Once there was a man, maybe sixty or seventy years old, who lived with his wife. But they weren't a very happy couple, no. They were very poor, and they were always fighting because of it. They fought morning and evening, winter and summer. One day, in the middle of an argument, the woman asked her husband, "Tell me old man, when you were young, didn't you ever go to school?" And he replied that he never had. So she got very angry with him and told him, "Then in the morning you will gather your things and go down to the school!"
So the next morning the man set off early in the morning and arrived at the school. The teacher saw him, and said, "What are you doing here? Do you have a child you want to send here?"
"I have no child, I have nothing!"
"Then what are you looking for here?"
"I've come to school! I want to be in the class!"
"Oh, Lord," the teacher replied. "It's too late for you to have come now. There's no use to it."
So the poor man went back out the door and started home, but without much spirit. He hung his head as he walked down the road. As soon as he went through his front gate into their small front yard, his wife stood in front of him. "Why did you come home? I thought I told you to go to school!"
"I went there, I did," protested the old man. "But the teacher sent me home; he said I came too late."
"Well, then you'll just have to go earlier tomorrow!" the wife decided.
And that's what happened. The old man woke up even earlier, put a biscuit in his carrying bag, and started off for the school. He was the first to arrive, but the teacher said to him again, "What are you doing here? I thought I told you yesterday - you're too late for school. Go home!"
And the old man got very annoyed at this, and decided that he wouldn't be too late the next day. Before night even set, he had already started back towards the school, and sat outside it all night long. But still, the teacher told him that he was again too late.
He started home, finally given up. He was very sad, and even his tears fell as he walked home. But between two sighs, he looked down and saw that there was something shining in his path. He bent down and found a bag. He opened it, and found that it was filled to the brim with gold coins. Oh, he was beyond happy.
He rushed home, and was met at the gate by his wife. "Look, woman! I went to school for only three days, and see what rewards I've gotten!" And from the gold they bought horses, cattle, a wagon, and a beautiful house. And they still live happily - unless they've since died. And that's the end, run away with it, to the top of the mountain!
The Csango people are a group of ethnic Hungarians living in Romania. While the origin of their name is debated, a popular theory is that it is derived from a word meaning "wanderer" or "one who became lost due to mischief." Their reputation amongst Hungarians does suggest that they had a streak of rebelliousness. One of the charges levied against the Csango people by outsiders was that they did not "respect the sanctity of marriage", for example. (Another explanation is that "chango-ing" is an onomatopoeia for making noise to frighten away enemies from the Hungarian border, and thus they were a group placed on the borders of the kingdom of Hungary proper.)
The Csangos origins go back in history. By the middle of the 15th century Christian missionaries were already sending Hungarian editions of the New Testament into Moldavia. By the mid-1500's the Csangos were accepted as a recognized and established ethnic group in the region. During the course of the centuries they faced differing levels of acceptance and persecution. At times the rulers of the land ordered them to change their religion and took away their government; in other eras, they were given more freedoms. Because of their religion, they maintained a separation from the largely Greek Orthodox Romanian people around them. In time, certain ethnic Romanians converted to Roman Catholicism and thus took up some of the Csango culture, but most of them never affiliated themselves with the minority in other ways - most importantly, the language.
Most Csango speak a dialect based on Old Hungarian, even though most of them today mostly speak Romanian. The dialect is difficult to understand for many speakers of modern Hungarian because of their unique pronunciation of consonants and vowels alike that do not have counterparts in traditional Hungarian. They also have a significantly different vocabulary with unique words and sayings. The Hungarian language underwent major changes during the Age of Enlightenment, but the Csango dialect, due to the isolation of its speakers, did not. Rather, it was influenced by the language of the Romanian people they lived amongst.
The Csango were largely unschooled and illiterate, but possessed a rich folk culture of stories, dances, songs, and customs. Many of these customs were intertwined with their Roman Catholic religion, and their children grew up learning Hungarian as their native language, regardless of what the official language of the countryside was at the time. Csango music has many characteristics of Hungarian music, and the lyrics are in a Hungarian dialect as well. However, the Csango remained stuck in time in a way. Due to their isolation and lack of a nobility or intelligentsia, they never went through the various philosophical changes that Europe as a whole (including Hungary proper) underwent as the centuries advanced.
Traditionally the Csango territory encompasses around fifteen towns and their surrounding villages in western Moldovia. It is estimated that there are about 60,000 to 70,000 people who speak the distinct Csango dialect, but it is hard to pin the number of members of the Csango community down more accurately because there are different definitions of who is Csango and who is not, based on factors such as ethnicity, religion, and language. What is known is that in the 1850's, almost 40,000 individuals registered as Csango in the census. By 1900, the number dropped to about 25,000. In 1992, the number was down to slightly over 3,000, and in 2002, less than 1,500 people identified themselves as Csango on an official Romanian census. [Other sources suggest that roughly 4,300 people declared themselves Romanian Hungarians and not even 800 declared themselves Csango in that year.] However, the answer is not that clear. Some people might identify as primarily Romanian due to fear of governmental retribution. To complicate matters further, other sources have counted all Roman Catholics in the general region as belonging to the Csango group, and that number comes in at almost 120,000. However, most of this latter group consider themselves to be fully Romanian, and reject the Csango label.
The Council of Europe released statements regarding their concern over the treatment of the Csango minority by the Romanian people, and expressed that their unique culture is an asset to the landscape of European heritage. The Csango people have stated that they do not want to make political demands but rather wish to be recognized as a distinct culture and be allowed to educate their children in their native language. When parents petitioned the government in the 1990's to allow Hungarian lessons in the area's public schools, they were ignored or met with refusals, and in 2001 the Romanian government banned Hungarian lessons even in private houses, and tried to intimidate mothers from teaching their children Hungarian. When the Council of Europe protested, the government defended itself by saying that they wanted to prevent nationalistic ambitions from the local populace, who ought to consider themselves Romanian. When the European Commission appointed teachers to the area schools to teach Hungarian, many students did not show up and the teachers were banned from many towns, with the villagers showing hostility to them.
Religion has also been a big issue, with the Csangos wanting to go to church services in their native language. Between the world wars, the Romanian government attempted to force the Csangos to assimilate and give up their Hungarian loyalties. The Romanian Catholic Church in the area was afraid that if it didn't cooperate with the local authorities, they would be banned from the area, and all the people would be forced to convert to Greek Orthodox. As a result, the Roman Catholic Church stopped providing education or religious services in Hungarian. The Vatican has since expressed its support in reintroducing services in Hungarian to the Csangos. When the Romanian government refused, the Vatican sent missionaries to the area to convert the Romanian populace into Roman Catholics in hopes of increasing the Csango minority's numbers. (The missionaries, like the teachers, did not tend to be well-received by the locals.)
In 2006, Romania rejected communism and since then, the government has started trying to more objectively analyze the situation of the ethnic groups within its borders to see in what ways they might have been persecuted or oppressed, and also to analyze the effects of the historical involvement of the Roman Catholic church.
