 19th century, on state-directed flood control. They burned the dried-out marshes and bogs and burned off the remnants of the water plants that had been deposited in thick layers during the centuries. These covered the ground profusely in some places, thinly in others, and had to be levelled out for ploughing and sowing to follow. Such marsh soil proved to be extremely fertile at first. It did not need to be fertilized for decades. However, the roots of reeds were very hard to destroy, so that on such fields, if there was much moisture, reeds appeared even a century later.

On the outskirts of the town and village, country taverns, forester’s houses, water mills, and temporary huts of herdsmen were erected, their locations determined by natural economic circumstances.

48. Farmsteads
Kecskemét

49. Farmstead
Jászárokszállás, Szolnok County

{123.} The scattered settlement (szórványtelepülés) is not frequent in the Hungarian linguistic region, with the exception of the peasant farmsteads common in the Great Plain; such do exist in some places among the Székelys, and among the Csángós of Gyimes (cf. Ill. 17). It seems that this form can be found only in areas 500 metres above sea level. We must look for its origin in the attempt to escape feudal duties, and in herding.

We find the so-called szeres (kinship) settlement in the south-western part of Transdanubia, Göcsej and Alsóőrség. Here four, five, or even fewer houses line up on the ridge of the hills and ten to fifteen of these form a village. Originally the arable fields lay in the immediate vicinity of the houses. For the most part descendants of one family live in one szer, as the names of such settlements imply: Győrffy-szer, Szabó-szer. In the meantime when fields became exhausted and new areas were cleared, the agricultural area and the place of settlement moved further apart. To balance this, new buildings were constructed, so that the szer moved on from time to time, drew asunder, and then regrouped. In recent times their development into closed villages has become more definite. Although this form of settlement is known throughout Europe, it can be brought into direct relationship with neighbouring Styrian (Austrian) forms corresponding to it.

Hill villages (hegyközség) came into being primarily in the grape-growing regions of Transdanubia, where the poor population, living mostly on wine making, moved out from some closed settlement. The houses and yards are located at greater distances from each other. Just as at the szeres settlements, these were connected by footpaths, and in some places by cart roads, which formed a vast, confused network.

50. A well with a steep on a farmstead
Karcag

Fig. 15. Fenced gardens of various functions around a village.
Konyár, former Bihar County. Late 19th century.
1. The new vineyard. 2. The old vineyard. 3. Playground. 4. Cabbage patches 5. Stable-yards. 6. Threshing yards. 7. Pasture.

The early lodgings (szállás) of the Great Plain were temporary erections built on the outskirts of settlements to which they belonged. From the end of the 18th century the earlier name szállás was displaced, except in the southern part of the linguistic territory, by the word tanya (farmstead), originally a word fishermen used for their abode. The Hungarian farmstead areas form the largest region of connected scattered {125.} settlement in Europe. This type of settlement is characteristic of the area between the Danube and Tisza, and the southern and central Tiszántúl. Only in the north, although still on the plain, do villages of closed settlement type occur again.

51. A grave-post in the cemetery
Magyarvalkó, former Kolozs County

52. Cemetery
Szentegyházasfalu, former Udvarhely County

The historical roots of the farmsteads go back to the era prior to the Turkish occupation, although the first remains of their predecessors can be shown in towns where the surrounding boundary areas were large enough to include the fields of the destroyed villages into the area. In the beginning sufficient fodder for winter maintenance was gathered around the buildings where the animals were outwintered. Only the men stayed here with the animals through the winter. The farmstead was created and further developed by economic necessity. Through the years, as the pastures were broken up and with the development of individual {126.} ownership, the outlying farmstead became a general agricultural centre. The entire family lived on it from early spring until autumn, so that they could do the necessary work without losing time by travelling. Later on the young people lived out there all the year round, while the old people stayed in their city or village homes. In some cases there were families whose permanent dwellings were the farmsteads and whose connections with the parent settlement decreased.

The farmsteads, therefore, were attached to some closed settlement. Many things show this very tight economic and social tie, such as road access. Farmsteads are easily accessible on the roads that branched out of the villages like spokes on a wheel, though the farmsteads themselves were not interconnected by a road network. The farmstead is the scene of agricultural activity, and the household at the parent settlement serves primarily to process and store produce. The farmstead perfectly accomplished the separation of production, of processing and of use. From the point of view of taxation, marketing, and local government, the farmstead is connected to the village. Baptism, wedding and burial also tie them there by and large; they have no independent cemetery, but they lay their dead to rest in the cemetery of the town.

The farmsteads determine the entire character of certain cities and regions. An example is one of the largest Hungarian cities, Szeged. The first farmsteads appeared at the end of the 17th century, but their numbers could not have been large even at the beginning of the 18th century. They multiplied greatly and by the second half of the century {127.} their numbers approached a thousand. In 1880, out of the city’s population of 73,676, there were 27,789 living permanently on farmsteads, while in 1930 the figure was 45,450 out of 135,071. This means that the larger part of the population occupied in agriculture lived and worked on farmsteads.

After 1945, as a result of land reform, some 75,000 new farmsteads were built over the entire country. The number of farmsteads began to decrease from the beginning of the 1950s, especially after the collectivization, since they have largely lost their original advantage, proximity to the place of production. Many people moved into the parent settlement, creating new homes. Others continued to stay out. Farmsteads lying near the settlement merged into it, or will soon be reached by the village. More recently some people have kept the farmstead and the garden around it as well as their dwelling in the closed settlement and spend their weekends and part of the summer out there. Such places no longer have anything to do with production but serve as a place of rest after work of a different kind in the city. In many places farmstead centres came into existence with schools, local government offices, a store, tavern, culture house, and their magnetic attraction soon created the seed of a closed village.

53. Cemetery
Szatmárcseke, Szabolcs-Szatmár County

54. Grave-post
Szenna, Somogy County

A significant proportion of the farmsteads still exists, and in 1970 about eight per cent of the total population of the country lived on such scattered settlements. It is a difficult task to supply the farmsteads with {129.} electricity, schools, culture houses, stores and road networks. According to the official position, “The forced liquidation of the historically developed farmstead system is contrary to both individual and communal interests. We can reduce the present boundaries of the farmstead region only through far-sighted planning and through central support which takes into consideration the local situation”. However, the task is enormous, since half of the population of the region between the Danube and Tisza, not including the population of the cities, lives on farmsteads even today. Families are assisted by allotment of lots, building loans, and jobs in the closed settlement, and are encouraged to move in on a completely voluntary basis. Young people especially use these opportunities, while the majority of the old folk prefer to stay in the familiar surroundings. The yearly decrease of the farmsteads amounts to about one per cent, so that we can reckon on their slow disappearance, as also of scattered settlements that have lost their function.

Fig. 16. A village with houses arranged along the street.
Nagyszekeres, former Szatmár County. Late 19th century.
The graveyard of the Calvinists is around the church, the cemetery of the Roman Catholics is on the rim of the settlement

We find orchards and vineyards in the Great Plain and elsewhere. In the Nagykunság, these are generally divided in width and length into several strips of land, at the end of which stand a hut and a shed. These are generally one-roomed structures, and their fireplace, heating equipment preserved many antiquities, especially in the Great Plain. They are not fit for permanent dwellings, and people spend the night in them only during work or when guarding the crop.

On the outskirts of larger settlements lie the animal markets, which are otherwise used as occasional pastures. We shall discuss the different forms of temporary herdsman’s buildings located on distant pastures later, as well as of the mills located on the edge of the settlement.

However, we may mention here the location of cemeteries in respect to the settlements (cf. pp. 635–6). The Magyars of the Conquest presumably chose their place of burial at some distance from their dwellings. However, by the 11th century royal decrees had ordered the building of churches, and inhabitants of villages could not move away from these. They had to lay their dead for eternal rest around the church, as it happened through the entire course of the Middle Ages, even if for lack of space the dead had to be buried on top of each other in the churchyard (cinterem).

The authorities began to urge, sporadically in the 18th century, and more and more strongly in the 19th century, that cemeteries be located outside the village, mainly for reasons of health. At the end of the 19th century, a law prohibited burials around the church, except where the church was located on the outskirts of the village. Thus there are still some graveyards which surround the church. Most of them are no longer used for burial, but we can name some still in use today in various parts of the linguistic region. Thus we can find some in the Székelyland, not infrequently even in cities (Sepsiszentgyörgy), but especially in villages (Telkibánya, Abaúj County; Gyenesdiás, Zala County) and the second largest city of the country, Miskolc, has a cemetery that is surrounded by the settlement itself.

55. Heart-shaped grave-post
Karancsság, Nógrád County

56. Tombstone, 1791
Tök, Pest County

The cemetery outside the village is usually bordered by a ditch with a lilac, box-thorn or other type of hedge on its bank. A permanent fence {130.} and ornamental gate are found only in regions rich in wood and woodcarving tradition. Such can be seen mostly in the Székelyland and Kalotaszeg. Many significances are assigned to the cemetery ditch. This is where the executed, the outlaws who fell in fight, the unbaptized infants, and the suicides were buried, and this is where they burned the straw which had been in the bed of the deceased.

Hungarian cemeteries have an older and a newer form. There are no paths in the former, the graves lying in apparent chaos but parallel to each other. The dead in these graves lie in the east-west direction, so that they turn their faces towards the rising sun, a custom traceable to the Conquest. In the places where the practice of recording family origin along the male line is especially alive, they buried those belonging together by blood in a designated part of the cemetery. When opening new cemeteries the authorities divided the area into parcels in which neither the practice of facing east nor the communal burial of the large family has any significance.

In the past, cemeteries were often planted with fruit trees, and more recently with locust trees, which augmented the income of the church that owned the cemetery or of the field keeper. The flower cult appeared in peasant cemeteries only at the beginning of this century. Earlier they formed a mound, then flattened it out, so that the grass grew over it. {131.} They mowed the cemeteries regularly, especially in the older, completely grassy areas.

The Catholics erected a wood or stone cross by the head of the deceased. Among later ones we find some carved in heart shapes after Baroque examples, while others imitated the human shape. The grave posts of the Calvinists were much more varied than those mentioned above. We can find some of a definitely anthropomorphic character in the central part of the country and along the Danube. They are column shaped in wide areas of Upper Hungary, and the notching in front gives information about the age of the dead. In a considerable part of the region east of the Tisza the upper part of the column ends in a peak which tilts forward slightly, and so its shape resembles that of a boat cut in half and stood in the ground. In Transylvania and in a large part of the area between the Danube and Tisza, richly carved, ornamental columns perpetuate the memory of the dead. The age and origin of these practices are subject to debate. There are some who believe them to be pre-Conquest, while others think they spread after the Reformation as a counterpart of the cross.

In certain areas the signs on the grave posts indicate whether it is a woman or man, young man or girl, or perhaps child who rests in the grave. In other areas age is marked by colour. A light colour, blue or white, indicates the young, brown the middle aged, black the more elderly. The latter colour is gaining ground more and more strongly and in certain cemeteries there are only black grave posts. In old Hungarian cemeteries the colour red indicates violent death (someone who died in a war, in a fight, was a victim of murder, etc.).

The cemetery is the village of the dead, where the ancestors rest, they and their belongings protected by superstition. This is why fruit can be picked from the trees only by the field keepers, why flowers cannot be picked here, why bushes and trees cannot be injured, and why grave posts and crosses cannot be stolen. The belief is held that the wronged dead will come for the stolen object at midnight and demand its return.

Fig. 17. A settlement with double inner plots.
Nagyabony, Pest County. First half of 19th century

Beside the structures already listed we find the outskirts of towns and village farmyards containing corn-barns (csűr), sheds (pajta) and sheep- and pigpens (akol, ól), living quarters (szállás) and loading platforms (rakodóhely). These are closely connected to the inner core of the settlement. Many of these farmyards form a type of settlement typical of part of the Hungarian linguistic territory: the settlement ethnographical literature calls the “double inner-plot” (két beltelkes or kertes) system. (The Hungarian word kert originally meant fenced and therefore may mean a fenced farmyard; recently the word mostly means garden.) The basis of this system was as follows: in the core of the settlement, the houses without a larger yard, not separated from each other by streets or fences, were surrounded by a ring of farmyards. In the latter animals were kept, either in the open air or in stables, fodder was stored there, and certain farm chores such as treading out grain or threshing it, etc., were carried out. Men lived and worked on the farmyards all or most of the time. They would build open fireplaces in the stables and gathered together to talk, sing and tell stories. The stables with a fireplace were called heatable stables (tüzelős ól). Therefore, in a certain phase of their {132.} development, these farmyards fulfilled in many respects a function similar to the tanya farmsteads by separating the agricultural activities from those performed in the dwelling house.

Fig. 18. A village with stable-yards called szálláskert.
Szeremle, former Bács County. First half of the 20th century.
1. Stable-yards. 2. Settlement of dwelling houses. 3. Plough lands and vegetable gardens. 4. Wood

István Györffy discovered this system of settlement form half a century ago in relation to the Hajdú towns, and since then a growing amount of research has found variations of it in an ever-increasing area. It is frequent in the strip between Upper Hungary and the Great Plain, it is rarer in the region east of the Tisza, and it occurs sporadically between the Danube and Tisza. There are several examples of this form of settlement among the Palotses of Upper Hungary, and recent research has also demonstrated its existence in Transdanubia. The latter instances, {133.} however, differ in some significant characteristics from their eastern equivalents. The stables stood in the pasture ground and were much more scattered, while the granary and the threshing barn were connected to the stable, though earlier they had stood completely separate from it. Recently its existence has been reported even north of the Csallóköz.

All these data prove not only its wide diffusion but also its antiquity. Beginning with the first half of the 19th century the population of the village or town increased so much that dwelling houses began to be built in the ring of farmyards. In this way the kert merged with the settlement. The smaller inner lots and the larger outer lots betray, even today, the former method of dividing the settlement into an interior core of houses surrounded by a ring of farmyards.