Paying Homage to St. Stephen of Hungary

[This pen-picture of the celebration of St. Stephen's Day at Budapest is sent to us by a Hungarian reader of the Spectator. the writer describes the feelings of a Hungarian peasant woman from Transylvania, now Rumanian territory. St. Stephen's Day is a great annual national holiday.—ED. Spectator.] IT was on a sultry August evening, as the buffaloes were coming home to be milked, that the thought of St. Stephen's Day went, like a quickened heart beat, through the little Transylvanian village. An old woman called out to a neighbour farther up the street : " In Budapest they'll soon be hanging out the flags for St. Stephen's Day."

And the neighbour, who was also old—she had been tying her kerchief under her chin for a score of years and more—answered : " Aye ; there'd be many of us travelling up free on that day if we weren't Rumanians now, God help us."

A third said : " It would have been a poor show in those days without the Kiirosfii lads and lasses—or old folk either."

A fourth who, like the others, had been standing in front of her own carved and painted gate-post, waiting for the returning kine, but who, unlike them, still wore the pleated red skirt and the kerchief tied in the nape of the neck of the young, being, indeed, but just turned twenty, listened spellbound to this conversation. She had to think of it all the time she was milking. And that evening, sitting with her man on the porch steps, she startled him with the proposal that they should go up to Budapest and take part in the St. Stephen's Day procession.

" You and I—in our Easter Sunday best," she said, as who should say : " We will don our ermine robes and coronets in honour of the day."

The cricket under the porch shrilled once, twice, thrice before the man took the pipe from his mouth. Then he said, slowly but benignly ; " I don't mind if we do."

He was six foot two, so he could afford to let his wife have her own way now and then.

Next day the girl took her own and her husband's " Easter Sunday best " from the great painted " tulip- chest," and laid it, in all its glory of creamy linen, flashing colour and sumptuous embroidery, out in the yard to air. Her little red top-boots, pointed and high- heeled, she also brought forth, wiping them with tender care ; and she polished her man's big black ones till they shone. She even re-pleated, with an art all the women of her village know the trick of, the black silk apron trimmed with ribbons of beetle's-wing green. And she fingered wistfully the pearl-set coronet with its many-coloured streamers that lay in the bottom of the chest, almost, though not quite, finding it in her heart to wish that she were still unmarried, so that she might have the right to wear it.

The next thing was to get passports for them both. For that you had to travel by train to Kolozsvar, which they now call Cluj, and wait, sometimes for days, till you were admitted to the Prefectura. After that things were generally easy. But this time the Rumanian sub-prefect, who had not forgotten that a few months before the village of Korosfo had declined to a man to show its picturesque costumes in the street procession in Bucarest, flatly refused to hand out the desired pass- ports. And the couple, bitterly disappointed, had to return home empty-handed.

It was the girl's resentment which, having flamed highest, died down first, " We'll just have to slip over the border by night," she said simply. And the man answered : " We'll do that "—showing that his blood, too, was up.

However, it so happened that when the time came he was forced to stay at home, the heifer having fallen sick and needing tending. And the girl, having cooked his meals for three days and packed the hand-woven double bag which is the Transylvanian peasant's suitcase, started out on the great adventure alone.

She went by train as far as Oradea Marc, the town which lies nearest the present Rumanian frontier. There she got out and hoisting her twin bags on to her vigorous young shoulders, set out on foot towards the marshy land north of the town across which you can most safely and surely reach Hungarian territory. Now and then she had to inquire her way from the haymakers in the meadows, and more than one peasant lad seemed only too willing to show it to her—all the more so because she seemed so capable of finding it for herself. But she proved equally capable in shaking off all such advances ; and it was alone that, after an eerie trudge under a clouded moon, she crossed, some time before dawn, the invisible line that divides Rumania from Hungary.

In Leta, a townlet in the heart of the Great Plain, she boarded the train once more. It was packed with cheery provincials—hilarious pilgrims all agog for the wonders of the capital and St. Stephen's Day, and quite ready, in their expansive holiday mood, to make friends with the stately young peasant woman in their midst.

But though she answered their questions politely, she kept herself to herself, secretly, and unjustly, dubbing them riff-raff, with the Hungarian peasant's aristocratic disdain for those who have taken to city clothes and exchanged the sweet and vigorous language of the Bible for the sort of jargon that goes with these. Almost she grew depressed as the hours went by—unaware that the endless golden monotony of the plains, so new and strange to the hill-dweller, had its share in the subduing of her spirits. The tears were not very far when, some time in the early evening hours, she was told that they had arrived and the train spewed her out into a grey and ugly square, full of grey and ugly people, hurrying and jostling. But as she strode along the broad street which leads to the heart of the city, between red, white and green banners fluttering like joyous bursts of song, her heart began to rise by leaps and bounds ; and when, a little later, she came to the river, so incredibly wide and serene, and saw beyond it the familiar sight of green-mantled rocks and blue mountains, happiness rushed through her like a great wind and she could have sung for joy.

But the greatest marvel came when all of a sudden a flood of intense light, as from a dozen hidden moons, was thrown on a church on the bill top, so that it stood out in stinging beauty against the night sky, every delicate arch and turret revealed. Sensitive to beauty as all the children of her district, the girl stood transfixed, with wide open eyes and held breath. She felt almost afraid,.she knew not why, and all at once very small and -humble—as small and as humble as a lost child—so that it comforted her to remember that she had come on a pilgrimage to St. Stephen, who had been a great and good man and though he had lived so long ago was still, some- how, a father to them all. A king he had been, with sceptre and crown . . . What was it she had learned about that in the days when the village school had still been Hungarian ? " Stephen brought Christianity to Hungary and for this received a King's Crown from the Pope. He was a wise and a just king and many years after his death it was found that his right hand had escaped corruption . . " That was how they knew he was a Saint. " This Sacred Right Hand is now being guarded in the Royal Chapel in Buda." Up there, she realized with a faint shock, " and is carried round in solemn procession once a year." To-morrow I She slept on the river bank that night, under the arch of the bridge. But on the chill brink of dawn, when no living creature stirred as yet and the ships and barges loomed dim in the grey light, she rose, washed her face and body, and dressed with care. Then, having hidden her workaday clothes behind some stones in the shadow of the buttress, she sallied forth into the radiant morning, to cross the bridge and climb the hill to the palace.

St. George's Square was like a huge cauldron filled with sunlight, and colour, and simmering excitement. Squads of mounted police, on iron-grey horses with blood-red saddle cloths, were riding up and down ; flocks of blue"- robed nuns with starched white head-dresses fluttered this way and that ; priests in golden vestments came hurrying past ; and soldiers of the Life Guard, in green tunics, red breeches and long white capes stood as though careen in stone before the chapel doors. Groups of villagers from various districts of the country came marching up, each district in its own distinctive costumes, handsome, sumptuous or merely quaint ; while the great of the land, in fur-trimmed dolmans and aigretted caps, dashed up in motor-cars and stood about talking. Every minute some fresh arrival made one forget those that came before. And the girl from Kortisfti stood in the crowd and gazed and gazed, altogether forgetting that she had meant to join the procession. She saw the Papal Nuncio arrive, frail and slim in his purple robes, and the Prince Primate in scarlet and ermine, his long train borne after him. She saw the Regent in his dark admiral's uniform, and the Archdukes in field grey, with the young Archduchess in a Hungarian lady's national dress—brocaded skirt, velvet bodice and tiny lace apron: And at last she saw the Chapel doors open and the Sacred Hand in its red and gold casket brought forth on the shoulders of priests. . . .

It was at this moment that a little man in black who had been running to and fro all morning, ordering one group to stand here and another there, rushed up to her and barked out : " You're from Transylvania, aren't you ? "

" That's right," she said, standing straight and tall as a young fir tree and looking down on him benignly. " Are there any more of you here ? "

She looked round at the crowd about her.

" Many," she said. " But none— " she dimpled suddenly—" just like me."

" Then there's nothing for it, you'll have to head the procession alone. We can't afford to waste you in the rear. Come on."

Perhaps he had expected her to draw back, shy and giggling. But the Kiiriisfo women are not like that. She accepted the situation simply, and no trace of self- consciousness marred the dignity with which she went forward to take her place at the head of the line. There was a breathless pause of a minute or two. Then the great bells of the Coronation Church tolled out, and Elizabeth Pentek of Korosfo, her kerchiefed head erect, stepped out, slowly and solemnly, in front of Archdukes and prelates and the representatives of all the other villages.