HUNGARIAN METHODS

Evening Star, Issue 22572, 13 February 1937, Page 2

HUNGARIAN METHODS

FARMER'S WAY OF LIFE In a recent trip through Hungary I was much impressed by tho striking hats of some of the carriage drivers, says a Budapest correspondent of the * Christian Science Monitor.’ _ They resemble bowlers with ■ an ostrich feather stretched over the crown, lengthwise. Most self-respecting persons in Central Europe wear hats with feathers, but the uniformity of these carriage drivers’ headgear was unusual. Two bay horses pulling a twoseated open yellow buggy, with a feathered young man in front and an im-portant-looking older man behind, was an outfit which we met by the dozen in Hungary’s provinces. On inquiry I learned that these are the vehicles of the great landowners. The feather is part of the coachman’s livery. It signifies that the man in the back seat lias many fields, woods, and gardens. It is in large country towns that one usually sees such carriages. Nearby one notes a castle and extensive estates. On the country roads outside the cities we met substantial wagons, pulled by strong livery horses that were driven by men wearing wide-brimmed hats and gaily-embroidered shirts. On each wagon was the owner’s name and address, always written with the last name first—Robinson Jack. Sometimes one horse is used instead of a team,

but he does not work in shafts. He is hitched on one side of the tongue, leaving the other side empty, lou might think he’d pull the wagon kittycornered, but lie doesn’t. Hungary’s small farmer possesses a little white house beside the dusty road running through his one-street ullage. His neighbours own the others. One of the little black-haired boys and one of the little brown-haired girls I saw walking in a straight double line from the school homeward were Ins children. His neighbour’s girl will marry, his bov, and his girl his neighbour’s boy; thus they will keep'the family possessions intact. The fields are already cut up into many small pieces and widely scattered about the village, hut each farmer has a well-balanced combination of gardens, meadows, wheat fields, corn Adds, and lives well. His wheat isn’t quite as good as that from the count’s estate across the river, nor his .horses quite as “ classy,” but they are good enough. .. , , He has several cows, a big family of pigs, and two gangs of geese of nine or°ten members each. They go out to the pasture each morning with hundreds of other geese, bat each gang waddles its way apart. When they swim, they swim in.gangs, they eat in gangs, they rush from oncoming motors m gangs. I marvelled how a goose knew his gang. Although the small farmer is not so expert as the superintendents hired by the great landowners living in the castles, still, with his horses, cattle, pigs, and chickens, his gardens, orchards. and fields, he gets more from an acre of land than the aristocrat.