It is early afternoon on a Saturday day in late July in Komlóska, the only village in Hungary where Rusyns constitute a majority of residents. I came here to take part in the Rusyn Day by invitation of László (Vasyl) Popovics, Head of the Local Rusyn Self-Government and a major Rusyn enthusiast in this general area of North-Eastern Hungary.
The first mention of the castle in this locality (its leftovers referred to as Pusztavár or Solymos vár can still be found in the vicinity) dates back to the 14th century. The village itself was first mentioned in documents in 1396; it is said that Rusyns settled there in the 18th century, arriving from what now is the Slovak-Polish border region. The precise places from which they arrived are not known, yet the folk memory asserts that they were Lemkos – and their vernacular shows affinity to that of Slovak Rusyns (unlike the Rusyn dialect of Mucsony, the other of the two historically Rusyn communities in contemporary Hungary, who speak Pannonian Rusyn).
Komlóska is in fact one long dead-end street, so a rare public bus that comes from the neighbouring railway station has to take a U-turn by the stop called ‘The Village Well’ (and there really is a well marking the centre of the village) in order to proceed to other localities. Uphill there is a cemetery, divided into two parts – the farther that looks forlorn, with only occasional old stone crosses across what now has become a grassy meadow, is marked by a crucifix crafted in the folk primitive style.
On the opposite side of the field track, there is a fenced campus of the local Greek Catholic Church with a newer cemetery. Most of the family names of the people buried there are Slavic in origin: Szemán, Koritár, Pásztor, Popovics; some are Hungarian: Kiss, Fekete, Lengyel… All inscriptions are in Hungarian, save one which is probably the oldest surviving gravestone with the text in Cyrillic: it is almost impossible to make out the name of the person that is buried there; I was able to read only the name Іоанн (Ioann, etymologically equal to John), the words до гробу темнаго (‘to a dark coffin’), and the abbreviation IC XC that stands for ‘Jesus Christ.’
According to Viktor Kramarenko, Head of Hungary’s National Rusyn Self-Government, many Komlóska families have spread to the neighbouring villages of Tolcsva, Vámosújfalu and Olaszliszka, and now ethnic Rusyns constitute a significant share of the local population in these areas. The existence of Greek Catholic temples proves that fact – and the conventional Slav abbreviation ІНЦІ (stands for INRI – Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, i.e. Jesus of Nazareth, the King of Jews) can be seen on the roadside crucifix standing at the intersection of the road leading from the railway station to Komlóska and the main road to Sárospatak and further to Slovakia.
But let us go back to the churchyard in Komlóska now. It is very quiet in this place – but the church door is open, with just a bench blocking the entrance. There is a note on the bench, saying:
“Dear Visitor, You may visit the church. The bench has been put here only to prevent animals from entering. Feel free to remove it to be able to enter, and when leaving please put it back. Thank you! Have a good time and a good day!”
And such a marvellous little nook that church is. One of the plaques hanging on the wall in the antechurch states in Old Slavonic that the temple was consecrated by the Bishop of Prjašiv (the traditional Rusyn name for Prešov, now in Slovakia) in 1903. After this then finally comes the interior that is gorgeous and at the same time cosy in that special rurally way.
There are prayer books lying on the pews (in Hungarian); the inscriptions on the icons (some of them were crafted in that primitive folk style) are in Hungarian, but the main abbreviations are in Old Slavonic; I did not dare enter the altar (there is no iconostasis in the church, like in most Greek Catholic temples in Hungary, Slovakia and other countries that might have been a sign of the prevailing Roman Catholic surrounding) where I saw an obviously old Bible – but the photo on the church’s website proves that it is written in Old Slavonic.
Later, when I left the church and began walking along the village street, I understood what feeling had been with me since I had left the bus near the village water well: it was as if you had found yourself back in a remote village of your childhood, where time had stopped and everything stood as it had from the very beginning… A bit later, I found other signs of this feeling: pieces of twisted wire to keep the household gates closed, old huts with a cross and the year they were built in shown on the façade (and those houses looked absolutely like those you would see in Ukrainian Transcarpathia – either square cubes or prolonged with the narrow part looking at the street and a roofed veranda along the long backside) – and same calmness and quietness: it was not earlier than after a twenty-minutes walk that I met somebody in the street; and like in Transcarpathian villages, the passers-by said hello to me, a man whom they had never met before. In addition, my mobile phone network did not work in the village (later I was told that there is one national provider whose network does work there).
A peculiar feature of the village landscape are stonewalls with wooden doors on the roadside behind which wine cellars are hidden – one must not forget that Komlóska lies just about a dozen kilometres from Tokaj, Hungary’s wine capital, and is surrounded by vineyards (however, the village’s grapevine plantations for some reason are not included into the Tokaj zone). And then there was a Rusyn nationality kindergarten – and again, nobody around and no locks on the gate. Fortunately, the kindergarten does work in Komlóska, and László Popovics says that the kids are taught Rusyn songs there. The fate of the Rusyn primary school, which once had been referred to as “the country’s smallest school,” was sadder: recently it was closed due to the lack of pupils.
In the meantime, I reached Rusyn Park, the venue of the Rusyn Day activities. At last, there were people in this village! The guests from Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Hungary were gathering for the festivity. The Rusyn Park has two stages – the open-air and the indoor ones, both painted to show the interior of a traditional Rusyn hut with the oven, embroidered cloths, icons (and again we can see there a replica of Our Lady of Máriapócs that obviously, all Rusyn households had had it), family photographs and furniture.
The main building of the Rusyn Park is decorated with the historical Rusyn tricolour with the national emblem (the Carpathian brown bear highlighting the scene) and a monument to Prince Francis Rákóczi II, who traditionally is considered to be a patron and protector of the Rusyn people.
The festival began with the St. Liturgy in Old Slavonic administered by Father Vasyl Boichuk (Vasile Boiciuc) from Peregu Mare (Velyky Pereg), Arad Region, Romania (this village is worth a separate article due to its multi-ethnicity – its 1,500-strong population consists of Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks and Czechs, Ukrainians and Rusyns, Germans and Roma). The traditional Byzantine acapella singing was provided by women from Romania and Slovakia.
And then the song festival started. And it occurred that the same songs, same melodies are sung, played and known throughout Central Europe – in Slovakia and Ukraine, in Romania and Hungary: «Чорна я си, чорна», «За лісом, за лісом» and others. The audience welcomed folk choirs and dancers from Prešov (Slovakia), Maramureş and Arad (Romania), and the hosts – the Komlóska Folk Song Choir…
A story about Komlóska would not be complete without mentioning the Rusyn lore museum functioning in an old straw-roofed hut, local winemaking, and ruins of the Pusztavár Castle. And it is really a place where time seems to have come to a halt long ago – and this archaism does not look annoying (maybe if you come to visit this place for a couple of days, but not if you would live there permanently – who knows?)…
