Mocking Songs, Humorous and Satirical Songs

This complex group of songs is one of the largest in the Hungarian linguistic region. It is placed according to numerical proportion between the love and soldiers’ songs. The tradition of mocking songs goes back many centuries; it is permeated by the candour, the turbulent gaiety of goliardic poetry, and by the Latin humour of the 16th to 18th centuries, the connection with which it can be demonstrated in many cases.

The triple title of mocking songs (csúfoló), humorous (tréfás) and satirical songs (gúnydal) designates groups close to each other, yet still separate, so that it would be very difficult to characterize them uniformly. A concept applicable to very many occasions and to a whole string of lyric songs is more or less open in the direction of every other folksong.

Their presentation, one following the other, was occasioned by cheerful social gatherings. They mocked, with poignant and sharp humour, certain groups of people, girls, women, young men, priests, and masters. This versified judgement is cutting, stinging to the quick, and often very ruthless, especially when they substitute in a suitable fashion places and names and in this way actualize the song. As is also apparent, numerous examples of this group of songs are partly or entirely improvised.

To arrange them according to content is nearly impossible, especially if we list the parodies as well. The most frequent form is when the girls sing about the young men, or vice versa, and list their assumed or real qualities:

{511.} Puszta lads are hard-up fellers, hard-up fellers,

All the money that they earn is merely fillérs.

Though they search their trouser pockets, trouser pockets,

All they find there is but pumpkin seeds or peanuts.

Hódmezővásárhely (Csongrád County)

This is how the town folks mocked the generally poorer people of peasant farmsteads. At other times they sang about other qualities than material attributes:

Hardly is a young lad worth a wrinkled punkin

Who besides his lass sits like a pipsqueak mankin,

Casting sheepish looks and gaping like a bunkin,

Bugger such a booby, fuddy, duddy dumbling!

Generally known

Naturally, the young men were not to be outdone, and they caricature the girls freely, especially those girls who dote too much on them:

In the town of Szentgyörgy girls were laying hen,

Under each they lay some twenty eggs and ten.

Of the thirty hatched a single cockerel then,

Alas, fair Szentgyörgy girls, where’ll you find your men?

Sepsiszentgyörgy (former Háromszék County)

The mocking of men and women often contains erotic features, which made the songs even more popular:

Corn-cake, milky, sugar-coated,

Soon I will become betrothed:

Bride today and wife tomorrow,

Goodwife then, a year tomorrow.

Corn-cake, stodgy, made with flour,

Old man am I, past my flower,

Got one thing to pin my hope on:

I have such a sprightly woman.

Generally known

Lizzy’s busy lentils shuckin’

Waitin’ till her great goodluck’s in.

When she is not all alone in,

O the bench goes creakin’, groanin’!

Pusztafalu (former Abaúj County)

In Europe, spinsters and women were always targets of mockery, so that it is natural that they are not left out of Hungarian folksongs either. On the contrary, most of these are about them:

Fillet, fillet, damn my maiden-fillet,

May a fire burn it up or grill it!

I have worn all thirteen fillets threadbare,

But saw not a pair of drawers lads wear.

Nagymegyer (Komárom County)

{512.} Out the house went, through the windows,

Still the old hag stays she indoors.

Teeth she lacks all three and thirty,

Still she calls her lover birdie.

Nagyszalonta (former Bihar County)

Stunted carrot, parsley, chervil,

Old women are danger, peril.

I can hardly bide the Devil

For to take ’em critters evil.

For a crone it would be better

If she was in hell in fetters;

Withered is the skin upon her,

Makes a man recoil in horror.

Nemespátró (Somogy County)

Naturally, the clerical and secular leaders of the village could not avoid being caricatured. The priest and the cantor in particular are the recurring actors of songs:

I for one detest a person

If he speaks ill of a parson;

For a cleric wears no sheepskin,

In his cassock he is freezin’.

Whippy, whoopee, hop!

I for one detest such persons

Who on tradesmen cast aspersions;

For the tradesmen have no pot-hats,

On the street, too, wear their cloth-caps.

Whippy, whoopee, hop!

Whippy, whoopee, hopsy-skipsy,

Strike up, play my tune you gypsy!

Come on, lovey, let’s be dancin’

Foot it gayly, lively prancin’!

Whippy, whoopee, hop!

Generally known

They also excoriated the village mayor. The social content of the song is also clear, since the mayor came from among the more prosperous peasants, whom he therefore supported:

Down the gardens is a mare,

Confiscated by the mayor.

So she kicked his Excellence,

Three day’s time he’ll exit hence.

O the poor man, magistrate,

He was such good give-and-take:

What he plundered from the poor,

Gave the rich to have some more.

{513.} Come rejoice ye farmer folk,

’Cause your mayor died, he croaked,

What you never hoped could be,

That your grey mare accomplished beautifully.

Szend (former Szabolcs County)

This genre is known throughout the entire country. Most of the songs were collected in Transylvania and the Great Plain. Not that humour was stronger in these regions, but most likely the unevenness of collecting has caused it to seem so.

Naturally, we have been able to introduce above only a few groups of Hungarian folksongs, and can only refer to the rest of them. We have left out the cradle-songs, children’s ditties and games, lyrical maxims, riddles, match-making songs, love letters in verse, verses of the witnesses at weddings, wedding songs, dance songs, toasts and festive songs, night watchmen’s songs, beggar songs, songs at fairs and vendor songs, mourning songs, wandering songs, and a few more. We shall deal with part of these when discussing customs. We think it important to list them only because they indicate the impressive richness of Hungarian folksong.

If, by way of summary, we try finally to characterize Hungarian folksong in general, we must emphasize the characteristic breadth, the clarity, the artistic simplicity in their message, and, through this, the manifold, intricate artistic expression of life and society that make up Hungarian folksong. Many folksongs could conjure up through a four-line stanza contemporary Hungarian society. They seem, however, to always tell the problems of the individual personally, to express in this way the sentimental attitudes, emotions, passions, thoughts, value judgement of the entire community. In folksong the entire community speaks through the voice of the individual, so that the expressions “individual” and “communal” with regard to Hungarian folk poetry are, in the final analysis, inseparable.