PETTICOAT PRIDE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 10, 12 January 1929, Page 18

PETTICOAT PRIDE

MAGYAR HEIRLOOMS

Preseuf-day Hungary; possesses \ very few large towns outside the, beautiful spa-like capital, Budapest, and even in the" towns the peasant farmers and their womenfolk arrive in the traditional clan costumes,- writes a correspondent of the '.'Daily Telegraph,'..' vThe: Magyar women. are attractive. .. Though they work hard in the fields all through the summer, sometimes sixteen hours a day, and in the dark months of.winter ply the needle in the tanya (sun-baked mud-brick farmhouses),'making the fine embroidery, for which-they are renowned, or preparing new'dresses, they aro lithe and healthy-looking.

One would hot think they were. so. slim and lissom, seeing them first eom'ing- to-^hurclfooni^Sundaywearing, as ■they do/ anything from'eight- to a dozen petticoats, perhaps in. different colours, and billowing out till, the wearers appear like quaint old Dresden figures como, toylif c. The ynumber of petticoats,!. anfi:?the qua.ntity-j'and/'beauty of the embroidery worn are important, for theso aro the outward sign of the Magyar peasant's position. The petticoats, indeed all the drosses, ure heirlooms as a rule, and are handed down from mother to daughter through generations. The quality of the material- is appreciated, and ' one deai-'-'old lady f-pyi'need ■the highest pride in showing me an old .dress she fished out of her chest, which she said had been worn at her., wedding, and by her-riiothcr^arso, who had received it from her..grandmother, with the legend that it was finest British cloth. The carefully'preserved clothes, togother with tho embroidered linqn, and' the plates, of which a.riumb.er.are to be found on the Avails of every ian'y'a kitchen, go to form.the;dowries: when the girls get married..,. . ■■, ' . : . ;... :