# Songs of Revellry
Drinking Songs

The group of revellry (mulatónóta) and drinking or wine songs (bordal) consists of a wide range of songs. Noticeably, the influence in this group of written songs, of literature, and of Latin verse predominates. Just as in love songs, here, too, we find many characteristics related to herdsmen’s and outlaws’ songs. In fact, because the connection between them has been continuous, it is not possible to draw fixed and final boundaries.

Wine songs and songs of revellry are all connected to some occasion, and these may be quite varied. Songs are sung at the most different folk gatherings: name days, pig-killing feasts, merrymaking in the tavern, weddings, grape harvesting, drinking in the wine cellar, or just simply drinking wine. They are often tied to one or another occasion in their content. Thus the tavern or pub are often mentioned:

Every time I turn up at the Kustány Inn,
I do eat and drink on tick, there revellin’,
’Cause I have all plenty enough credit there;
Take my word that all my debts I’ll square up fair.
Barman’s wife, go fetch me of your scarlet wine,
No matter how much it costs, never you mind;
Though I sell my crescent horned, mottled cow,
I shall pay the price of that wine anyhow!
Felsőkustány (Zala County)

Drinking songs often like to contrast work with drinking wine.

{509.} While I have a horse in harness,
I’ll be drinking in the csárda.
Little grey I’ll loose from swinking,
Let ’im earn some dough for drinking.
Folks dare call me rakehell drunkard,
And a slacker, workshy sluggard.
Nay, I do work as become me,
When I’m running short of money.
Ormánság (Baranya County)

No drinking can take place without praising the wine and drink, especially as high spirits mount:

Wine, wine, wine,
Did you drink such good red wine!
If the women start a-sipping,
Soon their topknots go a-slipping.
Nagyszalonta (former Bihar County)

In company, the song in praise of wine (bordicsérő) is followed by the drink-giving (itató) and glass-touching (koccintó) songs, into which they often weave the names of those present. At other times they urge with well-known phrases those who for some reason are reluctant to drink:

God created cockerels,
Cockerels and pickerels,
And he made some water wells
For to water animals.
But as even quacks do claim
Drinking from a well is shame:
Toads and frogs infest the same,
And a man’s life mar and maim.
Mohács (Baranya County)

Afterwards, songs dealing with drunkenness and its consequences are also sung.

To the vineyard I was going,
Hoe in hand to do some hoeing;
But I did not feel like swinkin’
Damn it all, I started drinkin’.
I have drunk, and like a drunkard,
Noway can I leave the vineyard;
Anyone who knows should come, say
Where to find the homeward highway.
’Tis a shame what friends and foes said
That the wine has made my nose red;
What makes red the gander’s pecker
When in wine he dips it never?
{510.} Women say amongst each other
Wine does make me reel and totter.
Why, a reed-stalk sways a-rocking,
Though in water lays a-soaking!
Tálya (former Zemplén County)

We could continue to list the glass-touching and drink-giving songs, those about fights in the tavern, and those in which the real drinkers take the bottle with them even into the grave. The following is a link in the direction of outlaw songs, since outlaws favoured wine, women, and gypsy musicians very much:

When all outlawed betyárs
From this world have vanished,
Rich innkeepers have to
Beg alms from the parish.
Then all pretty damsels will
Go in dresses tattered;
And the gypsy fiddlers
Will have by then scattered.
Szaján (former Torontál County)

Most wine songs are known in important grape-growing areas. Thus every important wine region has its characteristic wealth of wine songs, without which no worthwhile merrymaking could take place.