A Living Tradition

This capstone draws the course together around one question: who owns a tradition, who keeps it and who changes it? The earlier chapters gave the pieces: the village world, the crafts, the customs, the calendar, dance, song and the politics of preservation. Here they are put into a single year, followed by a method for judging what you meet and some practical ways to see, hear and join in. Names, dates and listings are from general knowledge and flagged for checking.

Who Owns, Keeps and Changes a Tradition?

Looking back over the course, a tradition has at least five kinds of people around it, and the same person may play more than one role:

• Bearers. The villagers and families who practised it as part of ordinary life (Chapters 2 and 5).
• Collectors and researchers. People such as Bartók and Kodály, and museum staff, who recorded it (Chapters 1 and 8).
• Revivalists. The táncház generation and today's craft learners, who take it up on purpose (Chapters 7 and 9).
• The state and institutions. Who fund, list and sometimes reshape it (Chapter 9).
• Designers and sellers. Who carry motifs to new audiences (Chapters 3 and 9).

No single group owns a living tradition. A tradition changes whenever it is practised, because each person adapts it a little, and the useful question is usually not "is it original?" but "is it practised, and is it honest about what it is?" (Chapter 9). Questions of nation, minority and border are political and are not taken up here.

A Folk Year

Here is a year built from the chapters. Dates and customs vary by region, and everything is to be checked before you plan around it.

Old Practice or Later Revival?

When you meet something described as "traditional", work through these steps:

1. Find the record. Is there a photograph, a collector's note or a museum object showing it in a village (Chapter 1)?
2. Find the break. Was it carried on unbroken, or stopped and then revived? Revival is not a fault, but it should be named (Chapter 9).
3. Find the maker or leader. Is the person a bearer, a trained revivalist or a professional performer (Chapters 7 and 9)?
4. Check the claim. Does the description say what it is, and how old, or does it only say "ancient"?

What to See, Hear and Join

• See. The Open Air Museum at Szentendre, regional museums, craft fairs, and costume and embroidery in situ at festivals (check what is open and when).
• Hear. Recordings of village singers and revival bands, and the collecting archives made by Bartók and Kodály (Chapter 8, check what is available online).
• Join. A táncház, in Budapest or at a Hungarian community event elsewhere, including in Scotland (Chapter 7, check what is currently run). A dance house welcomes beginners, and for anyone who danced as a child, as the author did, it is a good way back in.
• Learn. Workshops in embroidery, pottery and instrument playing, run by Folk Art Masters and others (Chapters 3, 4 and 9, check).

Exercises