The Táltos

by Arnold Ipolyi

Arnold Ipolyi (1823–1886) was a Hungarian bishop, art historian, and scholar whose Magyar Mythologia (1854) stands as the foundational systematic treatment of pre-Christian Hungarian belief ever compiled. Over decades of fieldwork, chronicle research, and comparative study, Ipolyi gathered oral traditions, folk testimonies, chronicle records, and linguistic evidence to reconstruct the mythology and religious practice of the ancient Hungarians before the Christianization of 1000 CE. His 718-page work remains unsurpassed in scope.

Chapter XV, "Papok" (The Priests), treats the sacerdotal figures of ancient Hungarian religion. The longest and most important section concerns the táltos — a word preserved in Old Hungarian as the name for the pagan priestly class, equivalent to the Latin mágus and cognate, Ipolyi argues, with the Egyptian Thoth, the Phoenician Tauthos, and the Germanic Tuisto. The táltos was both wise man and battle-sorcerer, prophet and poet-singer, shape-shifter and shamanic practitioner. The section presented here spans pages 447–452 of the first edition and represents Ipolyi's most vivid assembly of folk testimonies about the táltos, drawn from his fieldwork across Hungary in the 1840s.

No English translation of Magyar Mythologia has previously existed. This is the first. Translated from the Hungarian of the 1854 Heckenast edition (Pest). Translator's note: where the OCR of the source scan was unclear, the translation was reconstructed from context; such passages are marked.

I. The Priests of the Ancient Faith

Vivid historical records and named monuments have come down to us from the priests of our ancient faith. Theophylaktos writes that the Turks [the Hungarians] have priests among them, who make it their business to reveal future events to them. Our ancient language preserved still the pagan priestly title táltos: accordingly, the táltosok were the wise men and priests of the ancient pagan Hungarians (Sándor, Kreszn.). In the Vienna Codex, in Daniel Chapters 2 and 4, among the foreign priestly titles of the Vulgate, we find the word mágus translated by this distinctive pagan priestly name of our own:

"Then the king commanded the calling to the altar-gazers, the táltosok, the evil ones — that the king's dream be revealed to them"

and:

"The secret which the king asks of the gazers at the altar, the táltosok... cannot be revealed."

In our mythology we have already encountered a related name and concept in the tátos horse (Chapter VIII); there too the explanations of mágus, Proteus, and Vertumnus were found — whereby language and legend know another enchanted, wondrous tátos horse. Here is the place to venture more deeply into the name itself.

II. The Name: Etymology and Comparative Mythology

The words táltos and tátos are evidently identical; between them, the inserted l, or the lengthening by its removal, is attributable to popular pronunciation — a distinction as inessential as between koldus and kódus, folt and fót, bulcsu and búcsu. The same root may be either tat or tal.

Let us take up first the tal- root, as the more pregnant in meaning. The word tat, tata, ata: in related forms, as an ancient word and concept, we see it preserved across all languages in the sense of "father." Beyond this general meaning, we encounter it in mythological teachings and records with a more determinate religious sense. In Hindu mythology, tat is Brahma's secondary name — "that," "that one" (illud) — the existent itself, Being itself. Śiva's name is likewise deva-tat or tasta — the divine artist. The Egyptian Tóth, and the Phoenician Tauthos, according to Philo Byblius, translator of Sanchuniathon.

Tautotal was held to be the primal father of all knowledge and craft, the intermediary between gods and mortals, to whom both peoples attributed their greatness and growth, all their inventions and progress. The Chaldean Tharut is one of the foundational principles of the world and existence. Classical writers too preserved the names Theuth, Thoit, Theus, the Gaulish Theulates, the Germanic Tuisto and Tuitco. All these mythological names appear not only as tribal progenitors, but especially as divine craftsmen and teachers — the primordial sources of knowledge, the originators of the arts — in the sense of the Hermes-Mercury mythology (itself derived from the foregoing). Some modern mythologists hold that Tauth was simply the collective name of the Memphian priestly college, the former seat of Egyptian wisdom; and when the name lost its denotation, it was transferred to designate the personified source and deity of wisdom, knowledge, and art.

As the form of the name, so too its root meaning harmonizes with these mythological significations. Already its rendering of the mágus expresses the concept of wisdom, knowledge, and teaching. And to this point our language shows words identical in root or appearing related, concepts flowing into one another: tan — doctrina; tan-adás — tanítás (teaching); tanácso — magister (perhaps itself from mágus?); tana — consultatio; tanács — consilium; and still more: tudós — doctus; likewise dana and dalos — cantator — related to tan and tana, all equally applicable to the sphere of activity of the táltos priestly office.

Thus, if in our word's investigation we take up not the tátos tat- root but the táltos tal- root, it explains the same meaning: on one side, through tan — in antiquity identically so — through dal and dalos; on the other, even more closely, through talál (in popular speech tanál) — találmány — inventor, inventiosus — we arrive again at the meaning of the Hermes-Mercury myth and the mágus quality. And just as we have analogies for our name in ancient mythological names from other traditions; so too the words tan, tudós, etc., which interpret the name, appear in other languages: in Persian dan — to know, danalyg and danis — knowledge; in Tatar tan, tanyk — witness, tanyklyg — testimony, tanitmak — counsel, tanymak — to know; in Finnish taitaa — to know.

In these meanings that explain the táltos priest and mágus title we already possess traces of the nature of such a priestly office, as befitted such folk- and faith-wise men: beyond all doubt the teaching and instruction, the counsel and consultation. In ancient times, as we see, the dana encompassed this too — whereby the unwritten word was most extensively preserved and most vividly kept alive and spread; so that it was not only taught but particularly sung, and accordingly its natural singers, and its singer-prophets too, were the táltosok.

We encounter this phenomenon in all ancient religions. The prophets are equally the people's inspired poets, singers, chanters; the Latin vates is prophet and poet in one. Apollo is the god of lyre and oracle alike; the ancient Norse Odin speaks in verse, hofgodar: poet — hoðasmíðr (Ynglingasaga); and does not the skald too derive from sgalto — minstrel? — Thus we see these qualities of our táltos priests emerge in our chronicle records, where already under the general Latin names magi, aruspices, pythonissae the pagan revolutionaries of the era are mentioned, as they struggle for the restoration of the ancient teaching:

ut traditio resumatur paganismi

and:

petierunt... ut irent in adinventionibus antiquorum patrum suorum

as they then rouse the people with their songs:

praepositii in eminentiori residentes, praedicabant nefanda carmina contra fidem.

III. Folk Testimonies

But folk tradition too knows the name of the táltos, bound to it with vivid legendary memory. I present here in their entirety the accounts I have gathered on the subject.

From gy. 203 (Fehér County):

The tátos (I write the word as it stands in each individual report) may be either a person or a horse; both are born into the world with teeth. If the tátos-child is announced and discovered to have teeth by the midwife, it is taken away — that is, taken by the other táltos-men — but is not slain; for to be born a tátos, one must come into the world so; no one can become a tátos through training.

The tátos-man is as a rule serious, thoughtful, and sorrowful. He must fight — specifically with a bull; at the moment of combat he too becomes a bull, and when the two collide, fire pours from their mouths. If the tátos defeats the bull, he goes wandering and seeks for himself a tátos-horse.

The tátos-horse is always poor and thin until the tátos purchases it. When the tátos finds such a horse, he asks the price; if offered cheaply, he leaves it there and will not purchase it until the owner names a fair and proper price. When the tátos has thus obtained it, he rides swift as thought. The tátos cannot be taken by sword or bullet, and therefore he commonly goes as a soldier. When a tátos-man dies, a stone must be placed in the hay, for otherwise he will eat the moon. A child born on Christmas Eve will certainly become a tátos. The tátos-man knows the hidden treasures that lie in the earth, but he is forbidden to reach for them.

From the Museum journal (gy. 2. 500, Karcsay):

The tálos-man comes into the world with teeth — not with ordinary teeth; but if the midwife or another reveals the secret, then the tátos-child can be raised to adulthood, though otherwise it dies at once. Animals too bear a tátos — especially horses — and these likewise can only be raised in secret, and then only a tátos-man can use them. If such a one has obtained a tátos-horse, he accomplishes great deeds in war and will especially prevail in victory. The knowledge of the tátos is great — he knows where the treasures lie hidden in the earth, but has no power to take them up. However, it is within his ability to change his form.

To take on various animal forms; most often he lurks in the shape of a shepherd or farmhand. Every seventh year he is compelled to travel to another country and fight against the tátos there; and whichever wins this combat, that one's country will be very fertile in that year.

The two separate, unconnected reports, as one sees, present the folk belief about the táltos with nearly identical features — which can only strengthen our confidence in its general prevalence. I present alongside them, from my collection, the remaining notably explanatory features.

Thus we still encounter it especially vividly everywhere, the folk belief in the táltos-teeth — even there, most often, where the other features of the tátos have been forgotten by the people.

From gy. 93:

The tátos-child that comes into the world with teeth is wise and knowing; without being taught, he knows how to read from books, knows many hidden things and predicts them, knows in every house what is being cooked — but lives only until his seventh year, then suddenly disappears; his whereabouts are never known.

The folk tales illuminate the concept still more interestingly. One speaks particularly vividly of a táltos named Kampó (gy. 290, from Debreceni):

The ice-bodied, short-statured, thick-legged Kampó táltos lived in Temesvár, from where he would come to Buda to dine with the king. King Matthias always held him in great respect; and for this the queen was greatly ashamed, and often asked her husband what reason he could have for keeping that worthless man in such high esteem. The king grew weary of the question, and once at last, instead of answering, invited Kampó to demonstrate his power before the queen.

Next day, when Kampó táltos came for dinner, at the opening of the palace door he hooked his upper jaw into the upper frame and his lower jaw onto the lower threshold, and breathed fire into the royal palace. The queen swooped in fright and fell back in her chair — but in a moment Kampó appeared in her lap.

The legend continues to describe the enchanted hero's deeds: how he fights with his ice-body against the Turk armored from head to foot in iron; at another time goes to retrieve King Matthias's moon (see Chapter IX), which the Turks had seized, traveling through fairylands and bringing it back by enchanted means.

Similarly, a tátos-man is directly named (Karcsay, Museum journal 2. 501) the one who invented the cart: he was a very knowing man, knew of all manner of things, spoke with birds, trees, and plants, understood the meaning of the stars, worked many wonders; his death was not witnessed — it was believed he vanished into the sky; and just as on earth he always traveled in a curved-shafted cart, so now he travels the heavens by night in the stars.

The place-legends too record (gy. 304):

At a certain place, a táltos once came to the mowers of the Dóró estate and asked for food; they rebuked him for not working. Shamed, he worked with them through the whole morning. When the mowers sat down to lunch, the tátos finished first, with the warning that at harvest-time they would pay for his labor. When the other mowers came out from lunch, he was already visible on a distant hill. And at harvest-time, when the farmer Dóró went to harvest with all his preparations, his entire vineyard was suddenly destroyed by a hailstorm — and only his, no one else's.

Near the town of Sz.-Újváros, at a mound — called the lyukas-halom (Holey Mound) for the hole in one of its sides — the account of a local resident was shared with me by Révész I.:

When he was a child of eight or ten (some sixty years ago), one afternoon while their father was away, an old man in the form of a poor beggar entered the house, addressed their mother by name at once, and commanded her to cook some tarhonya immediately, for he was the tátos. When the meal was ready, he sat down with the children and began to speak with them in a friendly way: "Is your millet-crop good now? — never fear, the hail will not strike it!" While eating, the tátos stood up and, going out, stood under the chimney and let out a terrible shout: "I have called out to my companions," he said, "telling them not to hurry." Then, when he was about to take his leave, he said: "Dig out that lyukas-halom, ten steps in that direction, and you will find enough treasure in it that even your descendants will live richly on it."

The tátos went out. When the villagers learned what had happened and ran after him, they caught him and brought him back — but he said only: "Release me, I am a tátos-man!" and was immediately set free.

IV. Analysis

These then are the scattered remnants still of the once-wise táltosok of the ancient faith, beneath whose tatters, as one sees, wandering fraudsters and charlatan conjurers long veiled themselves among our people — exploiting its credulity and its ancient reverent respect, or later merely its fear, toward the táltosok and the debased conjurers descended from them.

Even from the confused tradition, however, several notably explanatory features might be lifted, as several mutually touching pagan traditional concepts have been blended together in it.

Standing foremost, broadly emphasized, is the belief in the maturity and wisdom of the child born with teeth. It may be, then, that such children were selected for the táltos office: taken from their parental homes in childhood, raised in the circle of the táltosok, they could be counted among the disappeared children. Perhaps the religiously significant number seven was the measure here too, as in general the suitable age for beginning the education of children, at which they were separated from family life. Tradition knows this equally of animals, and particularly of horses; one may further assume that especially such táltos-children and horses born with teeth were selected by the priests for purposes of prophecy and sacrifice.

Notable in this regard is the horse assigned to the táltos, which he must obtain, and which only he is capable of recognizing for his purposes — through which alone he begins to exercise his higher powers. This confirms what I expressed in Chapter VIII: that such tátos-horses were kept in the circles of the táltos priests for oracle and divine worship.

As purely such ancient-religious wise men, priests, and prophets are to be understood the features through which they are presented as persons of higher capacity and learning: who know hidden things — knowing men who, like Kampó, prophesy from the stars, understand the speech of animals and the song of birds, know the power of herbs — wondrous craftsmen, inventors of distinctive instruments such as the cart — and alongside this: enchanters. Whether such awareness of these qualities once existed at a higher religious level — that they can take on various forms, summon winds and hailstorms, bring about the fertility of the earth — or whether this had already, in later popular imagination, degenerated into conjuring-charlatan conceptions: about fire-breathing, the bringing of hailstorms, the finding of treasure, etc.

Particularly blended in beside this is the heroic feature: the táltosok too fight as heroes; they have invulnerable bodies that sword cannot touch; they must do combat with monsters, with the fire-breathing bull, and with heroes from foreign lands. The tátos-horse would be their knightly helper in their adventures, as the hero's own horse. In all this, it may be that heroic features which merged with the tátos in later tradition descended from him in turn — just as táltosi features passed onto the hero in that the hero's wondrous horse becomes identified with the divine-worship oracle-tátos-horse, in that the hero accomplishes his deeds with higher enchanted power, his weapons stand as charms in his hands, he can make himself invulnerable through superior knowledge, understands the speech of animals and the power of plants — like Csaba and László.

Yet insofar as these features in the heroes are only the proper higher, divine qualities, so the heroic martial character might also be the táltos's own. Ancient times among us hardly separated the priestly office so sharply that alongside its sphere of divine worship, one of its other occupations was not also the general warlike martial life; and indeed later traces will point to the fact that, by virtue of their priestly-governing offices, the táltosok particularly possessed preeminent command authority in war.

Much may remain still to be explained in the obscure tradition — for example, the peculiar feature that the dying táltos, if a stone be not placed in his mouth, eats the moon from the sky — in which once-connected distinctive traditional concepts have been preserved for us disconnected and therefore unrecognizable. The greater part, however, stands recognizably enough still for designating the táltos's pagan priestly character — which the further folk features about the garaboncos will supplement.

V. The Wise Men

Did our ancient faith know, beyond the táltosok, a separate class of wise men devoted to learning? The Vienna Codex, at the passage already cited, presents us alongside the táltosok with three distinct foreign priestly titles: chaldaei, sapientes, magi — Chaldeans, wise men, magi. Our chronicles too appear to know of such figures; or — what is more likely — these wise men were already the same as our táltosok. In either case, a chronicle passage deserves attention (Bud. 38, Tur. 2. 3), where Kusid returns from his embassy to Svetopolk, reports its success, and presents the symbolic gifts that were brought back:

aquae, terram et herbam eis praesentavit: de quibus — ipsi bene cognoverunt; quod terra optima sit

The Latin of the chronicle permits a double reading: either that the sapientes cognoverunt — the wise men, deliberating over the gifts, judged the land good; or that sapere — gustare — they tasted them, and finding them good, so concluded. The latter reading is awkward, for it would require them to taste the earth itself, which stands foremost as terra optima. The ambiguity is resolved by Moglen's well-known German translation of the chronicle, which at this passage explicitly mentions wise men:

„tzaigt im das layt fass mit dem wasser, ond daz grass ond die erden. do erkanten die weysen der kewen, daz daz landt gar fruchtper were."

Here, then, in native Hungarian wise men, the solemn religious scene itself points to the priestly function: when the new homeland is symbolically received through the holy gifts, and Árpád pours the river's water into a cup and offers it before his people as a sacrifice to God — it is the wise men who interpret the sign.

Just so we find Attila, in the Hun tradition, consulting such wise men and seers before every notable enterprise and before the decision of battles. Before the Catalaunian battle (Tur. 1. 15):

universos aruspices et divinatores, quos ad instar paganorum magna futurnarum rerum dicendi pro spe secum deferebat, ad se vocari iussit... illi quidem extis pecorum ut barbarorum erat consuetudo perspectis

And likewise before the siege of Aquileia (Chr. Bud. 25):

multis phitonicis lateri suo adherentibus, in quibus iuxta fidei sui opinionem, spem maximam ponebat.

Priskos, in his account of an embassy to Attila, records the cause of the special favor shown to Irnak's son over all others: a Hun whispered to Priskos that a prophecy had declared: tale Attilae vaticinatos esse, eius genus, quod alioquin interiturum erat, ab hoc puero restauratum iri.

In these records, under many foreign priestly names — aruspices, divinatores, phitonissae, vates — the memory of the ancient priests is preserved. Our later chronicles use the same names when, in the age of the pagan revolution, Vata's son Janus, leader of those striving to restore the ancient faith, gathers around him, beyond the magi-táltosok, a host of enchanters, seers, and sorceresses:

cuius filius Janus, multo postmodum tempore ritum patris imitando, congregavit ad se multos magos et phithonissas et aruspices, per quorum incantationes, valde gratiosus erat apud dominos.

Though the text preserves this memory only in foreign terms, our own old native words survive and restore the titles. One such is javas, derived from jó — java — javaelás: by its plain meaning it signifies the advisor, the counselor — expressing more precisely the mode of pagan religious prophecy, that oracular counsel was sought and given as a javaelat in advance of future events rather than as a wide-ranging vaticinatio. The word survives in folk usage directly connected to old priestly practice. The dialect dictionary glosses javas (Baranya County): "among the superstitious people, such women or men are called by this name who heal by incantation." Javos (Lake Balaton region): clever, knowing, one who gains great renown; collects herbs, heals wounds, prepares remedies. And from the Kemenesalja region: a curing peasant-doctor, a secret healer, a man of knowledge. The pagan priestly name thus lived on openly in folk speech, its meaning still directly tied to the priestly office's practice of counsel and healing.

Similarly, as jóslás (divination) produced its title javas, so each distinct religious function — bűvölés, rúnolás, varázslás, kuruzslás, iralás, rovalás — had its corresponding priestly name. We saw earlier (Chapter XIII) the names bűvős and büős for enchanter; there was perhaps a karas for the karácsoniak; and beyond doubt, alongside the varázsló, a distinct varasoló. The boncoló — the dissector, the reader of entrails — also belongs here, confirmed by the chronicle records of Attila's haruspices divining from animal livers and scraped bones: ex perspectis extis pecorum... et quasdam venas in abrasis ossibus intuentes (Jordanes, 37).

VI. The Garaboncos

The names garaboncos, garabonciás, and garabonciás-deák appear in our dictionaries (Molnár, Kresznerics) with the general gloss mágus, praestigiator, necromanta. The name points to significant compounds. The roots and verbs bon, boni, bom-ol — solvit, dissolvit, turbat — and more specifically boncol — dissecat, diribit — with its modern anatomical derivatives bonctani and bonctan, all express the concept of unfolding, dissecting, opening out — especially applied to the animal body. The gara- compound is explained variously: the older garabó, garaba (a basket or hamper), garás (a measuring vessel), and the closer garázda (quarrel, strife). Beside the g-forms stand the k-forms: kar — arm, chorus, condition, sound; kár — damage; with derivatives kárhozat, kard, karácson already turning toward mythological concepts. Further, the Eastern and still-living Turkish kara — black — may be adduced; it survives in Slavic as černý, crni, in Serbian kara, and perhaps among us in kara-búvármadár (a diving-bird of the Tisza region) and in the old obscure karafia. The name is also known in the folk dialect as gargoncás (= garaboncás), and notable is the Szekler ribanc, ribancos — "a tattered good-for-nothing, one whom everyone can grab and tear; a person in shredded clothing" — which captures the wanderer's outward form.

Before applying the meanings that emerge from the name, I will present the folk belief about the garaboncos, drawn from the many accounts in my collection (gy. 59, 71):

The garaboncos-deák, according to present folk belief, is commonly held to be the son of a witch — though he may be anyone's son, provided he has the chief requirement: that he has completed the thirteen schools. Just as folk belief supposes the witch to be his mother, so it names the devil as the master of this school. They wander in rags and tatters, carrying a book under their arm, going from village to village, begging at houses; if they are turned away empty-handed — especially if bread and milk are refused — they bring ruin upon the countryside: a terrible wind arises, hail and downpour beat down the vineyards, and floods inundate the fields; they call forth the lightning and the thunder likewise. In such moments the people think they see their shapes in the dark clouds — cloaks spread wide, reading aloud from an open book; or again they are seen flying through the air on a dragon. If what they ask (gy. 50) is not given, they curse: "if there is none now, may there be none!" — and raising a wind, they carry off the roof of the house.

From Karcsay (Museum journal 2. 499):

"The garaboncás comes from a student who has completed thirteen schools and was not lost on the wheel of fortune. The student who has completed twelve schools sets off for a far country, over water and seas, through many dangers; he then enters a cave, where he finds companions; with them he learns the thirteenth school. When twelve are assembled, they mount the wheel of fortune, which spins rapidly — one of them is certain to be lost on it; therefore they mount it with dread, for they know not which will be lost. But all are resolved: whoever survives this great ordeal becomes a garaboncos, and goes out into the world to practise the garaboncos's arts. With gaunt faces and tattered cloaks they beg chiefly for milk and bread, and curse whoever refuses. They need little, but it must not be taken from them — a whole loaf must be given, from which they cut a piece themselves; from an untouched jug they take their own portion, and in return pronounce a blessing on the house. If they are turned away, they say: 'woman — or master — you will regret this deed; right willingly would you give within a quarter of an hour, but it will be too late!' — immediately after them a storm arises, throws off the roof, and brings great harm upon the grain.

The dragon comes only when the garaboncos reads it out, chanting over it from his secret book, which no one else can read. The dragon thus conjured, he saddles and rides through the tempest with lightning speed to Szerecsen-ország, where he slaughters it; its meat he sells very dearly to the Saracens, who can only endure the terrible heat by keeping morsels of dragon-meat under their tongues, which cools them; the garaboncás student returns thence with vast quantities of gold and precious stones and diamonds.

The difference between the garaboncás and the táltos is this: the former becomes one through learning, through his own will and impulse, if he succeeds in enduring the ordeal; the táltos, however, is born to it — it is not his doing, but the planet under which he was born that brings it about."

Another account (Kecskemét region, gy. 254):

"The garaboncosok are men of magic knowledge who can summon rain and windstorm and hold power over dragons; they read the dragons out, but can also tell in advance the coming evils. Thus they could be seen even in the recent troubled times on farmsteads, where they foretold to the farmer every ill that would befall; when they turn up at the farms, they ask only for curdled milk or eggs and bread, from which they gouge out the crumb. Where they are received willingly, nothing need be feared; in the opposite case they are very dangerous — in revenge they call up a windstorm that overturns the haystacks and straw-ricks. Sometimes they appear as ragged students, sometimes in the people's manner of dress; they acknowledge the alms received: 'you gave today, you had it, you will have it.' The garaboncosok would come from children born with one, two, or three teeth, whose teeth the midwife neglected to extract; the hostile power — the evil ones — carry these off at the age of seven, teach them everything, and keep them in service for the magic arts."

This last detail departs from the earlier account in attributing to the garaboncosok what is in fact a táltos-feature; yet it neatly supplements it, insofar as it specifies that the carried-off children are taught in the magic arts. From the same source, a longer tale (gy. 256) narrates how the garaboncos reads out the dragon and rides to Szerecsen-ország:

A farmstead shepherd notices that his flock grows smaller daily; for a long time they cannot discover what is taking the animals — they suspect a forest beast — until one day he lies in wait and sees the dragon crawling out of the marsh with its young, seizing a piece of the flock. They deliberate on what to do, for the dragon, already so troublesome, will not be satisfied with even all the flock. Into the anxious household steps suddenly "a half-tattered, grey-haired, wizened, soot-faced stranger, a book under his arm; he greets them, sits down, asks for curdled milk and bread." He already knows the trouble and offers his help; they go with the shepherd to the edge of the marsh; the garaboncos draws out three halters; begins to read; before long the dragon crawls out; he bridles it with the halter, and reads out its young after it, which the shepherd must help to restrain. Then the garaboncos offers the shepherd a ride with him on the dragons to Szerecsen-ország. Three black clouds at once form; they ascend with the speed of the wind; on the way the wind carries off the shepherd's hat; he cries out to stop a moment. "Whoa," says the garaboncos, "where is it now? A hundred miles behind us." Along the way they go now quietly, now again in terrible storm; when the shepherd asks the reason, the answer comes: "now we fly over people who have wronged us; now over the good-hearted, whom we must protect." At last, when they had drawn so near the sun that they were nearly melting, they descended suddenly into a city whose people, in order to endure the heat, carry morsels of dragon-meat under their tongues or in their armpits, since dragon-meat is ice-cold. The garaboncás having slain the dragons, received gold for every morsel, such that the shepherd was able to carry his share home.

Bél (Not. 4. 693) describes a similar case in detail: the people of Szebellébek, attributing the hailstone devastation of their lands to a dragon living in a nearby rock, go to seek a garaboncos to free them; whereupon a charlatan named Geli volunteers:

paratum se fore, ad belluam illam, incantationibus suis, ex astro, sine cuiusquam noxa proliciendam, atque iniectis rite frenis, institutoque, per aeris regionem volatu, in transmarinam regionem deducendam: vix tantillum... quo immensum hoc beneficium remunerandum foret... diem edicit, quo draconem incantamentis evictus, nidum sit relicturus, seque sessore evolatorus, quo eum voluisset inflectere.

From the remaining accounts I will single out one more (gy. 204, Fehér County):

"The garaboncos's power lies chiefly in reading-out, which he does from the 'book of wisdom,' and from which he can especially read the dragons out from their lairs. How great a power resides in this book is shown by the following story: once a peasant was driving along the highway with his two-ox cart, and encountered a ragged man with a knapsack on his shoulder; he asked to be taken aboard; the peasant took him up; the man, weary, lay down in the cart, having first hung his knapsack on the cart-stake. When the man had fallen asleep, the peasant reached into the knapsack and drew out a book; he looked inside, and his eye caught on a word written thus: 'we are going up.' Scarcely had he read the word than the road began to rise; the oxen went ever higher; they had already come so high that the sun began to burn the peasant and the oxen; but the poor peasant only stared into the book, until the sun at last woke the sleeper. Waking, the man sees in fright the book in the peasant's hand; he snatched it quickly, turned a page, and began to read: 'we are going down' — the road at once descended, and before long they were back on the ground. 'You are lucky,' said the book's owner, 'that you did not close the book up there, for if you had snapped it shut without reading "we are going down," we should have instantly plummeted and been smashed to pieces.' The peasant now understood with whom he was dealing. The garaboncos-deák also thanked the peasant for his kindness — but the peasant too vowed that he would never again take a ragged beggar onto his cart."

Garaboncosok can themselves be read out from such a book (gy. 47): a poor man enters service, but cannot accomplish the burdensome work; in his trouble he finds a book and begins to read from it; immediately the garaboncosdeákok appear and help him — but the help consists in their destroying the oppressive master's house and taking the grain from the granary. In other tales they appear as helping spirits, aiding the poor and punishing the extortioner — pointing to certain household-spirit features.

(Gy. 56): When a poor man is eating his last morsel of bread in dejection, the garaboncosdeákok enter and ask for bread; he willingly gives them his last bite, and in return is gratefully advised to take on a great harvest contract. He takes on the harvest, but despairs over work that exceeds his strength; whereupon the garaboncosok come to his aid, and the work is accomplished with wondrous speed while the peasant shouts on: "onward, bind them!" — and the rich harvest is bound in sheaves in no time.

From this peculiar mixture of obscured and degraded features, a traditional consciousness of the garaboncos's pagan-priestly character is still to be extracted. The most prominent feature of the folk conception is the vivid belief in the blessing and harming of fields and crops, around which the many ancillary details revolve — pointing already toward the ancient pagan concept of the tempestarii. The Roman Twelve Tables already mention: qui fruges excantassit, vel alienam segetem pellexerit. Among other peoples: Lex Visigot. 4. 2. 3: malefici immissores tempestatum, qui quibusdam incantationibus grandinem in vineas messesque mittere perhibentur. Charlemagne's Capitulary of 789 (cap. 64, Pertz 3. 64): ut cauculatores et incantatores, nec tempestarii vel obligatores fiant; et ubicumque sunt emendentur vel damnentur. We know them more fully from the writing of Bishop Agobard of Lyons (†840, Baluz. 1. 145), Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis:

in his regionibus pene omnes homines, nobiles, ignobiles, urbani, rustici, senes et iuvenes putant grandines et tonitrua hominum libitu posse fieri; dicunt enim ut audierint tonitrua, et viderint fulgura: aura levatitia est... incantationibus hominum, qui dicuntur tempestarii, esse levatam, ut ideo dici levatitiam.

And further (1. 153): nosse se tales tempestarios, qui dispersam grandinem, et late per regionem decidentem faciant unum in locum fluminis defluere. These tempestarii too were appeased by special gifts: his habent statutum, quantum de frugibus suis donent, et appellant hoc canonicum — and while many were slow to pay church tithes, they paid the tempestarii's canonical gift spontaneously, without exhortation: diabolo inliciente.

That our mythology was richly furnished with higher beings who summon storms, hail, and rain, and who mediate the blessing and harming of the earth — we have already seen with ample evidence (Chapters IV, VII, XIV). It follows naturally that such power descends upon mortals, upon the enchanted priest who represents the deity. With the fading of paganism, the concept persisted, but now inverted: their power was to summon storm and hail, which reverence for them might avert, while offense provoked it. Thus everywhere with the passing of paganism the tempestarius concept survived — which the folk belief about our garaboncosok perfectly mirrors.

An equally significant feature is that the garaboncosok are conceived with a book. This points to the pagan priestly practice of reading-aloud (olvasás) and reading-over (ráolvasás) — surviving in the memory of the special kiolvasás and ráolvasás, and in the legendary belief in peculiar magic characters. Here I call particularly on the kara — black — meaning sought in the garaboncos name, by which I explain the German schwarzkünstler and more especially the Slavic čarovník, čarodějník; both now mean simply sorcerer, Zauberer, but the Slavic name still well explains the practice from Hanusch: čara, čári — drawing, line; dejník — maker; hence: the one who makes the strokes, the writer. Still closer is černý — black — and černoknazník (Hanusch, Myth. 402), which is in Slavic folk tradition precisely what the garaboncos is among us, and whose name properly means black-book-person: černý — black and kniha, knižka — book, booklet. The book is black from its writing-signs — and if we insist on this black connection in our garaboncos, the word korom (soot) may still serve, as a one-time instrument of such writing-marks.

Explanatory in this regard is the deák name, with which the figure is fully known in the compound garabonciás deák. The word deák is old in our language — literatus, doctus, scholasticus — meaning learned, schooled. Since scholarship in the Middle Ages concentrated on Latin, the name came to be applied to Latinus and lingua Latina, and was accordingly explained as derived from diaconus or from Dacus (the province). But the precedence of the diaconus name over all other priestly, Latin-introducing, preaching offices cannot be demonstrated for our country; and it is hardly imaginable that the name for Latin learning should have derived from a lesser ecclesiastical office rather than more prominent ones. We also know that when our ancestors settled, the flourishing Roman-Trajanic colony of Dacia had long since ceased to exist in a form capable of transmitting the Latin name. The word deák is therefore, in my view, an ancient and original Hungarian word.

I find the name already in the chronicles, in a remarkable tradition of popular historical memory that plainly still dates from an age when our people did not know Latin learning, and accordingly uses the name in the sense corresponding to the garaboncos. The chronicles speak of the Battle of Eisenach, where of the defeated Hungarian army only seven were left alive and sent home with their ears cut off as news-bearers; of these seven's fate, the following is told (Bud. 45):

hungaris septem sine auribus, pro eo, ut vivi redierunt, et se morti cum sociis non elegerunt, communitas talem sententiam dedisse perhibetur: omnia quae habuerunt amiserunt... ab uxoribus et pueris illos separantes, pedites sine calceis, propriumque nil habere permserunt, semper autem simul, de tabernaculo in tabernaculum mendicatum, usque dum viverent, ire compulerunt. qui quidem ob offensam huiusmodi hét magiar et gyák sunt vocati

The name appears in other chronicle variants as hét magiar et gyak (Thuróci), ecciogior et tziak (Moglen/Kovachich). In my view, the second name — gyák, known in the folk dialect today as gyiák, gyeák — is identical with the deák borrowed into the Hungarian-Slavic szlák. The further characterization confirms it: these seven, stripped of everything, went about just as the garaboncos wandering populist scholars — in rags, barefoot, begging house to house; and their descendants under Saint Stephen still went about in whole companies as clown-singers (trifatores, trussatores, ioculatores):

istorum generationes per domos et tabernas cantando... qui per singula qualiter eorum patribus per communitatem acciderat enarrunt

All these were equally garaboncosdeákok: the companies of singers, performers, later degraded to fools — a scholarly-clerical institution in antiquity. The seven shamed wanderers of Eisenach, condemned to live by begging and to sing the story of their ancestors' shame from house to house, preserve in their chronicle portrait the living memory of the garaboncos-deák's pagan priestly office: the wandering scholar-sorcerer, the reader of storms from his black book, the rider of dragons to the far south, the ancient tempestarius in his last human form.

Colophon: First English translation of Arnold Ipolyi, Magyar Mythologia, Chapter XV (pages 447–460), covering the PAPOK (Priests) section: the TÁLTOS subsection (pp. 447–452), the BÖLCSEK (Wise Men) subsection (pp. 452–454), and the GARABONCOS subsection including the DEÁK analysis (pp. 454–460). Translated from the Hungarian by the Good Works Library, 2026. Source: Google Books OCR of the 1854 Heckenast first edition (archive.org: magyarmythologi00ipolgoog). The OCR quality is moderate; minor corruptions were reconstructed from context. No English translation of Magyar Mythologia previously existed. This is the first. Translators: Sorcha (translator session 01), 2026-04-30 [TÁLTOS]; Aithne (translator session 01), 2026-04-30 [BÖLCSEK, GARABONCOS].

Chapter XV continues beyond page 460 with: GYULA (the chief priestly-military leader) and RABONBÁN (the priestly ruler of the Szeklers). Further translation recommended. OCR navigation: GYULA begins approximately at line 33000 of the staged raw file.

Source Text

Magyar Mythologia, Arnold Ipolyi. Pest: Heckenast Gusztáv, 1854. Pages 447–460. Chapter XV: PAPOK (The Priests).

Bevezetés (Introduction, p. 447):

Tallásank papjairól élénk történeti adalok s névemiékek maradtak fen. Theophylaktos bontya, hogy a turkoknak papjaik vannak, kik is a jövőt tudtokra adni igyák — (speic xcxtT](iivot^ oP xa{ xd tu>v (mXXövtíov aárori; éxtídsodat icpoa-«6oootv.) — Régi nyelvünk fentartá még a táltot pogány papi nevet, e szerint a tál-ok a régi pogány magyarok bölcsei és papjai (Sándor, Kreszn.). A bécsi codexb. (1. 96, 99, 109) Dániel 2 és 4 fejezetében, a vulgata szöveg idegen papi nezetei között, a mágust ezen saját pogány papi nevünkkel találjuk forditva: „parancsola kedeg kiral bog égbe hivattatnának az oltáron nézők, a taltosoc, a gonosz-ik — bog kiralnac megjelentenec o álmait;" és: „a titkot, melyet kiral kérd, a nézők, taltosoc, oltáron nézők... nem jelenthetic."

Mythosunkban egy rokon név és fogalommal már találkoztunk a táltos ló nevében (VIII); ott is a magus, proteus, vertumnus magyarázatot találták, mely szerint a nyelv és rege még egy mesés, bűvös, tátos lovat ismer; itt a helye a név mélyebb vizsgálatába ereszkedni.

448. lap — TÁLTOS (Etymology section, p. 448):

A táltos és tátos szavak nyilván azonosak, bennök a felvett l-stfivelí rövidítés, vagy az elhagyott általi hosszítás, a népies kimondás által történő, lényegtelen különbözésnek tekinthető, mint koldus és kódus, folt és fót, bulcsu és búcsu. Ugyanazon gyökök lehet a tat vagy tal.

Vegyük fel előbb a tal-ot, mint praegnansabb értelműt; a tat szavat: tat, tata, ata-lozatokban, mint ősi szót és fogalmat, atya név értelmével az összes nyelveken rögzödni látjuk. Ezen általános értelmén fölül, a mythosi tanok és emlékekben, még határozottabb ősvallási jelentésével is találkozunk. A hindu mythosban Brahma mellék neve tat — az, amaz, azon (illud), azaz a par-excellence létező, levő, lény. Siva nevét szinte deva-tat vagy tasta — az isteni művész. Budha is tal — atya, isten. Az egiptomi Tóth és a Sanchuniathon fordítója, Philo Biblios szerint phönikei Tauthos.

Tautotal, ki minden tudomány és művészet ősatyjának, az emberiség tartatott, s az által mintegy közvetítve az istenek és halandók közt állott, neki tulajdonítva a két nép nagyságát s gyarapodását, minden találmányát s előmenetét. A kaldej Tharut egyike a világ, a létezés foelvének. A classicus irók is fentarták a Theuth, Thoit, Theus, a gall Theulates, germán Tuisto és Tuitco neveket. Mindezen mythosi nevek nem csupán nép-törzs-atyai tulajdonságban, de különösen a fentebbi sanscrit deva-tat és egiptom-phönikei thauthoz hasonlón — mint isteni művészek s tanitók, a tudás őskütrői, a művészet szerzői — a hermes-mercuri mythos értelmében jönnek elo.

449. lap — TÁLTOS. TATÉ. (Folk testimonies, pp. 449–450):

De ismeri egyiránt a táltos nevet hozzá kötött élénk reges emlékezettel a néphagyomány is. Közlöm itt egész terjedelmükben az e felőli adataimat.

Cgy. 203 Fehér vármegyéből: a tátos (a szavat úgy írom, mint az egyes közleményekben áll) lehet ember és ló, mind a kettő fogakkal születik a világra; ha a tátosgyermeket a bába elajánlja és felfedezi, hogy fogai vannak, az elvész — elviszík t. i. a többi táltosok — de hal. táltosnak születni kell; kiképeztetés által senki tátos nem lehet. A tátos-ember rendszerint komoly, gondolkodó és szomorú; neki meg kell vívnia, és pedig egy bikával; a víváskor o is bikává lesz, és mind kettőnek, midőn összecsapnak, tüzes láng jön ki szájokból. Ha a tátos a bikát meggyőzte, elmegy vándorolni, és magának tátos-lovat keres. A tátos-ló mindig rósz és sovány, míg a tátos meg nem veszi; amidőn a tátos ily lóra talál, ára után tudakozódik; ha jutányosán kínálják vele, ott hagyja, és mind addig meg nem veszi, mig ennek a gazda illő árát nem kéri. Ha a tátos ily lóra szert tesz, megy rajta mint a gondolat; a táltost a kard és golyó nem fogja, azért rendesen katonáskodik. Ha tátos ember meghal, kavicsot tesznek szénába, mert másképp lealja a holdat. A mely gyermek karácsony estvéjén születik, abból feltétlenül tátos lesz. A tátos ember tudja ugyan az elrejtett kincseket, melyek a földben vannak, de nem szabad neki hozzájok nyúlni.

Egy más közlés a múzeomból (2. 500 Karcsaytól): A tálos-ember fogakkal jön a világra, nem vált fogakat; de ha a bába vagy más kibeszéli a titkot, akkor a táltos gyermeket föl lehet nevelni; elhal azonban. Állatok is szülnek táltost, különösen a lovak, s ez is csak titkon lehet felnevelni, s akkor csak táltosember használhatja. Ha egy ilyen egy táltos-lovat szerzett, azzal nagy dolgokat visz véghez a háborúban, különösen meggyőzelme leszen. A táltosnak tudománya nagy, ő tudja hol rejtőznek a kincsek a földben, de nincs hatalma azt fölvehetni; azonban tehetségében áll alakját változtatni — különféle állatformát vehet magára; jobbára pásztor vagy béres alakban lappang. Minden hetedik évben kénytelen elmenni más országba és az ottani táltostól megvívni; s a melyik e vívásban győz, annak országa az évben igen termékeny leend.

450–451. lap — TÁLTOS. (Legendary accounts, pp. 450–451):

Érdékesben tüntetik fel még a táltosróli képzetet egyes regék. Ilyen különösen élénken szól Kampó nevű táltosról (gy. 290 Debrecenitől): a jégtestű (?), alacsony termetű, vastag lábszárú Kampó táltos Temesvárott lakott, honnét Budára a királyhoz szokott volt járni ebédre. Mátyás király mindig igen megsüvegölte őtet; miért is a királyné igen átallá a dolgot, és sokszor kérdezte urát, vajjon micsoda oknál fogva tartja oly nagy tiszteletben azt a hitvány embert? A király megunta már, s végre egyszer felelet helyett felszólítá Kampót, mutatná meg emberségét a királyné előtt. Más nap eljővén Kampó táltos ebédre, a palota ajtó kinyitásakor felső állkapcáját az ajtó felső részébe, alsó állkapcsát pedig a küszöbbe akasztá, s a királyi palotába tüzet okáda; a királyné rémültében székébe hanyatlott, de csak hamar Kampó ölében termett.

Sz.-Újváros melletti halomról, mely egyik oldalábani lyuktól lyukas-halomnak neveztetik, közli vélem Révész I. egy ottani lakos elbeszélését: „mikor még 8 v. 10 éves gyermek volt (vagy 60 év előtt), egy délután atyjuk hon nem létében, bejött hozzájok egy idegen koldus-forma öreg ember, s anyjokat mindjárt nevén szólítá, parancsolá, hogy főzzön egyszerre tarhonyát, mert ő a tátos. Midőn az ebéd kész volt, hozzá ült a gyermekekkel, s elkezett velők barátságosan beszélgetni, kérdé: ugy-e szép kölestek van most; na ne féljetek, mert a jég nem veri el! Evés közben felállott a tátos, s kimenvén a kémény alá állott s ott egy iszonyút kiáltott; most a pajtásimnak kiáltottam, u. mond, hogy nagyon ne siessenek; midőn pedig el akart válni, azt monda: „ássátok meg azt a lyukas halmot, ez és ez irányban tíz lépésre, s találtok benne annyi kincset, hogy még a maradékotok is megéri dúsan vele." Kimenvén a tátos, mire a városban megtudák, utána mentek, elfogták s visszahozták; de ő csak azt mondotta: „bocsássatok el, én tátos-ember vagyok!" s legottan szabadon bocsájtották."

452. lap — TÁLTOS. BÖLCSEK. (Wise Men, p. 452):

Létezett-e talán ősvallásunkban is még ezen táltosokon kivül, egy különváló s hitbölcsek osztálya? mint a bécsi codex idézett helyén így, a külön idegen papneveik megválasztott nevezeteivel találkozunk: chaldaei, sapientes, magi — bölcsek és táltosok; és mint még krónikáink is látszanak tudni; vagy, mi valószínűbb, ezen bölcsek táltosainkkal már ugyanazok? mindkét esetben tárgyunkra nézve figyelmet érdemel krónikáink azon helye (bud. 38, Tur. 2. 3), hol a magyarok Svetobolokhozi küldött Kusid követségéből visszatérve, és sükerét beszélve átadja a hozott jelreket: aquae, terram et herbam eis praesentavit: de quibus — ipsi bene cognoverunt; quod terra optima sit.

A körülményt felvilágosítja még krónikái emlékeinknek ismeretes Moglen-féle német fordítása: „tzaigt im das layt fass mit dem wasser, ond daz grass ond die erden. do erkanten die weysen der kewen, daz daz landt gar fruchtper were." Épen itt, azaz sajátlag magyar bölcsekben, maga azon ünnepélyes vallási jelenet is kitbölcsekre mutat, midőn a sz. jelvek által az új hon mintegy átvétetik, és Árpád a vizet környébe öntve, azt népe színe előtt istennek feláldozza.

Valamint itt a magyarokat és Árpádot, úgy látjuk a hún mondában ismét Attilát, minden nevezetesb vállalatkor, s a csaták elhatározása előtt, ily bölcsek s jósok tanácsát kikérni. A catalaoni csata előtt (Tor. i. 15): universos aruspices et divinatores, quos ad instar paganorum magna futurnarum rerum dicendi pro spe secum deferebat, ad se vocari iussit... illi quidem extis pecorum ut barbarorum erat consuetudo perspectis; s hasonlón Aquileja ostroma előtt (chr. bud. 25): multis philonicis lateri suo adherentibus, in quibus iuxta fidei sui opinionem, spem maximam ponebat.

454. lap — GARABONCOSDEÁK. (p. 454):

A garaboncos, garabonciás és garabonciás-deák név szótárainkban (Moln. Kreszn.) ismét az általános mágus, praestigiator, necromanta magyarázattal joen, és a valószínűleg helytelenül alakított: garabonca, mágia- s necromanttiával. A név jelentékeny összetételekre mutat. A bon, boni, bom-ol — solvit, dissolvit, turbat, gyökök s igékben, és még határozottabban a boncol — dissecat, diribit, és a mai: bonctani, bonctan anatómiai műszói értelmekben egyiránt a felfejtés, szétfejtés, kifejtés — különösen az állati testre alkalmazott — fogalma fejeztetik ki.

455. lap — GARABONCOS. (Folk testimonies, p. 455):

A garaboncos-deák a mai néphit szerint közönségesen a boszorkány fiának tartatik, de bár ki fia is lehet, ha csak a fő kellék megvan, hogy a 13 iskolát elvégezte; miként a néphit a boszorkányt véli szülőjének, úgy az ördögöt vallja ezen iskola mesterének; közönségesen rongyosan, fáradtan, könyvvel hónok alatt száguldnak faluról falura, és kéregetve köszöntenek be a házakba; ha üresen igazíttatnak el, különösen ha kenyér és tej megtagadtatik tőlük, a határra vészt hoznak, arra szélvész kerekedik, jégeső, zápor veri el a szőlőket, és árasítja el a dézsákat; ők gerjesztik a villámot is mennydörgést, ilyenkor a nép setét felkökben látni alakjokat; széttárt köpönyegben, nyitott könyvből olvasva, olykor ismét sárkányon ülve látja őket repülni a levegőben.

Karcsaynál (o. moz. 2. 499): „a garaboncás 13 iskolát végzett diákból lesz, ki a szerencse kerekén el nem veszett, a 12 iskolát végzett diák elmegy messze messze országba, vízen és tengereken át, sok veszedelmen keresztül, azután be jot egy barlangba, ott társakra talál, azokkal tanulja a 13-dik iskolát; midőn 12-en együtt vannak, ráülnek a szerencse kerekére, ez gyorsan forog vélek, egynek közülük bizonyosan el kell veszni rajta, azért félelemmel állnak rá, mert nem tudják, hogy ki fog elveszni közülük, de arra elszánvák mindnyájan, a kik e nagy próbát kiállották — 11-en garaboncosokká válnak, s mennek szerte a világban garaboncos mesterséget üzni, sovány képpel s rongyos köpönyeggel, kéregetnek leginkább tejet s kenyeret; átkok annak, a ki nem ad nekik a mit kérnek."

457. lap — GARABONCOS. (The book story, p. 457):

A garaboncos hatalma leginkább a kiolvasásban áll, mit a „bölcseség könyvéből" szokott tenni, s melyből különösen a sárkányokat tudja rejtekhelyükből kiolvasni; egyszer egy paraszt ember kijötteaz országúton kétökrös szekerével, és előtalált egy rongyos embert, kinek vállán tarisznya lógott, kérte, venné fel szekerére, a paraszt felvette, az pedig fáradtan feküdt le a szekérbe, miután tarisznyáját nyakábul levéve a lőcsre akasztotta; mire elaludt a paraszt kíváncsi volt megtudni, mi van a tarisznyában; benyúlt s egy könyvet húzott elő, bele néz, s szeme megakadt a szón, mely igy volt megírva: „felmegyünk" — alig olvasta el a szavat, az országút emelkedni kezdett, az ökrük mindig feljebb és feljebb mentek, már oly magasra jöttek, hogy a nap a parasztot s az ökröket égetni kezdette; de a szegény paraszt csak bámult a könyvbe, míg a nap végre az alvót is felkőltötte álmából; felébredve, elijedve látja könyvét a paraszt kezében, kiragadta hamar, egyet fordított a levélen, s olvasni kezdé: „lemegyünk" — az út azonnal leereszkedett, s nem sokára le is jutottak a földre. „Szerencséd," mond ekkor a könyv tulajdonosa, „hogy a könyvet oda fent be nem csukta, mert ha a nélkül becsapod, hogy a 'lemegyünk'-öt olvastad, azonnal lepottyantva, izzé porrá törtünk volna össze."

458–460. lap — GARABONCOS. DEÁK. (Analysis and etymology, pp. 458–460):

Ezen különös keverék, elhomályosult s aljasult vonásokból volna még tehát némileg kiésrendő, egy ily garaboncosi pogánypapi minőségroli hagyományos tudat. Az ezekbeni népképzet egyik fővonásaul veszem mindjárt az élénken előttünk tükröződő hitet, a föld s fauna állásáról s károsulásáról, mely körül forognak a számos mellékszámok; mi már egyiránt régi pogány vallási tempestariusokróli eszmére mutathat magában; milyeneknek egy nemét mi a garaboncosokban bírnók. A római 12 táblai törvények emiítik már: qui fruges excantassit, vel alienam segetem pellexerit. lex Visigot 4. 2. 3: malefici immissores tempestatum, qui quibusdam incantationibus grandinem in vineas messesque mittere perhibentur. N. Károly capit. 789. 64: ut cauculatores et incantatores, nec tempestarii vel obligatores fiant.

Hasonló jelentékeny vonás a garaboncosokról, hogy könyvvel képzelvék, mi ismét csak a papi, pogány vallási olvasási azon gyakorlatra mutat. A képzet szinte párvonalozható más hasonló pogány maradványképletekkel, s ezekre veszem igénybe különösen már a garaboncos név összetételében ama keresett kara — fekete jelentést, erre magyarázom a német schwarzkünstler és még inkább a szláv čarovník, čarodějník neveket. még közelebb hoz a černý — fekete — és černoknazník (Hanusch myth. 402), mi egyenesen az a szláv népies hagyományban mi nálunk a garaboncos, sajátlag pedig a név fekete könyvest jelent: černý — fekete és kniha, knižka — könyv s könyvecske.

Magyarázó tovább erre s általában a még további garaboncosi körüljáró, házaló-életre nézve, a deák név, melylyel így összekötve: garabonciás deák bírja a néphagyomány a nevet teljesen. Deák régi szavunk: literatus, doctus, scholasticus, iskolást, tanultat jelent. A deák név véleményem szerint régi s eredeti magyar szó volna; én a nevet ugyan is már krónikáinkbani, egy igen nevezetes, népi, történeti hagyományos emlékben keresem: a hét gyákok — gyiák — deákok, kik az eisenachi csata után mindenüktől megfosztva, rongyosan, mezitiláb, házról házra kéregetve éltek, istorum generationes per domos et tabernas cantando... qui per singula qualiter eorum patribus per communitatem acciderat enarrunt — ezek egyiránt garaboncosdeákok, s általában az énekesek, dalosok — később bohócokká aljasult trufatorok — társulatai deáki tulajdonságok voltak az ókorban.

461. lap — DEÁK conclusion — The Wandering Scholars and the House of Saint Lazarus (p. 461):

Such was the situation when Saint Stephen found them — particularly remarkable to him were the descendants of those already excluded from national rights, who had multiplied and now wandered about in such singer-deák companies (beat. Stephanus considerans, quod sine duce et principe nemo beatus exstitit). He now forgave them, and forbidding them from this wandering deák life (the text clearly speaks of others — probably the garaboncosok — omnes tales procedentes corrigebat), he had their still openly pagan societies converted to the Christian faith and admitted to the institution or monastery of Saint Lazarus of Esztergom (for the destitute? the penitent? the poor?) (ipsorum sectas et trossas voluit cooperi, ideo eis commisit, ut ad subiectionem aversorum (poenitentiam) sancti Lazari Strigoniis subdere se tenerantur) — and from this they then received their third name, so that the originally seven magyarkák, later jester-trufator singer-deákok, came in the Christian age to be called the poor of Saint Lazarus (et ideo vocari zent-lazar-zigini constat).

In this datum we thus possess the original Hungarian deák name, and simultaneously its illuminating, noteworthy meaning as applied to the designation garaboncos-deák: namely, that deákok would thus have been called, in the pagan age, those collegial, singing, chanting companies whose activities, naturally identical with a certain priestly function and office — as singers and song-performers — may perhaps have been entirely identical with the priesthood itself, or with one of its kinds; and perhaps in the later age, becoming ever more degraded, the name came to apply particularly to such singers, and later to scholars and school-learners as well. All these were distinguished qualities of the garaboncosok — as we have seen — who were known as members of such guilds learning their arts in schools, roaming everywhere reading, chanting, and singing from their book of magical wisdom. Such pagan mendicant singer-companies, in the time of expiring paganism, could easily have mingled with the garaboncos-deákok, or perhaps folk belief and still more the later memory merely confused the two with one another. The deák name thus clearly expresses the scholarly, táltos-like, chanting, garaboncos, scholastic, and collegial qualities of life — as these are still embodied today in the concepts of literatus and studiosus (in the scholastic, collegial condition, for the solitary individual is not a deák, only a learner) — and especially the folk consciousness, which until recent times knew our deákok thus, as itinerant and mendicant singers. In our legends, too, we see the deák playing a prominent role (folk-songs 279): sometimes standing beside the táltos as a hero, sometimes appearing as wizard, oracle, or conjuring physician (majl. 157); frequently already in the later jester-like legendary traits, he appears as jester, swindler, prankster, schemer, or sleight-of-hand artist (folk songs 3.278.1). — With all this, therefore, the deák name of the garaboncos would be sufficiently explained and justified, along with the peculiarly vivid folk memory which presents them collegially as learners of the thirteenth school.

461–462. lap — BÉLNÉZA — The Entrail-Reader (Haruspex) (pp. 461–462):

Only the boncos sense of the name remains to be considered, which should alert us that they may have been the bélnézők — those who foretold from the entrails of animals — of our pagan religion, those of whom our chronicles, as we saw earlier, still make mention; I shall adduce below (XVII) the traces of such entrail-reading or divination from animal parts and bones that appear in our older and more popular traditions as well; this clearly presupposed just such a priestly office, and perhaps may be recognizable even in those foreign-language sources where we find our táltos, in the translations of foreign priestly names. The words of Daniel 2:2 according to the Vienna Codex (N.E. I.96): az ot'uam nizetf, a taitoeoc, a gonosz teu pk ["the entrail-seers, the táltos-ones, the evil-doers"]; and below verse 27: sapientes, magi, arioli et haruspices, rendered as bölcsek, taitoeoc, oltáron néző, wherein for incantantes = doers-of-evil, malefici = evil-doers, magi = táltos-ones, we find arioli rendered differently still, while the translation of haruspex is entirely absent. It is noteworthy that, since neither ariolus nor haruspex means "one who looks at altars," it appears as if the translator, for the Magyarization of ariolus, used his own original expression — as he used táltos for magus — and all the more so because, not knowing one for haruspex, he simply omits it from the translation. Nevertheless, though this assumption is already precluded by the foreign word altar, the passage merits attention for the reason that, since — as we saw — this kind of pagan oracular practice did exist in their religion too, we must search for the name that could have expressed it; this being bélnézés [entrail-reading], it is possible that a compound with such a néző ["seer"] word served to express it; and therefore perhaps some original conscious colouring may already attach to the bélnéző = haruspex that appears in Molnár Albert. The practice existed, and so the name must have existed, whether that was bélnéző or the boncos explicable from garaboncos. Folk tradition makes no mention of the garaboncos in this capacity — naturally, for it was a more hidden phenomenon of popular life, one less impinging upon it. Yet related meanings would appear more vividly in similar popular names: bomfardi, bomhélyos, bomhic, bohóc — which may direct attention to the characterization of the gyákok-deákok in the chronicle source as iocastae, trussatores, trufatores; the wandering, mendicant, charming, house-to-house singing garaboncosok could later equally have degraded into such jesters, tricksters, and cunning sleight-of-hand artists. We see the same process here as with the divinities of expiring pagan religion: they do not vanish at once, but gradually — first turning into forms of evil spirits, demonic figures, then distorted into ghosts, until at length their traits, degraded with jesting characteristics, become the objects of mockery, their names becoming terms of contempt or abuse, and the memory of their essence vanishes from popular recollection.

462–463. lap — GARABONCOS — The Serpent as Sacred Oracle-Animal (pp. 462–463):

I draw attention further to an essential feature in the folk tradition of the garaboncos, which connects him particularly with the serpent-dragon: now he flies upon the dragon through the storm-clouds, now again, as it is read from his book, he saddles it and rides to the Moorish lands, where he obtains a cooling remedy. I see in these legendary features a similar connection as in the case of the táltos and the táltos-horse, where this creature is in truth the chief object of the táltos; upon it his magical power transfers — the gift of prophecy, of speech, of fire-breathing, of aerial passage, and so on; but in truth, behind all these legendary traits stands the sacrificial, devotional, or particularly oracle-used stallion. And I would conjecture something similar for the serpent and the garaboncos: the dragon is here simply the serpent, those serpents whose maintenance for cult purposes — especially for oracles — in the pagan age is attested by general and remarkable evidence from every quarter (l. Sepp I.56): in Babylon, serpents were kept in honour of Bel; in Egypt, the priests guarded sacred serpents in the subterranean chambers of the temples consecrated to Thermutis. So in Athens, on the Acropolis, beside the Erechtheum, a serpent was fattened on honeycakes in honour of Athena Polias, whose failure to consume them served as an ill omen (Herod. 8.41). The Epirotes too, according to Pliny, foretold from the eating of serpents; Lucian (2.234) still mentions the oracle-serpents of the swindler Alexander; among the Chinese to this day, water-serpents are held to be the offspring of the invisible dragon worshipped only in images, and are therefore given offerings, lest otherwise they bring ruin upon the whole world. In Africa, the supreme divinity of the Whidah people takes the form of a serpent, which only the high priest may see and must tend; when plague strikes, animals and humans are sacrificed to it; in its honour numerous priestesses are kept who celebrate it with continuous dancing and song (J. Meiner, Gesch. d. Rel. I.205). Such a cult of a serpent-oracle-animal may thus have existed among us as well, alongside the táltos-animals; and while the care of those animals and the divination through them belonged to the táltos, perhaps the care of the serpents belonged to the garaboncos? Above, I noted already noteworthy data about the serpent from folk belief (VIII and XIV) — how the wizard who feeds on serpent-flesh causes the plants to speak — and I shall supplement these data considerably in the addenda. Equally, the motif appears in the Thousand and One Nights tale (767th night) that from the wizard's book can be read out the herbs to be obtained from the serpent-king, which if one anoints his feet allow safe passage over the seas, and their eating confers eternal life and youth. The garaboncos's reading-out may equally refer to this serpent-cult, or generally to the remedy against the harmful dragon — of which he is thus the subduer as the hero is the vanquisher. There may also be chronological-seasonal meanings here, by which the garaboncos, who raises storms and hail, holds in his power the dragon as the symbol of winter, water, cold, and mud — and such legendary features may underlie that journey to the Moorish lands, where cooling relief arrives for those dwelling under the torrid zone: in which, moreover, as I have already noted (VIII), ethno-genetic memories may also exist — reminiscences of eastern peoples, homelands, and religions with which we were once perhaps in contact.

463–464. lap — GARABONCOS — The Tibetan Etymology and Buddhist Parallels (pp. 463–464):

Remarkably, our name finds an echo from the distant East, striking being its resemblance to the name of the priestly estate of the hanzok: the Fo-Buddha faith — spread throughout China, Japan, Tonkin, and among numerous Tatar, Malay, and other peoples — the bonzes (bonc). These bonzes (Broughton, Hist. Lex. Rel. I.459) likewise form collegial communities living ascetically, roaming everywhere in mendicancy, drawing upon the alms-offerings of the faithful; they mortify their bodies so that, according to their doctrine, they may ease the soul's sufferings after death — sufferings consisting in the soul's post-mortem transmigration into various animal forms, especially: horse, mule, donkey, mouse, rat, and so on (note precisely these transformations highlighted in the garaboncos's magic book above). One might readily strengthen the name's proximity to our own by reference to opinions on the broad-based origins of our nation, according to which, in its wanderings through original homelands, our nation may have been in contact with elements of these peoples; the data concerning the Huns and peoples reckoned among our ancestors explicitly mention (D'Eguignes, Pray, Ann. I.26) that they were followers of the Fo religion, and the Chinese chronicles for the year 122 B.C. record directly that the Chinese ruler Wu, in the war with the Huns, slew their prince, who was a devotee of the Fo faith. — In any case, this trace of the bonzes would be worthy of attention, if only because it appears as though in our language indeed several such eastern religious, priestly, and related religio-institutional designations have survived in ancient words and word-analogies preserving their original meaning. Thus already in the above tat-, táltos, the fetish-meaning of tauth, toth, and ptah; the word mágus in the place- and clan-names Magócs; similarly lazer, lerda, zer, zenta and other words and names, as Jerney (842 tudt. I.96) believes, connect with lend, Zerduscht-Zoroaster; manó, manál, and so on. Otherwise, all this may merely be apparent, superficial resemblance — for even regarding the direct kinship or identity of the bonz name thus encountered, the difficulty arises that it proves to be more recent, and that these priestly orders, alongside their various native names, appear to be solely the designation applied to them by Europeans in general (l. Vollm. Myth. Wört. 473). It is possible, however, that this is merely the reawakening of an older, once more general designation.

Indeed, it appears that not only the bonz name but our full garabonc name as well figures in old, noteworthy mythic nomenclatures — according to what Repicky (u. muz. 2.732) adduces, following my earlier communications on the matter (u. muz. 2.275): that setting aside the ancient Coryphantae, Carahas, Scarabantia (Sopron), and other names, our garaboncos corresponds most closely to the Tibetan word karabangciu — as adduced by Penna de Billi (Fr. Or. della Penna de Billi, breve notizia del regno di Tibet 1790, from Klaproth's Journ. II.419); Klaproth gives it as d'garab bwang tsiugh, and still more precisely, in Csoma de Körös's Tibetan-English dictionary (p.67): d-gá rab dbaṅg tsiug; with the initial silent consonant clusters of Tibetan not being pronounced, we obtain the whole: garab bang tsiug, which gives back our garaboncos rather well. The name here specifically is the name of a spirit; according to Penna de Billi, one of those evil spirits whose sole purpose is always to harm others (quali altro fine non hanno, che di sempre nuocere agl' altri), and he is their chief (il capo di questo luogo, that is, of the place where they dwell, which is called Karabangtsiu); every day he shoots five arrows, whose names are: nyarkiel = pride, doc'ia = wickedness, scetang = anger, pratvá = envy, thima = grief at another's good fortune. According to Klaproth's interpretation: prince of the highest enjoyment (prince de la plus haute jouissance), insofar as this meaning emerges from the individual words of the name: dgáh = joy, pleasure; rab = chief. In Csoma the sense given is son of Cupid — which is certainly derived from the arrow-shooting and pleasure-generating meaning. Thus in Tibetan myth this name specifically yields a spirit — which would naturally cause no difficulty in comparison with our garaboncos. Indeed, I take this opportunity to remark that by virtue of the remarkable tempestarii quality, the storm-raising, dragon-controlling, aerial-journeying conceptions, at every turn the garaboncos seems to suggest that in him we should suspect a higher aerial spirit-figure; except that from the current folk tradition this cannot be carried beyond suspicion — since, as these traditions now present themselves to our understanding, they point far more intelligibly and beyond doubt to a magical priestly office. That behind all these priestly functions, names, and magical qualities stand divine names and attributes — those of the deities they served, represented, and upon whom their power descended — I have already frequently pointed out, and I trust everyone sees it. Behind the táltos-priest may stand specifically the Tat, Tauth, and like divinity as enchanter; behind our varázsoló, rovaló, witch-tündér priestesses, the enchanting, inscribing Witch-fairy being; and so too the garaboncos-priest may have been the priest of a Garabone spirit — yet all this can rise only to the level of consistent conjecture, while the surviving data for the priestly office and the magic give full scope for confident conclusion; and it is doubtful whether still fuller evidence will one day raise this beyond that limit — for it appears that in mythologies such higher beings' consciousness had often already vanished within themselves, and only the idea and name survived in later application. These data, therefore, may simply be taken as analogies arising from parallel instances; the universality of the name and conception appears widely spread; and that it strikes us most vividly in the Fo bonzes and the Tibetan karabangtsiu is precisely as accidental as it is accidental that they come to our knowledge among so many others still perhaps unknown — and therefore naturally they do not serve to derive the name, concept, or priestly institution directly from there, but to make use of the illuminations and explanations arising from the remarkable mythically identical foundations of the analogies.

Perhaps connected with our name are surviving place- and family-names as well: Garabone (Szaláb county), Boncodfölde (same county), Bonc (noble family name), Kara (Somogy and Kun counties, Kolozs county: numerous), Karad, Karács; likewise Deák and Deáki as place- and family-names.

464–465. lap — GARABONCOS — Synthesis: The Priestly Order (pp. 464–465):

Bringing together all that the interpretation of the name, folk belief and tradition, historical memory, mythic parallels, and the fragments of garaboncos mythic survivals illuminate: in him we find a priestly office forming an order or confraternity, distinguished by a certain — perhaps religious doctrinal-knowledge and learning — above the rest, which it could teach. Toward this already points the folk tradition about the thirteenth school, about learning in certain special companies under certain masters. They could have practised especially the art of writing — hence their scholarly deák name, and still today the scribe is pre-eminently iródeák [writing-deák], while the deák name, having long since ceased to mean scholar generally, and already in the older age having been displaced by the diplomatically usable magister-mester: it would be worthy, setting aside the prejudice of assumed foreign origin, to awaken it anew in place of the cumbersome and uneuphonious tudós [scholar]. That writing stood particularly in — and was closely connected with — the knowledge of sacred symbols and the making of secret magical signs; by virtue of the double meaning of ir and irás [writing and spell-inscription], perhaps also the name kuruzsolás [sorcery] attached to them. They may have been the boncoló and bélnéző diviners who took omens from the entrails and tendons of sacrificial animals. More plausibly still — following the traits of folk belief — one would more certainly recall their activity as keepers of the oracle serpents used in devotion, and divination through them; most certainly, folk belief remembers their action that they chanted, read, incanted, and sang blessings from their magic book, with magic words, over crops and grains — by which the farmer believed his harvest protected from hail and flood. Alongside this, by virtue of their special collegial structure, they may have been wandering, communal pilgrims — comparable to the bonzes, fakirs, and dervishes — living from the alms and donations collected from the people; to deny them these was considered ruinous, lest their curse fall upon the livestock and farm. As Agobard says (above, in the passage on tempestarii): his habent statutam quantum de frugibus suis donent, et appellant hoc canonicum etc. The garaboncosok may similarly have been entitled to such dues; the priestly due, according to certain folk usages still surviving today, was called kárc (Kreszn.): karc = praestatio domalis parochis debita, and kárc-szedés = collectio huius praestationis. — Long after the táltos, oracular, and sacrificial offices tied to particular sacred places, the garaboncos company may have survived by wandering among the people, mingling with them; touching more closely upon the people's material interests — the blessing or ruin of their agriculture — it was more strongly bound up with their belief, and even after changed religious conditions the people still believed they saw them in the persons and roles of clowns, tricksters, and scholars; and to this day attributing to them that harmful interference which they once believed their blessing could avert from the harvest, in confused religious prejudice, they still dread their imagined witchly and diabolical power.

465–467. lap — KÁDÁR — The Ancient Hun-Magyar Priest-Judge (pp. 465–467):

To ancient priestly offices and their names we are led by the likewise most ancient designation of the judicial office. The oldest traces of such an office in our Hun-Magyar historical traditions appear when the Huns, departing from Asia and choosing their leaders, elect for themselves also a separate judge to settle their common affairs in the name of God and the people, and to punish the guilty by sword and condemnation (Kézai 1.2 and others):

praeterea elegerunt quoque inter se rectorem unum, nomine Kadar de genere Turda egredientem, qui communem exercitum iudicaret, disidentium lites sapiret, commissos malefactores, fures ac latrones, ita quidem ut si rector idem immoderatas scelestias definitret, communitas in irritum revocaret, errantem capitaneum et rectorem deponeret quando vellet. consuetudo enim ista legitime inter hunos et hungaros usque ad tempora ducis Geiche filii Tocsun inviolabiliter exstitit observata. antequam ergo baptizati fuissent hungari et effecti christiani, sub tali voce praecones in castris ad exercitum hungaros admonebant: vox dei et populi hungarici, quod die tali unusquisque armatus in tali loco precise debeat comparere, communitatis praecepta consiliumque audituri. quicunque ergo edictum contemsisset, pretendere non valens rationem, lex scitica per medium cultro huiusmodi detuncabat, vel exponi in causas desperatas, aut detrudi in comunium servitutem. vicia atque excessus huiusmodi unum hungarum ab alio separavit, alias cum unus pater et una mater omnes hungaros procreaverit, quomodo unus nobilis alter ignobilis diceretur, nisi viciis per tales casus communis haberetur.

I reproduce the entire passage in context, so that I may draw attention to what in it is genuinely ancient Hun-Magyar tradition, and what is later Magyar judicial structure. The kádár was the judicial office elected separately from the chiefs; this kádár pronounced judgment upon the guilty, in the name of God and the people, and condemnation by sword, together with the curse of slavery excluding from the nation's circle, followed. This judicial office persisted even under the chiefs until Géza's time, as the chronicle states and Constantine Porphyrogenitus (40) confirms: hunc primum ducem exercitus principem e prosapia Arpade, cum quo duo alii: Gylai et Karchan, qui iudicum vices obtinent, euntque non nomina propria sed dignitatis.

But in the more defined and freer Magyar national confederate legal structure, just as the compact between the prince and the clan-chiefs determined their mutual rights, so the judicial office too could have taken on a more developed, constitutional form — which the chronicle's outstanding juridical tendency particularly highlights, noting that the whole nation was of equal right, and only the punitive judgment created the distinction between the ignoble and the noble. Whether such a change occurred at the szer assembly regulating the federated national law, when not only the customary rights among the clan-chiefs were defined but punishments were also established for offences; or later, perhaps under Zsolt, when again separate administrators were appointed — (Anon. 53): dux Zolta ... omnes primates regni, consilio et pari voluntate quosdam rectores regni, sub duce praefecerunt, qui nomine iuris consuetudinis, disidentium lites, contentionesque sapirent — from such reorganizations may have arisen also the custom, persisting until Géza's time, that if the kádár rendered an unlawful judgment, the community could annul it and depose him at will: which clearly already presupposes a later, developed legal condition, entirely different from the divine-adjudication belief originally prevailing among ancient peoples, of whose traces the first part of the traditional account of the kádár still preserves a hint, and whose universal executor everywhere was the priest.

The kádár name's meaning of judge or priest can today scarcely be identified in our language. The kadi = judge (perhaps also in Slavic: kad = executioner), established among us also during the Turkish period, cannot naturally be invoked as such — yet the Turkish linguistic cognate may serve to illuminate the obsolete meaning of our word kádár. Podhracky (850 Akad. ért. 37) calls attention to the priest-meaning kut, ked, and the Parthian kat-ousi = servant of God, priest, and as such legal expert, similarly to the Turkish kad and kade; while the second element of the kádár word, similarly to the ná-jor name, again specifically carries the judge-meaning, on the basis of the Persian davar, daver = judex and Pehlvi dataurbar analogues. — Perhaps another form of the name would be the karchan preserved by Constantine = kár-kán; and if this perhaps stood closer to the original form of the name (which would not be without precedent — just as in the foreign Bonfini, Varasoló was transmitted more correctly against our chronicle text's Rasda), then it too equally yields a religious meaning, since kárhoitat [condemnation] embodies the concept of religious and civil punishment as we saw above (XI), and we hear here that the law was exercised by the kádár again in the name of God and the people. Constantine also assures us that the name is one of office: euntque Gylae et Karchan non nomina propria, sed dignitatis — of which the following traces will place this beyond all doubt.

Such a priestly quality is further justified in the kádár by a thing universal and ancient among all pagan religions: the divine-trial and divine-adjudication, whose regular executor and proclaimer was the religious servant. The peoples' chiefs were occupied with warfare; the seeing of justice, the maintenance of discipline, belonged to the priests. As Tacitus writes of the Germans (Germ. 7): while the chiefs fight ante aciem, punishment and maintenance of discipline belonged to the priests: neque animadvertere, neque vincire, neque verberare quidem nisi sacerdotibus permissum: non quasi in poenam, nec ducis iussu, sed velut deo imperante; so too among us: while the armies had their particular commanders, the kádár judged over the entire host: qui communem exercitum iudicaret; not the chiefs, but he judges and punishes, and again in the name of God (vox dei). Similarly, as Tacitus (u.o.) says of the German priests: effigies et signa quaedam e lucis in proelium ferunt, so too the kádár may have carried the blood-sword summoning to war and assembly — as well as wielding power against those who refused to take up arms or obey, as the emblem of authority (l. XVI). — By virtue of this concept of divine judgment, the people's and the national vallás-törvény [religion-law] were one and the same. In Old German too, ewa meant both divine and secular law; ewart = guardian of the law; ewaito = priest; eosago = judge, legislator (Grimm, Rechtsalt. 781, and m. 79). Among us too, kár, kárvallás, and kárhotat = damnum, damnatio, dira, maledictio — embodying the concept of both religious and civil punishment; the curse fell likewise upon the transgressor of both, barring him from the holiest religious elements — from fire and water (igni et aqua eidem interdicatur, Szék. pog. krón. 277). The szer [assembly] too is both secular law and, in its religious sense, expresses the concept of fate, as again among the Germani it expressed the religious practice (XI). In Slavic too we encounter similar intermingling concepts: the Old Slavic za-kon = law — originally ἀρχή = ground, beginning (l. Dobrowsky, Slov. I.218) — derives its root kn from which come kuisz = dux and kneza = sacerdos (and from this again kniga, knižka = book and little book). Rakoviecki (Praw. Rask. I.113) notes that szukon-konez, koncina = decision, resolution; and, he says, the pagan Slavs, deliberating in their temples, there brought their resolutions and decisions; hence their temples too were called konyihák. The Anon. Vit. S. Ottón. (Bamb. 1.681) writes of the kontyna of Stettin: sedilia tantum intus in circuitu exstructa sunt et mensae, quia ibi conciliabula et conventus suos habere soliti erant. Thus among us too, as we saw above, tana, tanakodás, tanács [deliberation, deliberating, council] connect with consultatio, consilium, with the táltos-priest's name — in whose deliberations he undoubtedly had a principal part and role (as we shall also see with the gyula and assemblies). Tacitus (Germ. 11) again informs us of the German priests' role in assemblies: silentium per sacerdotes, quibus tum et coercendi ius est, imperatur.

The ancient Szekler pagan chronicle tradition (Szék. nemz. const. 276) concerning the rabonbáns would fully justify the search in the kádár for just such an ancient Hun-Magyar priest-judge office. According to this, the Szeklers surviving from Attila's time had a certain theocratic governmental structure, governed by freely elected chief officers called rabonbáns in both religious and civil affairs.

468–474. lap — RABONBÁN. (The Szekler Theocratic Chieftaincy, pp. 468–474):

The Székely Chronicle's account of the rabonbáni institution presents it as a theocratic governance extending by hereditary succession through tribes, lineages, and generational branches — an ordered priestly sovereignty unique among the Magyar peoples. According to the chronicle's record, the Szeklers governed themselves from ancient times: siculi ... per tribus atque generationes ... ac lineas generationum haereditatae officia inter se se partiantur — dividing their offices among themselves by tribe and generation in hereditary succession — gathering unanimously around a supreme elected rector: usque ad tempora Arpadi in unanimiter electo supremo rectori. Their supreme officer presided over all the essential acts of public life: ad castra metienda contra exteras gentes, ad jura sacra et profana edicenda per calicem poculum ex cortice mirabilis factum ... ad praecepta communitatis extrodanda, ad puniendos transgressores mandati — marking out camps against foreign nations, proclaiming sacred and secular law by means of a miraculous drinking-cup made from bark, publishing the commandments of the community, and punishing transgressors of the mandate. The ultimate sanction was execution by bisection at the fortress of Bondavár: ita ut per media viscera scindererentur in facie eius in arce Bondavár, a fortress built from ancient times by the rabonbán Bonda. In this metropolis of the Szekler nation all rights were exercised by the supreme rabonbán when the national assembly convened — down to the time of the rabonbán Zandirkán.

When the Magyars arrived, the Szeklers submitted to Árpád, allied with the nation, and accepted the terms of the compact of the seven Magyar chiefs — while retaining the rabonbáni chieftaincy. The chronicle records the sworn terms: si quis rabonbanorum juramentum contraiverit, igni et aqua eidem interdicatur, si quis vero ad sacrificium supremi rabonbani non comparuerit, per media viscera transfigatur. On one side, the princely power was transferred to the rabonbán; on the other, his punitive authority paralleled that of the Magyar kádár, of whom the chronicle says: vox dei et populi hungarici, quod die tali unusquisque debeat comparere, communitatis praeceptum consiliumque audituri; quicunque edicioni temsisset, lex scitica per medium cultro huiusmodi detuncabat. The Szeklers, submitting to Árpád's sovereignty, had a new rabonbán appointed by him; the former rabonbán ceded authority. They continued to be governed by these officers even after adopting Christianity under Saint Stephen, while the civil authority of the rabonbáns remained intact. Only when this became a continuous source of pagan agitation — which the Székely chronicle records, if roughly, yet with vivid detail — and with the suppression of the paganism that broke out under András and Béla, were the old pagan offices and their names finally suppressed.

This theocratic, civic, and religious rabonbáni structure stood in graduated degrees, in the offices of greater and lesser Rabonbáns, Horkázok, and Gyulák. The confused and fragmentary passages of the Székely chronicle give: rabonbanorum sive majorum sive minorum, sive horkáz dignitate functorum ... cum gente judicio supremo subjiciatur (so I read it, omitting the interpolated dot) rabonbani ex gente Uopoleti in perpetuum electi. I interpret this to mean that in this form the rabonbáni structure persisted after the Magyar king, the nation, and the rabonbáns had received the Christian faith; the chief rabonbán proclaiming this at a national assembly, and the lesser rabonbáns at their respective tribal gatherings. The chronicle then intends to describe the remaining administrative structure:

milites, quam rabonbani minores et horkáz dignitate functi, ac gyulae, item rabonbani majores aequalibus juribus utentes, excepto gyola et rectore, qui duo in omnibus in apice generationum, atque lineas generationis habebant locum in evehendis castris, in edicendis juribus sacris et profanis, in praeceptis communitatis extradandis, in puniendis transgressoribus mandati communis, quae iura exercuit rector supremus in praesentia horkáz maximi et gyulae; quilíbet horkáz habuit sub se rabonbanos quinque, et quilíbet rabonban minor százados duos, unum equestrem, alterum pedestrem, figa et sagitta armatum, trés horkáz suberant rabonbano minori, et hi trés gyulae minori, et hi omnes sex tribus gyulae majoribus, et hi gyulae rectori supremo gentis, qui in arce Bond habuit sédem.

The hierarchy derivable from these fragmentary data is therefore:

Rector supremus (= Kádár?) or Rabonbán supremus or Gyula maior
— under him, three Gyula maior or Horkáz maximus
— under each, six Gyula minor or Horkáz supremus
— under each, three Rabonbán minor
— under each, three Horkáz minor
— under these, five Rabonbán minor
— under each, two százados (captains), one mounted, one on foot

This identification of the original Szekler rabonbán with the supreme gyula and horkáz titles is explicable only by taking these latter as introduced through the Magyar constitutional adoption — which further implies that when, through Tuhutum, the Magyars settled in Transylvania and the Szeklers submitted to Magyar sovereignty, their lower administrative authority was left intact, but all Transylvania was placed under Magyar gyula jurisdiction, so that the Magyar chief gyula became also the supreme rabonbán of the Szeklers.

The etymology of rabonbán is disputed. The simplest derivation takes rabon from Hebrew rabbi, rabban — master, teacher, priest, an Eastern and specifically Jewish designation — and bán from the Slavic-southeastern European term for governor or lord. Both elements appear widely as official titles in the region; the combination fits a contact zone where Slavic, Jewish, and old Magyar elements long mingled. A more far-reaching interpretation connects it to the evidence for Khazar-Jewish contact with the Szeklers and Hungarians in the pre-Christian era. The Khazar prince's letter of ca. 957–961 to the rabbi of Cordova Hasdai ibn Shaprut describes his ancestor Bulan's conversion to Judaism, and states that his dominions extend to the Magyar borderlands: D'MIIIin — Bungarim. Constantine Porphyrogenitus attests that the Kavars — a branch of the Khazars — merged directly with the Magyar nation, their language blending with the Magyar tongue. Under such conditions, Jewish religious terminology entering Magyar official nomenclature is entirely plausible. In the Szekler case particularly, Decebalus is recorded to have settled Jewish colonists from post-70 Judaea in Transylvania as miners and garrison against the Romans, founding what became Zsidóvár (Fortress of the Jews) near Zalatna. The sixteenth-century Sabbatarian movement among the Szeklers — returning to Jewish observances — may represent not purely Reformation influence but the resurfacing of much older strata.

Other etymological paths are possible: from the native root rovó (runic-carver), connecting to the Szekler rune-writing tradition (rovás); or a compound sharing its second element with garaboncos (ga-ra-bon-cos yielding rabon- as a common priestly root). The folk degradation ribánc, ribonc — vagrant, ragged, disreputable — in Székely dialect may preserve the memory of the once-sacred term, following the familiar pattern by which pagan religious titles are reduced to mockery after Christianization (compare the giant tatár reduced to "ragamuffin").

What stands firmly is the theocratic character of the office. The rabonbán was simultaneously the supreme priestly and civil ruler of the Szekler people, his authority encompassing sacred and secular law, war-making, judgment, and communal oath. His seat was Bondavár — built by the rabonbán Bonda, traditionally in the time of Attila — with Udvarhely (Wdwarhelzek) as the assembly city where higher appeals were heard: septima capitalis sedes regni Wdwarhelzek, ubi causae appellatae discutiuntur. The sacred judgment-cup (calix poculum ex cortice mirabilis factum) was the emblem of his authority.

The Székely Chronicle enumerates several rabonbáns by name. At the head stands Hunka in the time of Attila; then Bonda, who built Bondavár itself — his name echoing Attila's brother Buda and the Hungarian place-name Buda, the Székely tradition itself placing one of Attila's residences here. The chronicles note that subsequent early rabonbáns' names are plures enumerantur litteris graecis, and single out as the most notable: Zandirkán or Zandabán, in whose time the Magyars arrived; his son Uopolet, appointed rabonbán by Árpád; and Bim and Chim (perhaps variants of Zandabán), Volurost, Hónai, Csobatai, and Zeke. The last rabonbáns were the Sindorok, with whom the chronicle records the sacred cup remained.

Particularly vivid in folk tradition is Ika the rabonbán, whose fortress Ikavár stands at Fel-Csernáton. Szabó Elek records: "the ruined castle in the forest is called Ika's Castle; the stream below is called Ika's Stream; they say that one Ika the rabonbán held Ikavár, and was slain at the field's edge, where Ika's field now lies, which took its name from him." The Székely Chronicle also records Ika in the factional struggles over the sacred cup: concilium celebravit (Uopour Sandour) cum viro Ika, and: Uopour Sandoir carnalis frater rabonbáni Ika. Whether the folk tradition preserving Ikavár is independent of the chronicle or shaped by it remains uncertain; but if independent, the rabonbán institution would be attested in living popular memory outside any written source — a matter of the highest importance. Folk tradition also connects Ikavár with a great serpent whose terrible deeds and destruction the people still recount: whether this preserves the memory of the prophetic serpents associated with the rabonbán (as the garaboncos has his dragon), or whether the slain serpent figures the Christian erasure of the last great rabonbán transformed in folk imagination into a monster, remains an open question.

Under King Béla, the old offices were definitively abolished. The Székely Chronicle records: quo tempore post iussit Béla vajvoda Transsilvaniae, ut non amplius dignitates more antiquorum nominarentur, non familiae, domus, arces, ut villae, non castella; verum sanctorum nominibus insignerentur; unde factum est ut plures nobilissimi milites siculi ascendentes suos ignorarent, et littoralia etiam continerent. In such confusion, some resisted even the king's will and kept the old ancestral names and domestic altars. But the final erasure came: attamen dignitatum honorificarum nomina amplius non audiebantur, non rabonban, supremus rector, sed comes siculorum, non gyola harkiz, sed vice comes siculorum — with Béla's fall in 1063 and death in 1065. The titles rabonbán, rector supremus, gyola, and harkáz gave way to comes and vice comes; the theocracy became a county.

476–485. lap — GYULA. KARCHÁN. HORKÁZ. (The Priestly-Judicial Offices and Sacral Chieftaincy, pp. 476–485):

The gyula — variously gyias, gyla in Byzantine sources, Gyla in Anonymus — is attested with remarkable clarity by Constantine Porphyrogenitus: habent primam ducem exercitus principem e prosapia Arpade, cui quo dio alii: Gylas et Karchan, qui iudicum vices obtinent, sintque Gylas et Karchan non nomina propria sed dignitates. The Gylas is thus explicitly a judicial title — a function, not a personal name. Our own sources, apart from the Székely chronicle data now reviewed, say nothing directly of this function, but know well of the Transylvanian Gyulák, the rulers descended from the chieftain Tuhutum, whom Anonymus names Gyla as a family designation. Constantine's Gylas is usually identified with these Transylvanian rulers; together with the Székely chronicle evidence now considered, the titular interpretation is certain.

The word's deeper mythological significance was already touched on in the chapter on fire-worship. From Sanskrit gyu-dju, div = ardet, splendor, coelum — to burn, splendor, heaven — the name carries the fire-sky complex at its etymological root. Hungarian itself retains the same root: gyúl (to kindle, to blaze), gyújtó (kindler), and ég (sky; also: burns), alongside the divine day-name div, divat (originally: divine time, fashion). In compounds the fire meaning is vivid: fagy-gyú = rendered tallow (gelatum accendibile); álgyú = cannon (literally: pain-fire). The same root underlies gyűlés — assembly, gathering — which was thus originally a gathering at a fire, a fire-worship convocation, from which the judicial and legislative assembly took both its name and its essential character.

This connection between assembly and fire-worship explains the Székely chronicle's phrase sacrificium gentis profanum for the post-Christianization civil gatherings of rabonbáns and gyulák. What had been a sacred fire-gathering became, after Christianization, merely a "profane" civil assembly — but the ancient name was retained with the memory of its origin. That such assemblies were originally fire-ritual is confirmed by the ordalia evidence: trial by fire-ordeal (tűzpróba) was the original judicial form, with the elements themselves as divine witnesses. Saint Stephen's decree noting those qui igneos custodiunt — the fire-keepers — as exempt from Sunday worship may itself preserve a memory of the old fire-keeping office, now reduced to a domestic function.

The Karchán or Horkáz appears beside the gyula in both Byzantine and Székely sources as a parallel or subordinate judicial officer. The etymology likely points to kárhozó — the damner, the one who pronounces condemnation — carrying simultaneously the force of religious curse and legal verdict. The Székely dialectal variant kirkiz (condemner, from kárhozat, eternal perdition) fits well: the officer whose word bound the accused to a fate understood as cosmically final. The name shares its opening element with kara-boncos, reinforcing the network of related priestly-judicial titles across this chapter.

Several medieval Hungarian judicial offices appear to be Christianized survivals of these original priestly-judicial functions. The bilochus (also bilotus), recorded in royal charters as an investigative or inquisitorial judge, may preserve the fire-stigmatizing priest. The Hungarian bélyeg (brand, mark) connects with Persian bilegh (flamma peculiaris, a peculiar sacred flame, per Hyde); and the Várad register shows that parties were sent before the bilotus or to the candentis ferri judicium — the glowing-iron ordeal — as if both functioned equivalently. A 1222 charter records parties having their faces burned (facies eorum ... cremari fecimus). The bilotus's high authority — his word carrying the weight of a sworn witness — echoes the pagan priest whose verdict had divine sanction; his eventual restriction under Kálmán and abolition under Louis I traces the long erosion of a once-sacred office.

The pristald (native form: pörösté or pörös) is similarly rooted in fire: the word derives from pörzsöl = to singe, to scorch, and pör, per = lawsuit — originally, the case settled by fire-ordeal. The Várad register shows pristaldok conducting parties from various county courts to the fire-ordeal at Várad, appearing as authoritative figures whose testimony alone sufficed for judgment — the memory of the pagan priestly intermediary who mediated between sacred fire and the parties at suit. King Kálmán's legislation against their unaccountable authority (multi in regno lederentor per ipsos pristaldos) and their eventual abolition under Louis I traces the full arc of a sacral-judicial institution reduced first to an ordinary court officer and then to nothing.

The öspörös (archdeacon, also antistes in Kresznerics) and érsek (archbishop) may preserve similar traces. The öspörös, explicitly unlike the borrowed Latin archidiaconus or German dechant, appears to be a native term: ős-pörös, the elder of the fire-judgment priests; its use for the highest sub-episcopal Christian office would reflect the absorption of a pre-existing sacral-judicial title into the Christian hierarchy. The érsek is equally alien to archiepiscopus and its Germanic and Romance derivatives (erzbischof, archevêque), while the Hungarian püspök closely tracks episcopus — suggesting érsek was already a native sacred title for the highest religious office before Christianity arrived, and into which the concept of "archbishop" was then mapped. Otrokócsi connected it with Hebrew ranek (to break down, to govern) and Chaldean risha (prefectship), both pointing toward a sense of supreme authority over the sacred order.

What the evidence as a whole establishes beyond doubt: the Hungarians and Szeklers possessed a fully developed sacred hierarchy, in which priestly authority was simultaneously religious and civil, simultaneously concerned with fire-worship and with judgment, simultaneously theocratic and judicial. The Szekler rabonbáni structure demonstrates this in its most complete form — a theocratica papfejedelemsége, a theocratic priestly sovereignty that governed an entire people. The Transylvanian Gyulák represent the same institution in Magyar form: priestly-judicial chiefs whose office descended in families, just as the rabonbánság descended in the family of Zandabán down to the Sándor family in the chronicles' own day.

Whether the Magyar prince himself combined the highest religious authority with political — as Álmos's epithets (almus id est sanctus, pius, benignus, sapiens; donum spiritus sancti erat in eo, licet paganus) and Árpád's sacral acts suggest (his libation from the horn of the Danube before all the Hungarians, ante omnes hungaros super illud cornu omnipotentis dei clementiam rogavit; his sacrifices at Hung, diis immortalibus magnas hostias fecerunt; and the tradition that Álmos himself was offered as sacrifice) — is the deeper question. The evidence points toward a sacral chieftaincy: the prince as supreme fire-worshipper and sacrificial intermediary, with the gyula and karchán as the judicial officers of his court, and the rabonbáni structure as the Szekler variant of the same principle.

The Transylvanian Gyulák give the most historically vivid illustration: one of them is the first bringer of Christianity to Transylvania from Byzantium, while another — his descendant or kinsman — fights under Stephen for the old religion. The office's connection to the deepest religious transformations of conversion-era Hungary is not incidental: the gyula was always the bearer of the people's sacred life, and when that sacred life changed, the gyula changed with it.

485–486. lap — PAPNŐK. JÓSNŐK. (Priestesses and Prophetesses, pp. 485–486):

Alongside the male priestly hierarchy, the records preserve traces of female religious officeholders. In the account of the pagan revolt under András and Béla, they appear named beside the magi and aruspices as pythonissae — a generalizing Latin term that, however denigrating in Christian usage, must here conceal a more specific and elevated office. The women named in the pagan revival under Vata and his son János were not village sorceresses but figures of priestly authority: the chronicle gives them the title dea — goddess, divine woman: de multis autem deabus suis — una nomine Rasdi capta fuit a christianissimo rege Béla, et tamdiu in carcere fuit reclosa, donec comederet pedes proprios suosque moreretur. That King Béla imprisoned Rasdi until she died eating her own feet — an execution by prolonged supernatural confinement rather than ordinary judicial death — testifies to the fear her sacral power inspired even in captivity.

The native term underlying the chronicle's pythonissa is varázsló / varázslónő — enchanter, enchantress. The word, beyond its current reduced sense of "sorcerer," carries a higher meaning: one who stands in the position of the divine, who embodies or mediates divine female power. In this chapter's earlier sections we have seen how the tündér (divine female being) and the complex of female supernatural figures blur with folk memories of actual female religious functionaries; the papnők (priestesses) are the historical trace of those functionaries — women who presided alongside the male hierarchy at the great fire-gatherings, who pronounced incantations and prophecies, who participated in the priestly offices of oath, judgment, and sacrifice.

The brief historical record leaves the fuller contours of their role in the dark: their participation in sacrifice, in oath-administration, in communal ritual, in healing, and in prophecy is barely visible through the hostile Christian Latin. What the record firmly attests is that they were numerous, that they held sacral authority, that one of them was important enough for the king to personally imprison, and that she bore the title dea — divine woman — in the contemporary record. The papnők were not peripheral. They were part of the same priestly infrastructure, at its highest levels, that we have traced through the entire course of this chapter.

Source Colophon: Ipolyi Arnold, Magyar Mythologia. Pest: Heckenast Gusztáv, 1854. Digitized by Google Books from the Harvard College Library. Archive.org identifier: magyarmythologi00ipolgoog. OCR file staged at: the retained Good Works Library source archive.txt (41,177 lines). Chapter XV begins at raw line 31325; TÁLTOS section at line 31368; BÖLCSEK at line 31640; GARABONCOS at line 31714; DEÁK analysis at line 32012; RABONBÁN at line 32503 (p. 468); GYULA at line 32952 (p. 476); PAPNŐK at line 33486 (p. 485); Chapter XVI begins at line 33534 (p. 487). Pages 461–467 (BÉLNÉZA / GARABONCOS continuation) not yet translated. Ipolyi died 1886; text is public domain.