Legend

Where did he live? How long did he live? No one knows now, but what is certain is that when giants still inhabited fair Transylvania, there was one among them who, in his anger, threw a handful of pebbles at the flying ghouls, and not finding them, the pebbles fell into the moon’s dish, and even now the sides are stained. This angry giant was called Firtos. When he wanted to die towards the end of his life, he lay down on the ground, but he was so big that his body covered a county that is now a castle. As a testimony, his body, which has become a tall mountain, still stands in Udvarhelyszék, and the boundaries of nineteen villages lie above the resting remains of the ancient giant.

I will not tell you the names of the villages, only the one whose boundary was pushed out with a last kick by Firtos, who was struggling with his death, and so that he could get his name the sooner, was named Rugonfalva. 

In memory of the last giant, a beautiful chapel was built by the dwarf people of the time. Then, in order to give him a decent burial, they called together the people of the land from all the regions. They couldn’t dig a hole that big, so they had to heap the earth on top. For two years the people of the land worked until at last they covered it up so that only the tooth was visible. Then an oracle prophesied that if his teeth were not covered up, the giant would foretell the time, for his teeth had the property of darkening in rainy weather, while they showed the fair weather with a bright whiteness far away.

The people who settled on the heap of earth piled up on Firtos agreed, and to this day the giant’s teeth, which look like miles across, still serve as a time indicator, losing their shine and darkening a day before the rainy season. And two of its hollow teeth are visited by people in wonder and called ‘caves’. 

Having said these things, I will begin my story of the green friend from Rugon village, who lived in the side room of the chapel built in the middle of the village, and to whom the women and the whole army of girls who walked with a light step came to confess their sins. He was called a green friend because he never wore anything but a greenish dress. At least not in front of people! However, it was a rumour among the girls that sometimes someone in a beautiful Hungarian dress, would walk around the little chapel-room. Even sweet speech could sometimes be heard through the chapel walls in quiet times.

One could only enter the chapel to pray, because the green friend always kept his door closed against the two-foot-high fence. He shut the outside away from himself and the inside from people and lived alone in solitude.

One day, a chronicler came to Rugonfalva to visit the chapel and the green friend. He was the friend’s welcome guest, and they ate and drank for a week, enjoying the pleasure of making acquaintance. Then they formed a friendship, and in order to form a sacred bond, they also spent a week, except that they invited the principal men of the Church.

-Who will be here besides you and me? -asked the autumn chronicler.

-I thought I would invite the first men, like Márton Buzgó, József Falu and several churchmen.

 

-Márton Buzgo has a beautiful daughter too! the chronicler remarked, waving his eyes falsely.

-Let us not speak of her here! – “Before me all virtuous daughters are sacred and inviolable, and therefore I do not like to speak of them.

-“So let us leave it! We have plenty of wine, let us drink! And they drank.

The bell-ringer went to the village to call the brethren, who were not expecting the second calling. The guests gathered in the chapel room for the evening and by midnight they were all drunk. Wine and talk went on. One brother wanted to reason with the other’s cackling thoughts. The green friar praised the chronicler with ringing words, praising him that he would make a better priest than he.

In the din and noise, they didn’t notice when, after midnight, he slipped out of the party – the green friend. They went on drinking, but after an hour or so the wine was gone again: there was no one else to bring it. Where is the green friend? But he was nowhere to be seen. He was gone, lost, swallowed up by the earth.

-If there is no master, let us go home! – cried Márton Buzgó, my lord, and they set out, as many as they were. The chronicler sat down on the bed of the green friend, and began to sleep the sleep of the just.

The next morning the house of Mr. and Mrs. Buzgó was broken up with a great noise and shrieking, for the fair Buzgó Boriska was found with only his litter in his bed, and he himself was lost, had run away, or had been stolen. They found my Mr. Buzgo sleeping on the roadside. But at least he woke up when he heard that Boriska’s daughter was lost. There was wailing, running. They set the whole village on fire. Never heard or knew of her again.

Towards noon, tempers calmed down, and when the chronicler went round the houses to see if the green friend had been seen, the truth finally came out.

They ran away together.

The old chronicler stayed there in the green friend’s place, and to his death he kept preaching to the people, teaching them to forget the giddy green friend. Forgive him his sins, for he was only human! He was a wretched man!

“Cursed be the green friend! Let him not rest even after death, but let his soul go up and down like a fountain of water from his grave!!!” Thus cursed my lord Márton Buzgo the unforgettable kidnapper of his daughter.

Forty years later, an old hermit came to Rugonfalva.  He donated a lot of money for the rebuilding of the chapel, and only asked to be buried in a stone coffin under the big pulpit of the chapel! They thanked him for his beautiful gift, and when the new chapel was built, the old hermit died.

They put him in three coffins. There was a tile in which he rested, iron in which the tile was placed, and the iron was enclosed in a large stone coffin. Let it be as he wished. They placed it under the stone base of the pulpit, and let it rest.

But he did not rest!!!

On the third day, a green spring came up from under the pedestal, but it did not flow out, but flowed back in again, and so it continued every three days, for a hundred and a hundred years, and he had no rest!

If you ever pass by, look at the base of the pulpit in Rugonfalva. There he shall see his soul as green water oozing, and say a prayer for his planetary soul, for he shall have no rest till the number of prayers for him shall be a million – for the cursed green friend.