Costume, Food and Customs

Hungarian Folk Art & Traditions

Course 1 · Chapter 5 · Costume, Food and Everyday Customs

Folk culture is not only things but things done: dressing for an occasion, baking and sharing bread, marking a birth, a wedding or a death. This chapter brings together three strands that meet in the life of a household: costume as it was worn, the food and drink of the traditional table, and the customs that surrounded the main stages of life. The festival year has its own chapter (Chapter 6). Details are from general knowledge and flagged for checking.

Regional and Festive Costume

Chapter 2 described dress as a language. Here we look at how it worked in practice (check each point, since details differ by region and period).

Women's costume. Typically a linen blouse, one or more skirts or an apron, a bodice or vest, and a headdress or kerchief. Brides and married women wore different styles from girls. The number of petticoats and the richness of embroidery could be striking in festive dress, as in Sárköz and Mezőkövesd.
Men's costume. A shirt and wide linen trousers, a vest or short jacket, boots, and a hat. Herdsmen wore the felt cloaks and embroidered coats seen in Chapter 4.
Festive and everyday. The richest pieces were worn at church, weddings and festivals. A person might own few of them, and wear them for decades.
Mourning and special occasions. Darker or plainer colours were used for mourning, with local rules about how long (check).

Costume survived longest in some communities and is still worn at weddings, dance events and festivals today, partly as a deliberate choice (see Chapter 9).

Bread, Paprika and Pálinka

Bread

Baked at home in an outdoor or indoor oven, often once a week. Bread had a special place at the table, and it was handled with respect, for example by marking a cross on a loaf before cutting it (check this custom).

Paprika

The red spice, from peppers, became central to Hungarian cooking from the nineteenth century, with Kalocsa and Szeged as centres of production (check the history). Strings of drying peppers are a familiar sight in some regions.

Pálinka

A fruit brandy, made from plums, apricots, pears and other fruits. Home distilling is a long tradition, now regulated, and pálinka is offered as a welcome (check the rules and the protected status).

The winter pig

The autumn or winter pig killing (disznóvágás) was a household and community event, producing sausages, bacon and lard for the year (check).

Dishes such as goulash, stews and noodles with cheese are known abroad, though the line between peasant cooking, restaurant cooking and tourist menus is not clear (see the record, revival and souvenir test in Chapter 1). A separate food course is not planned, but the outline can be extended if you would like one.

Weddings and Rites of Passage

The great events of life were marked by customs that combined the religious, the social and the practical (check each description).

Stage	Typical customs (general, check)
Birth and baptism	Gifts for mother and child, a christening meal, and godparents, who had lasting duties
Courtship	Dances, spinning-room gatherings, and rituals such as the setting of a decorated maypole outside a girl's house in some areas
Wedding (lakodalom)	A multi-day celebration with processions, music, dance, special foods, ritual songs, and the bride's dowry display; the dress and the headdress change when the bride becomes a wife
Death and mourning	A wake, a funeral, a meal, and a period of mourning dress; All Saints' Day visits to graves are still widely kept

Hospitality

Hospitality was, and in many places remains, a matter of pride: a guest was offered food and drink, usually with pálinka, bread and whatever the house held, and refusing everything could give offence (check, and treat as a general rule, not a universal). The clean room of Chapter 2 existed partly for this purpose.

A British comparison Compare the Scottish ceilidh and the tradition of first-footing at Hogmanay, where visitors bring gifts such as coal and whisky to a house. In both places, visiting customs combine food, drink, good luck and neighbourliness (check the comparison).

What links the three strands Costume, food and customs are all ways in which a household showed that it belonged to a place and a community. Each one also became a symbol, in a museum case, on a menu or at a festival, and each deserves the same four questions as in Chapter 1.

Check the details Wedding customs, mourning rules, the history of paprika, pálinka regulation and the role of particular foods vary between regions and are often retold in a tidied form. Verify before quoting any of them.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe the main parts of a traditional woman's festive costume and what the details could tell an observer.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Choose one of bread, paprika or pálinka and explain its place in the household and in the national image.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Pick one rite of passage and describe the customs around it, saying which parts you would need to check.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Costume: blouse, skirts, bodice, headdress; festive, everyday and mourning (check)
Food: home-baked bread, paprika, pálinka, the winter pig
Rites: birth, courtship, wedding (lakodalom), death
Hospitality: a guest was fed and given a drink
Method: record, revival or souvenir; who, why, how do we know, who keeps it