ROMANTIC PAST

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3477, 9 June 1934, Page 2

ROMANTIC PAST

THE TABAN OF BUDAPEST. This article, by Noel Panter, describes the Taban, a small district of Budapest, about a square mile in extent, which is now being pulled down. It lies at the foot of the Buda Hill, on the further side from the Danube. It is only too often true that where romance begins, there hygiene ends. Poor drainage, inadequately ventilated dwellings, crumbling roofs and damp rheumatism-provoking walls constituted, perhaps, too great u price to pay for those memories of the past, for that poetic enchantment which clothed the Taban in an atmosphere all' it's own.

A matter of fact municipal council has decreed that the entire area—a blot, so it was said, on the cultural escutcheons of a town that prides itself upon the healing properties of its thermal springs—should be razed to.the ground. Little is left of the Taban now. In a few months' time villas, sanatorium's, and blocks of modern Hats will have arisen where once stood quaint and picturesque cottages. Most of these were built by the owners themselves, who had little knowledge of architecture, but something of poetry in their souls.

In many of them, constructed on rising ground, there were steps leading from one room to another. Narrow way, straggling, apparently at random, between the houses, with white and yellow walls and overhanging eaves, bore names such as "Moonbeam Lane" and "the Street of the Golden Duck" Somehow, one feels that the ghosts of forgotten lovers surely will haunt the wide macadam roads of the Taban that is to be, and will sigh regretfully at the changes wrought in the name of progress. On summer night when, seen from the high hill of Buda; the red rays of the setting sun flushed the western sky with fountains of radiant glory, the Taban would seem to beckon. Then lovers would descend the steps in the shadow of the old fortification, and make their way to the lanes and old-world courts beyond. Grim Grimes of Other Days.

There they would dally in tlie flagrant gardens, drinking the heady Magyar wine and lulled into i'orgetfulness of every care by the melodies conjured from the gypsies' violins. Later, homeward going, they would pause, perhaps, by the old stone cross near the Taban Church. With overhead a sickle moon and a myriad golden stars, they would whisper to one another the tale that is older than the island of Cythera, yet ever grows new in the telling. It is no coincidence that the young men and maidens of Budapest repaired to the Taban to plight their troth. Instinct, inherited and ineradicable, drew then, there.

For decades this had been their prerogative, and it was an understood thing that parents should not probe too deeply into the secrets of those meetings. But it was not always that the Taban was the home of innocent romance. Three and four hundred years ago it was the abiding place of those whose reputations caused them to be shunned by the honest burghers and guildsmen of Buda. The inhabitants were outcasts beyond the city walls, and their numbers were augmented by the indiscriminate rabble which in those distant days assembled near every large town to prey upon the citizens.

In times of war the Taban lay at the mercy of the enemy. The Turks, when they stormed the fortress of Buda, took possession of it. It is said that its very name is of Turkish origin, and, being interpreted, means "the foot of the hill.''

Soldiers of the Sultan, soldiers of fortune, Armenians, Greeks and the sweepings of the military camps jostled o'ne another in the strsets of the Taban. In many a cellar, still to be seen, fair-haired Magyar girls languished in captivity, later to be shipped down the Danube to stock the harems cf the East. Recent excavations have revealed, in dungeon-like pits, many human skeletons —grim testimony of crimes committed cen-

turies ago. In the days when license unbounded flourished in the Taban, venturesome burghers or swaggering cavaliers from the town would sometimes go tu it in search of amusement. Often their night's revelry was ended by a dagger thrust. Days afterwards their bodies would be found floating in the waters of the Danube. Ancient Baths.

The Taban was ever rich in mineral springs, and they no doubt furnished the young bloods of fortified Buda with the excuse for their excursions. Some of the baths still in use date from Roman times, and were developed by the Turks in the sixteenth century.

The people of the Taban, some of whom may still be observed dismally surveying their fast vanishing surroundings, differed greatly from the other citizens of the capital. But fifty or sixty years ago Buda and Pest, on opposite shores of the Danube, were regarded as different towns. Even to-day the peasants and simpleminded people of the serving class draw the distinction very definitely. Many of them are proud to live in Buda, with its historic walls, its castellated bastions, its palace, its Minis-

tries and its home of the aristocracy. Just so it was with the Taban. The inhabitants rarely, if ever, crossed the Danube to the busy shops and thoroughfares of Pest. They preferred their quiet backwater nestling on the edge of the teeming metropolis. They kept to their ancient customs and to their oldfashioned ways of speech. It was in a Taban restaurant that I heard the good wife scolding her Swabian maid for brushing out the parlour in a seemingly efficient yet unorthodox fashion. "May the old punish you for brushing towards the window." According to an ancient superstition of the peasants, it is unlucky to brush manure towards the sun, and this belief became modified as time went on. The expression "old god" has its origins, too, right back in the beginning's of the Hungarian Christian era. King Steven of Hungary introduced —enforced would, perhaps, be a better word—Christianity in the eleventh century. The Magyars, a soldierly and nomadic people, had at first little understanding for the mysticism of the new religion. They obeyed their king- and the Christian missionaries, but they still had a lingering respect For the old god, who was chiefly the -god of war. Thus they frequently invoked him and alluded to him, and the custom, though having lost its significance, has been handed down to the present

day. Catholic Hungary still offers opportunities to the student of the pagan mind.