In the midst of the village stands the church, whitewashed like the other houses. It is slender and modest in shape, neither surrounded by fortified walls like the Saxon churches, nor made glorious with color like those of the Roumanians. Near to the entrance of the village is the church-yard, and in some places it is still customary to bury the dead with their faces turned towards the east.
There are few Roumanian villages in Szekler-land, neither do we find here the inevitable outgrowth of Roumanian hovels tacked on to each village, as is usual in Saxon colonies. The Roumanians do not thrive alongside of their Szekler neighbors, because these do not require their aid and will take no trouble to learn their language. The Szekler cultivates his own soil without help from strangers, whereas the Saxon, whose ground is usually larger than he can manage himself, and obliged to take Roumanian farm-servants, is compelled to learn their language; and it has often been remarked that a whole Saxon household has been brought to speak Roumanian merely on account of one single Roumanian cow-wench.
The greater number of Szeklers have remained Catholics, the population of the western district only having adopted the Reformed faith, while the Unitarian sect, which has made of Klausenburg its principal seat, and counts some fifty-four thousand members, is chiefly composed of Hungarians proper.
There are not above a dozen really wealthy Hungarian nobles in Transylvania, and of many a one it is jokingly said that his whole possessions consist of four horses, as many oxen, and a respectable amount of debts. The same sort of open-handed hospitality which has ruined so many Poles has also here undermined many fortunes.
The conjugal relations are somewhat Oriental among the lower classes, the position of the wife towards the husband involving a sense of social inferiority; for while she addresses him as kend (your grace), and speaks of him as uram (lord or master), he calls her thou, and speaks of her as felsegem (my consort). In walking along the road it is her place to walk behind her lord and master; and at weddings men and women are usually separated, and if the house have but a single room it is reserved for the men to banquet in, while the women, as inferior creatures, are relegated to the cellar or to a stable or byre cleared for the purpose. Bride and bridegroom must eat nothing at this banquet, and only in the evening is a separate meal served up for them, and, like the other guests, the new-married couple must spend this day apart.
If we are to believe popular songs, of which the following is a sample, the stick would seem to play no unimportant part in each Hungarian ménage:
“O peacock fair, O peacock bright,
O peacock proud and high!
I fool! for though of lowly birth,