HUNGARY: A LAND OF SHEPHERD KINGS 



327 



peasant who sings he knows not what 

 nor why, but sings because he must. 



No one can say whence these songs 

 have come. The peasant says they wan- 

 der in the air. It may be; this air is 

 surely tenanted. What is true is that he 

 and his have preserved the nation. 



This brave, patient, enduring folk has 

 sung its race back to its ancient freedom. 

 It has sung, in the sweet mother-tongue 

 that but for it had been long forgotten, 

 of the glorious dead and the stricken 

 field, of memories enshrined in wonder- 

 ful lore, of hope and of regret: never of 

 despair. For it has. withal, that touch 

 of humor which none but a Magyar 

 could so finely have described as 

 "the smile between tears." 

 the; genuine originaIv magyar 



Pastoral Hungary has features all its 

 own. It stretches across the vistas of 

 the Great Plain in the region of the 

 Hortobagy. There is the genuine, orig- 

 inal Magyar, the Centaur-Mazeppa, who, 

 like his sires of old, that rushed Alex- 

 ander on the plains of Sogdiana, rides 

 like a devil of the twilight ; eats, drinks, 

 sleeps on his small, tireless charger, and 

 chokes with pure delight in lust of life 

 and rush of wind. The long white 

 gatya — no penitent sheet — the embroid- 

 ered sleeveless waistcoat, the plumed or 

 be-ribboned hat, the gorgeous mantle, the 

 deep-bowled pipe, mark this tanned Bac- 

 chanalian cavalier more surely than does 

 the anthropologist. He cultivates no cir- 

 cus trick, but he and his horse are Free- 

 masons in one craft. 



There is nothing spectacular in_ this 

 man's work nor annals. In the main he 

 meets with ruminative docility which 

 rarely extends him. His blood-brother, 

 the shepherd of the night, sustains_ him- 

 self on sheep cheese and milk, and in his 

 lonely vigils could still do service to as- 

 tronomy. The Queensland squatter has 

 no such run as the shepherd of the plain, 

 whose vistas are wide, illimitable, and 

 peaceful. 



Change in pastoral Hungary is imper- 

 ceptible, but the modern spirit, the fruit 

 of competition, is making itself felt 

 Sleepy medievalism feels the galvanic 

 touch of modern cooperative principles. 



The national asset is the horse, as is 

 natural in the case of a race where man 

 and horse were inseparable in death as in 

 life. Now he is, in State policy, a ward 

 of court. Highly specialized State studs 

 on great domains receive him from 

 Arabia, from England, from the fast- 

 nesses of the Karst and the stock of the 

 village ; exhaust upon him all the theories 

 of the Sledmere stud; breed, lend, sell, 

 give, and altogether play Providence to 

 the trend of his evolution. Private own- 

 ers there are in plenty, each anxious to 

 emulate the luck of Baltazzi, whom Kis- 

 ber, son of the immortal Kincsem, dow- 

 ered with the Garter of the British Turf. 

 The typical herd of native cattle gives 

 the impression of a vast forest of horn 

 rising in symmetrical crescent form. 

 But it is not an economic asset, and is 

 doomed. The buffalo has honor in the 

 land. Under the yoke she is patient and 

 enduring; her needs are primitive; her 

 milk rich in all the constituents which 

 make milk hygienically valuable. 



For the rest, the ugly boar, rooter in 

 the forest, the deer, and black bear pro- 

 vide sport tinctured with danger. The 

 sporting instinct of a Ouorn fox is alto- 

 gether wanting in the native breed. Here 

 he is shot out of hand, a doom followed 

 by the obloquy of neither man nor dog. 

 Wolves there are, too, in hard times — 

 long, gaunt, fierce- jowled brutes, out- 

 casts of the steppes, rather nomadic — 

 but these are the spoil of the Szekelys, 

 the fabled descendants of Attila's people 

 in Transylvania. 



THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT ASSISTS 

 WISELY AND ENERGETICALLY 



The agrarian interest being the legiti- 

 mate sphere of an agricultural State, it 

 follows that the Magyar peasant should 

 be the object of particular care. So he 

 is. "Thou shah have," says the Agri- 

 cultural Department, "no other gods but 

 me." 



Does the peasant need a steam-plow 

 from fairyland across the ocean, seed, 

 saplings, labor, money, a market, a wine- 

 press, a homestead, instruction, irriga- 

 tion, serum, manure literature, medicine, 

 midwives, spawn, silkworm eggs, stal- 

 lions for his brood mares, homes for his 



