Saying and the related saying
Deszk, a settlement with a history of more than 530 years, was first mentioned in a document in 1490. The name is of personal name origin, perhaps an old Hungarian nickname for Desidérius. Depopulated during the Ottoman occupation, it was settled by Serbian border guards who were served in 1746, when it was officially declared a municipality. It was completely burnt down during the Battle of Szőreg on 5 August 1849, but was soon rebuilt. At the beginning of the 19th century, the aristocratic Gerliczy family of baronial rank built a residence, farm buildings and a church in the village and in the surrounding fields, and the family’s magnificent castle was built in Deszk. In the 19th century, Kukutyin-Puszta (now part of the municipality of Ferencszállás) belonged to the administrative area of Deszk, the name probably being a derivative of the Serbo-Croatian plant name kukuta with the -in formative meaning ‘bürök’ (described by Endre Félegyházi). In the 1880s it was planted with oats, but the then flooding Maros made it impossible to work the fields. The ingenious locals did not want the crop to go to waste, so they got into boats and cut the oats, the precious oats, down to the tip.
He can go to Kukutyin to pick oats – say, for someone we don’t care about; he can go wherever he wants. “Where are you going? To Kukutyin to sharpen oats.” – and in this meaning we use the expression as an evasive answer. To sharpen oats is to do useless, useless work.
“The border at Deszk was large, no! Kukutyin was part of it. We used to call the present Ferencszállás Kukutyin. Here the baron’s tobacco growers worked. Kukutyin became the village of Ferencszállás. There was no village there before. The people of the village came from the tobacco farmers. Then Baron Gerliczi ruled here. He had many servants, all Hungarians…” “ They were given a place for their house on the baron’s estate in Ferencszállás. He gave each of them a pice of land. But there was great poverty there. Well, there was a poor man. He went to Deszk. He asked the baron, and said: – Please, help me. I am so poor that I have to beg. But it’s no use anymore, they don’t give bread.. – “Go,- he said – to Kukutyin to sharpen your oats! So he went to the farm manager, or else he was still “ispán” . He went to “ispán”, here to Ferencszállás. here to the major. He said to him: – Mr. Ispan, please! The baron sent me here to sharpen oats in Kukutyin! – “Come on!”- Tell them you’re joining too! Join them!”
You should know that the oats had already grown, so it had a head, but there was water on the ground, knee-deep water.. And the head was plucked with a knife and a scythe, with whatever they could. This became the saying: “. Sharpening oats in Kukutyin ” “Kukutyin” was the name of the major, but it was Ferencszállás. They called it Ferencszállás because the baron was Ferenc…”
(Based on the stories of former Kukutyin residents)
Source:
History and Ethnography of Deszk 1984