Reed Cutting in Bős

Along the banks of the slowly flowing waters or in the marshy, swampy areas, the men were not idle even in winter.  Cutting reeds was hard physical work, which tried body and soul. These days reeds have gone out of fashion, however, in Bős, there are men who still know how to cut reeds.

The little group got together on a sunny but nippy morning. Our guide today is Zoltán Fekete, woodman, Jaroslav Profant, the former leader of the reed cutters of Bős, Iván Brožek, and his son, Norbert. Iván is a real Danubian man. He has been a reed cutter since childhood. There is a lull in the wind for the moment, we could not have asked for better, they say curtly. You cannot cut reeds in rain or snow. 

After a short discussion, we head for the Bős border. It is unbelievable to me that they can find their way around in an area in which everything looks the same. The old folk certainly knew every bush, every jut and branch of the river. Since then the lands were bought up by foreigners, the same as the place we were headed for. Reeds prefer wetlands.  Danish peasants tried to cultivate these areas covered with reeds. They ploughed them up, but they did not get very far. Reeds are a very rich kind of grass with a labyrinthine system of roots, which do not give in easily. So the ploughed-up land was soon overtaken by reeds. Of course, walking among the reeds was much harder.

The men took out the reed-cutting scythes with short handles and carefully sharpened them. Then father and son set to work. With their left hand they bundled up the reeds and with their right, they struck the base of the plant. Or the other way round, depending on which hand was the stronger. At such times various kinds of weeds and the reeds of the previous year, so-called rank reeds, are mixed with the stalks, so in the end they pull out the reeds (or shake the weeds from them), so as to clean them, they say. Reed cutting requires great concentration. The sharp scythe can easily cause accidents. It frequently tears the clothes, the rubber boots, and can wound the worker.

Sometimes by the time a worker came out of the reeds, the blood was sloshing in his boots. They used to say about this work that it ate the trousers, so many holes were made on them that they were totally ruined, they say laughing. I do not want to take anyone’s attention away from the work, I turn to Mr. Profant, who used to direct the production of the reeds of Bős. “We started to cut the reeds in Bős so as to provide shade for the saplings of the local nursery. The work was not unknown to the locals, they have been doing it from time immemorial,” Profant begins. “This area is very marshy, so the reeds like it here. The harvest is begun when the leaves of the reeds fall off, near December and January.  And you can keep working until new leaves start to sprout. We used to cut the reeds by hand and then we processed them. 

Some of the cleaned reeds were used to make loosely woven parget, which they put under the plastering because it was a good thermal insulator. The thicker reed webbing could be used for decoration, but it was good for use as a fence too. We made thatched roofs too. You need 300 to 400 sheaves for one. The more skilled reed-cutters could harvest up to 20 sheaves. The size was strictly prescribed from the bottom of the reed 15 centimetres in height, the diameter of the sheaf must be exactly 101 centimetres. This is about what an adult man can embrace. Harvesting by hand is much more expensive than by machine, but the area was too small to be worth mechanizing. We could never compete with producers in Hungary.”

“So then there were the hunters,” Zoltán took over the word. “I myself insist on putting a reed roof on the feeding rack, which I am responsible for. True, I need to do more, but it is a natural material and it grows around here, so let’s use it. Fortunately, many of the hunters think like this. The reeds we cut nowadays are used in this way.  Anyway, it is good for the reeds to be taken care of. The area that Ivan and company have now cleared will produce better quality reeds next year. In the old days, what was not harvested was burned or pressed down by cylinders, so as to have a better quality yield the following year,” he says, while Ivan and Norbert set to work binding the sheaves. These days specially prepared wire is used, formerly string was used. If there was not any, the other characteristic plant of the wetlands, grey willow, which we know as pussy willow, was put to good use. The locals called the bush rakotla, for its branches were flexible enough, to make a rope with a twisting motion or loops.

The calibre of our men is demonstrated by the fact that they could make orderly piles from the prepared sheaves in minutes. Where in the morning the impenetrable reeds danced in the wind, by the time the clock struck noon, the border was lined with orderly rows of cocky straw edifices.

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