Subject: zbojník bandit
Culture: Slovak
Setting: banditry, Slovakia late 17th-early 18thc
Evolution:
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources. Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
"Although Slovak brigand-themed folk songs were recorded much later, the few specific historical references in them point to the 17th and 18th centuries. In those rare instances when the brigands' adversaries, the police or authorities, are identified ethnically, the reference is to the Germans. The 17th and 18th centuries were the period when the Habsburgs forcibly endeavored to integrate the Kingdom of Hungary into their empire, which involved bringing in German troops and administrators. The Habsburgs' Germans, not the Kingdom's pockets of old German settlements in Spiš County and elsewhere, came to be seen as the enemy of the multi-ethnic Kingdom. Those two centuries, when the pressure from Vienna was forceful and mostly exercised by ethnic Germans, were the only period when references to the Germans could have entered Slovak folk songs as synonymous with the authorities. Before that, the local authorities stemmed from the local population (Slovak, Hungarian, German, other). After the 18th century, the Kingdom's administration was gradually Hungarianized.
"Contrary to the assumptions engendered by the modern image of Jánošík, the old images of brigandage do not contain references to an ethnic clash between Slovaks and Hungarians. The rare, fleeting references to the Germans create inconsistent images of a patriotic clash between the subjects of the Kingdom and alien intruders, but not of a Slovak-German ethnic clash, nor of a clash between Slovak subjects and German landowners. Nor are any ethnic tensions implied in the proceedings from the trial of the actual historical figure Juraj Jánošík. With the exception of a German officer's wife, who was ambushed while merely passing through Liptov County, Jánošík's victims were not identified ethnically. Most of them were commoners, three were noblemen, one was a clergyman, and one another clergyman's wife. Since Jánošík's band operated in the predominantly Slovak counties, it can be reasonably assumed that the majority of the victims were Slovaks." [references omitted]
Costume
"Male clothing consisted of linen trousers, a shirt with wide sleeves, and an apron. Drapery clothing consisted of narrow drapery trousers and a shirt with wide sleeves. Twill clothing consisted of narrow twill trousers and a shirt with cuffs on the sleeves. ...
"... Men, both single and married, always wore hats – in winter, fur caps."
Ax
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Flask
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Pistols
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Pipe
* Dunhill 1969 p184
"The typical Central European pipe of today can be traced to the eighteenth-century Dutch clay. The porcelain bowl at its simplest shows all the characteristics, including curves, proportions, lean-over, and spur, of its humbler model, although carried out on a larger scale. The stem, is however [SIC], broken off short, and the bowl is inserted into a holder or base, which also receives the new stem. By this arrangement both bowl and stem are upright, and the pipe hangs down comfortably into the hand, while the deleterious juices of the tobacco ... drain naturally down into the holder and can never reach the mouth. Such a pipe is capable of infinite variations, in respect both of the decoration of the bowl, and the material (often a simple cherry-wood) and decoration of the stem. ... The bowl also is frequently fashioned from wood ...."
