{3-597.} Village Life

The various strata of the peasantry lived side by side in a state of interdependence. Traditions, origins, cohabitation, family links, shared work and — in part — common property, all contributed to the closed structure of a village society. The village's unwritten laws defined their rights and duties as well as the tasks that arose from their natural environment.

The rhythm of rural life is revealed by ethnographic research conducted in Transylvanian villages that practised the three-course rotation system. The farmer's year traditionally began in March with ploughing, followed in April and May by more ploughing, the sowing of barley and maize, putting sheep and cattle out to pasture, and weeding and planting in the garden. In June, the farmers harvested alfalfa, clover, and grass, hoed the cornfields, and fallowed the field reserved for fall wheat. The harvest began in mid-July and lasted for a few weeks; then came stubble-stripping, fertilizing, and threshing. September and October was the season for picking fruit, harvesting corn and sunflowers, and digging up potatoes. When these products were sorted out, it was November, the time for fall ploughing, stabling the cattle, and collecting firewood. The sheep were brought in at the first snowfall. The December frosts heralded a few quiet weeks, during which a pig was slaughtered, and its meat processed; now the men could sleep nine or ten hours, not seven as they did in summertime. The spread of indoor stock-raising added to the yearly chores, for it necessitated more fodder and made for countless tasks around the farm.

The women's tasks, apart from raising children and managing the household, included spinning and weaving yarn in the spring, bringing in the hay, sharing in the heavy labour of harvesting, tending the vegetable garden, as well as steeping and hackling flax. After the home preserves were safely stored in early November, the women spun wool, wove, and made clothes until Christmas came {3-598.} round. In the new year, they laboured on at weaving and feather-plucking. Thus women, unlike men, had even less time to sleep in winter. There was more social life and shared family entertainment in winter; that was the season when most weddings were held. The family farm was a small integrated producer of agricultural and animal products, and the greater its market-orientation, the more work it demanded from its members. In Kolozs County, a quarter of the farms were considered in the 1880s to be market-oriented. According to Ákos Egyed's calculations, a quarter of Transylvania's peasantry produced regularly for the market, and another quarter did so intermittently, while the rest engaged in subsistence or fragmentary farming. Over a period of fifty years, the rather slow rhythm — branded by some as indolence — that marked peasant life in feudal times was gradually transformed. In places where landed property had been consolidated and restructured, the more ambitious peasants found scope for their entrepreneurial zeal. The peasant generation that lived at a measured pace made way for 'a type of farmer who is ambitious, takes risks, and assesses all options in terms of time and money' — one who is interested in technical innovations, reads the odd agricultural textbook, and sends his child to serve on a well-managed farm.[33]33. K. Kós Jr, Eszköz, munka, néphagyomány: Dolgozatok a munka néprajza köréből (Bucharest, 1980), p. 453.

The peasant house with its adjoining yard combined the functions of home and farm. In their appearance, the dwellings reflected the natural environment. In the muddy expanse of the Mezőség, even the wealthier farmers lived in shabby adobe huts, and Romanian churches had thatched roofs. Surveying the Mezőség in the post-Compromise period, Balázs Orbán deplored the general absence of orchards, vegetable gardens, fencing, and even outbuildings; only a few flourishing villages on the edge of the region left a better impression. Miklós Bartha, a politician and publicist, wrote in 1880 that 'lodgings are so inhuman here that a good farmer elsewhere would not consider them adequate even for his animals.'[34]34. Bartha Miklós összegyűjtött munkái III, ed. by J. Samassa (Budapest, 1910), p. 327. In the mountains, on the other hand, even the poorest families {3-599.} lived in more sanitary, wooden houses, while the most attractive houses were found, as before, in Saxon villages. Until 1848, the standard rural dwelling was built of logs, with tiny openings for windows; by the late 1850s, houses constructed of stone, with two windows giving on the road, became more common. Bricks, tiles, and sheet-iron roofing came into more general use only at the turn of the century. Wood remained the principal building material, including wood shingles for roofing.

By 1900, two-room, three-part houses had become the rule in Hungarian and upland Romanian areas; the larder had grown into a separate room, and a stronger roof structure allowed for a larger porch, which lent itself to many functions. The kitchens were still commonly equipped with open fireplaces; meat was smoked over the latter, and the smoke helped to preserve the wood-shingled or even straw roof. By the 1850s, peasants were adopting measures to evacuate the smoke more efficiently, but the big innovation was the introduction of the kitchen-range, which also necessitated new pots and pans and ushered in a cleaner style of cooking. The combination of fireplace and large oven survived, but by the turn of the century the baking oven was commonly relocated in the yard, and rooms came to be heated with tile or cast-iron stoves. By the time of the Compromise, the Hungarian homes in Hétfalu were furnished in a simple but artful manner. First there were colourfully-decorated benches, painted chests with a tulip motif, and ornate tables; then came sideboards, coat-racks decorated with the tulip motif, and, in Saxon houses, glass-fronted cabinets. Wardrobes became more common around 1900, supplementing the storage space in chests. Larger glass windows, paraffin lamps, and mirrors appeared everywhere and made houses more liveable. Electric lighting was first introduced in some larger Saxon villages after 1907.

In their layout, the houses were oriented inwards. The street frontage was more ornamented, but it was also the narrower side. {3-600.} The longer span of the house opened onto the yard, where stood the smaller outbuildings, and beyond these, the bigger ones, which were generally larger than the house itself. In the uplands, houses were dispersed in unfenced clusters, whereas in the lowlands, villages had somewhat irregular streets lined by fenced yards. Although officials and merchants who settled in the villages began to build houses with a longer street frontage, local customs did not change; the peasants' houses became larger and better, but their basic layout remained the same. Within each region, Hungarian, Romanian, and Saxon houses were broadly similar in structure and internal layout, yet clearly distinguishable by their detailing. Then again, at the turn of the century, the value of an average Saxon house in the southern region — several thousand crowns — was four to eight times that of a Hungarian peasant's adobe house in the lowlands.

The market economy brought changes in clothing and diet. Manufactured goods became widely available in the second half of the 19th century, and not only in the more developed Saxon regions but in Hungarian villages as well. The Saxons' attire continued to be clearly differentiated by social status. At the turn of the century, the criticism was oft expressed — not for the first time in history — that women were spending too much on clothing and textiles, and that this harmed the economy. Although factory-produced textiles came into wider use, most clothing was still made at home, adorned with ancient geometrical and floral patterns. The national costume distinguished Hungarian, Saxons, and Romanians from each other. Székelys preserved the noble simplicity of their attire; the colourful and variegated Romanian costumes, worn even by the poorer strata, varied greatly from region to region. With growing affluence, people could satisfy needs that went beyond mere subsistence. They acquired framed pictures, shawls, colourful decorative cushions, fancy underclothes, and pottery, all of which reflected the new golden age of folk art. By the turn of the century, a sober and {3-601.} simplified version of the quintessential Hungarian peasant garb, the cifraszűr (embroidered cloak), had appeared in Transylvania. In comparing the case of Transylvania with other, more developed regions, ethnographers tend to attribute this renaissance of folk art — which occurred among all three nationalities — to the delayed onset of modernization. Whatever the reason, Transylvania remained a treasure house for scholars interested in folk art and folk music.

Corn, vegetables, and fruit were the essential elements of the peasant diet. In most regions, bread was not an everyday food. Romanian and Hungarian peasants alike consumed several versions of corn porridge, as well as polenta served with onions, milk, or cottage cheese. The Romanians ate rather more potatoes and beans, the Hungarians more wheat-bread, bacon, and generally more warm dishes. Meat was eaten, at most, twice a week — poultry and mutton all year round, pork in the winter — while dishes such as stuffed cabbage, meat soup, and pancakes were reserved for special occasions, and doughnuts for the more affluent people. At times of heavy labour, meals were more substantial. The approximately two hundred days of fast observed by Romanians was one reason for their simpler culinary culture, but the basic cause was grinding poverty; in the early 1880s, people in Hunyad County regularly made a meal of bread slices soaked in hot, salty whey, and this remained a staple of their diet for another fifty years. A knowledgable observer reported in the early 1900s that poorer Romanians were short of food even in years of good harvest and that they had to keep their expenses and consumption at the lowest subsistence level. The lack of variety in their diet, particularly in years of poor harvest, led to a wide incidence of pellagra. By 1900, milk from the more productive cows was sent to the market, and the typical peasant owner would retain for his family's consumption only what he could not sell. Saxon peasants enjoyed a more ample diet: they baked bread made from wheat or rye flour, drank coffee in the {3-602.} morning, ate a two-course lunch that included meat and, for dinner, they would have milk and stewed vegetables, or, in the summer, bacon and fruit. They drank mainly wine and beer, whereas elsewhere the common drinks were brandy and wine.

This survey of peasant life, along with the preceding demographic data, suggests that modernization encompassed old and new social tensions. Although the occasional minor protest movements, labelled 'communistic' by the authorities, did appear in Transylvania, the tensions did not reach a boiling point until the collapse of the monarchy. Nevertheless, the state faced chronic problems. From the 1850s onward, the gendarmerie was on constant watch for signs of disorder in the countryside; the task required a relatively small complement, for the gendarmes' heavy hand had earned them a fearful respect. (The gendarmerie had a force of 1,200 in 1867; its numbers were cut to 850 by 1876, then expanded to some 3,000 at the end of the century.) The sub-prefects could also call in the army to maintain order, but there was less need for police intervention in Transylvania than in the more volatile districts of the Great Plain.