Original subtitles

Budapestfilm presents

Budapestfilm presents

Sponsored by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage

a film by Marcell Jankovics and Levente Szörényi

SONG OF THE HIRACULOUS HIND

LAND OF ORIGIN

The deer is everything.

The deer and fish are man's main nourishment.

God gave both.

Once there were two shamen, divine brothers.

They lived on earth, but had nothing to eat.*

They set out.

One went to the Upper world...

where four-legged creatures and birds lived.

He became the father of the reindeer,

he let this great richness fall to the poor earth.

He saw to it that when the world of man came

there should be food aplenty.

Sky, sky, make way!

The other brother went to the Lower world.

Clay, clay, make way!

He became for ever and ever

lord of the waters and father of the fish,

he gave us all that lives

beneath the earth, beneath the water.

This is no stupid tale,

old shamen tell it thus.

The deer is more than this.

In the beginning the earth was covered with smooth ice.

No man lived upon it, grass did not grow on it.

On the ice stood a ice-walled house. lnside was a man:

Whiteman was his name. He said to himself:

Alas, this cannot be! I must seek a wife.

Who are you, my sister?

I will be mother to every animal, insect and bird,

they will all be born of me.

I heard of you and came visiting.

I'd like to play with you.

And a child was born forthwith.

The man saw

that this child was a blade of grass born of a woman.

Take it with you.

Later grass and trees will cover your icy land.

So the grass sprouted and put down roots.

The man watched it every day.

On the seventh day the grassy stretch was so big

that there was room for another house.

Then Whiteman spoke thus:

Maybe some flying god

or other such wants to settle here.

If he does so, my land won't be big enough.

Why have you come again?

Let us sleep again together, let us play!

Again a child was born.

The man saw that it was like a reindeer

but had no antlers.

Take the child, go to your own home!

By now grass and trees covered the whole land.

Well, son, this is who I am. First of all I lived in ice.

My home was made of ice. I am such, god of the Earth.

You guard the earth's face, and care for Grasschild.

So your name shall be Earth's Reindeer.

You will be god of the New Land.

You must defend the land from feathered and antlered gods.

Father, without antlers I cannot fight.

The Antlered god will take away the land.

Preserve your antlers.

One is from stone, the other from the tusk of a mammoth.

One day men will be born here.

I will be their father too.

Take care of them, your siblings.

The deer is more than this.

Not only our sibling, she is our mother too.

When she came down to earth

When she became flesh, she turned into earth.

From her flesh and bones came the very earth,

from her antlers the hills, from her coat the forests.

From her flowing life juices the waters of the earth.

Our deer mother is with us for as long as we live,

inseparably.

My dearest, my mother, my guardian!

The deer is our soul.

When we die, we are once more united with our mother deer.

We are the people of the deer.

Our dead appear in the form of a deer.

The deer existence is death, one half of existence.

When our year is done

the deer carries our father the sun to the next world.

Wherefore the celestial hunter pursues the deer each winter

to snatch back from him the sun's stolen soul.

Our mother the deer guards and shields us like the snow.

She is the winter sky.

She never sheds her antlers,

and they branch out arborescently.

They hold up the sky...

Our ancestors told us the world will exist

till the hunter brings down the deer forebear.

If this be so the world is eternal,

for as long as man has lived on earth

star has never caught up with star.

Earth and sky are born,

Earth and sky are created,

Winged Forefather and Bloody Hand.

Two men are born.

Forest surround, around home

Wind blows through empty barn.

The two men set out

For the heart of a frosty forest,

To seek a clearing where elks roam.

Dear doe, dear doe!

I had a bad dream.

What bad dream could you have seen?

For sure I dreamt

our sky father sent us a snowstorm,

our sky father sent us a windstorm.

stealthily wounds you with a turul-feathered arrow.

stealthily wounds you with a turul-feathered arrow.

I have seven snow-tripping hind daughters,

What trouble can befall me?

If someone will be killed here, 'tis you...

At break of day they bind their snowshoes,

Swiftly they slide.

Near a snowy pasture, near a frosty heath

They come upon a herd of deer.

Seven snow-tripping hinds

with their six-legged deer mother,

Their fiery stag father

Break into a headlong gallop.

One arm forward, birch forest passes,

One leg forward, pine forest passes.

The two men after them.

Behold,

the fiery deer herd breaks away from us...

We cannot reach or slay them!

Let me go ahead!

Winged Forefather draws near,

Where he pokes his birch stick A lake comes forth for roach,

A lake comes forth for loach.

His turul-feathered arrow

Into the right flank of the hind he shoots.

If gallop you will, then gallop wildly,

never stopping, but at the end of the earth,

where earth and sky meet,

there I know my arrow will find you.

Oh ancestor, Upper sky! Old ancestor, Upper sky!

If you created me to glitter in the sky, now I'll escape.

At the world's end a sky sea is glittering,

let me go to its rim.

Upper Sky their Father, let so much snow fall,

Between uprooted trees there rose a snow wall.

They break through it! On their heads snow

Falls not, an opening remains in their wake.

The glittering sky sea at the world's end they reach.

Down to the face of the sea they run.

No snowflake upon it,

Nothing but smooth ice.

That monstrous Winged Forefather

Has also reached the edge of the glittering sky sea.

But the wind filled the deer tracks with snow.

So finally he returned.

After a journey who knows how long,

he came upon the hind he shot.

Upper sky father!

Soon a living-dying world will come,

soon a man-bringing world will come!

How can a mortal conquer a deer like that?

Your giant creation is fit to stab any man with its antlers...

So the maimed four-legged deer

now glistened in the sky,

and the snowshoe track of the pursuing Winged Forefather

now glistened in the sky.

The rest of the story tells of the origin of our people.

How weary I am.

My land is far behind me.

What land can this be? I know it not.

Who knows how many days I have been hunting this deer?

And though I have killed it,

my home is far away so I cannot take it with me.

He set off in the direction in which he came.

After he had been going for who knows how long,

all of a sudden came upon Bloody-handed Solitude,

Walking Forefather.

He was still tracking the deer.

Did you kill the deer or let slip the chance?

I killed it,

but so far away that the best of its meat I left behind.

And now I am going home.

But if you want deer meat, go take it.

On my return journey

I made a sign with my wing in the snow.

If you follow the trail you will come to it.

You can eat and stay there,

for a man on foot will never get home again from there.

And he drew out of his snow boot the other severed leg

and gave it to Walker

for him to eat until he came upon the meat.

My home is far from here.

I will never get back on foot.

This too is land.

There is fish, there is game, it won't be bad here.

I shall stay.

From these two men derive the two clans of our people.

The sun shines, swiftly ascending.

lce cracks, a spring is gushing.

Trickling, dripping, melting, flowing,

Splashing, bubbling, swelling, foaming.

Vapour, dew, froth rising,

Running, floating, ebbing, drying.

Grove, bush, leaf with buds are bursting,

Root and bulb and seed are sprouting.

Gentle spring, summer abounding,

With the hum of the bee, the country resounding,

The living awake, moving, stirring,

Giving birth, calving, happily musing.

HUNOR AND MAGYAR

White stallion colt at drinking place, towards the sunrise,

in the abode of our mother river Dona, Elk hind,

a jewel among girls, to fetch water came down.

White stallion colt, when he saw her,

forgot to drink water.

Gazing at the young filly,

he let his eyes rest upon her,

let them drink her in slowly.

I sigh my sigh for you

till my time is over

till my unlit fire is lit.

No such beautiful colt shall I see

till my future bridal bed.

Could I lead him by his bridle

I would bless Sky father.

Elk hind, elk hind, you hide,

No trace of your water-image in the water.

You are hiding in hiding

Wind has blown away your grass-image in the grass.

Elk hind, my love,

Must I take aim at you? Must I seek you,

You starry-haired, seven-calved one?

Elk hind, you are coming into my life,

The fulfilment of my word.

Elk hind, should you see me, Should you turn back,

would you flee?

...flee me not!

Horse and cart, horse and cart...

I harness a horse to the cart

I urge him with a whip, curb him with a bit.

I saddle a colt.

I feel the smell of the herd,

I milk cow and goat For their sweet milk.

I turn the earth with an iron plough,

Millet is ripening, I dig a pit and bake bread.

Honey from the bees in my glass,

Pig tusks dig acorns.

Cloaks from felt I make, canvas I paint,

Armour and a sword from bronze I beat.

Woman of the farmstead in golden wave.

Her price, if tis a thousand gold pieces I still will pay.

"The bird flies from bough to bough,

The song flies from mouth to mouth;

Green grass grows on graves of old,

Songs recall the heroes bold.

To hunt for game is why they came

Fair Eneh's sons brave:

Hunor and Magyar, two champions,

Twin brothers, Menrót's sons."

Hunor and Magyar were the first born of Ménrót and Eneh.

When they grew up they left their father's home.

Horse and cart, horse and cart...

It happened one day

that they set out hunting to the Meótisz marshes...

It is the Sythian custom for hunters to climb a tree

and wait in hiding. Each has a horse at the ready -

which has been taught to lie down -

and a dog.

If the hunter sees the game, he shoots his arrow,

then sets off in pursuit on horseback,

while the dog keeps the scent.

In the forest where they were waiting in hiding,

the wonderful hind of their dreams, ran ahead of them.

They followed it, but could not catch up with it.

The deer, as if wanting to lure them,

sometimes ran on and sometimes stopped.

The hind disappeared.

They sought it for a long time, but found no trace.

Ambling in the countryside rich in pastureland,

they deemed it suitable for grazing flocks.

Returning home, they told their father where they had been

and begged him to let them settle with their retinue

in that enchanting place where the deer had led them.

Contemporary sources remember it differently.

There was another reason for the migration of our ancestors.

As noted down by the rhetor Priskos,

a Bizantine envoy who visited Attila, ruler of the Huns.

The Ogurs and the Onogurs were forced into migration

because the mists and griffins rising up from the Baltic Sea

drove out the Central Asian Avars,

and they the Khazars, and they the Ogurs and the Onogurs,

in other words our ancestors were forced to flee.

Some, as they had done earlier and would do again,

remained where they were and faced their fate.

Ménrót with the people of his house acted thus.

His sons, however, did not wait for the conquerors.

Heeding divine inspiration, they packed up so that,

following their guiding star, they could seek a new home.

They had been living in their new home for five years

when one day they again set out hunting.

"The bird rises, the song rises

Of the two sons of fair Eneh;

Winging bird from bough to bough,

Ringing song from mouth to mouth.

Soon they wished to venture forth

Being bored of fish and game.

For new adventure, better fight

They rode off to the plain."

Beautiful pearl gems, enchant!

Tiny apples of your bosom.

Neat naval, slim neck entrance.

How many lovely, trim girls;

morals, force are nothing worth.

Desire fades with the years.

Open your gate and look at me.

Fight not, trust not, curb not your desire.

Your sandals I'll undo, the buckle of your belt.

Your ring is my fetter, your knee my chair.

Styrup, saddle, carts;

gallop with me, always love me.

Pain and sorrow will soon fade.

For my part I write the records.

On the plains the sons of Belár come upon their wives,

who without their husbands are revelling in their tents.

The Turk has a shaved head, ugly, bleary-eyed, freckled!

It was the celebration of the horn.

Hail, idol of the law, interpreter of the sky!

I plead for forgiveness. My witness is the blue of the sea.

Revenge will be forthwith. The loan repaid.

The women were taken with their fortunes

at a swift gallop to the Meótis marshes.

Among the children the two daughters of Dula,

prince of the Alans, were captured too.

One of them became Hunor's wife...

the other was wedded to Magyar.

My dun horse is tethered to a post.

Ram, wether, lamb, pig, hog,

camel, goat are thronging. The trough is brimming.

Wheat is falling from my sickle.

Hemp in sheaves, I grind the barley, chaff in the barn.

Around the oats only nettles in the stubble.

Steer, calf, bull aplenty.

Collecting the milk, I churn it into butter.

Curd in the making, my cheese yellowing.

Grass, tree, hawthorn.

Sloe and pear.

Nuts and berries make good liquor.

Wine I strain from ripened grapes.

Tasty from wormwood, down it goes!

Carved tree-trunk my ark, in my net carp.

Storks and coots among the bulrushes.

My armies pitch tent, the camp is colourful.

Guarded by mace, hatchet and axe.

ON AND ON

In the year of our Lord 819

Ügyek, or according to others Előd

who some called Levéd (which may mean goose)

and believe him to be the son of Ügyek...

I can't help it, this story is confused!

...was a noble leader of Sythia.

Sythia was a big land known as Dentümogyer.

lts people never bore the fetters of any ruling power,

and they still live according to their own morals today.

The Hungarian nation derives from

one of the ancestor's of the people of Scythia, Magyar,

and the Huns derive from another ancestor, Hunor.

Though many dispute the latter claim.

The renowned and powerful Prince Attila

was descended from Hunor's offspring.

He left the land of Sythia and came to Pannonia

in the year of our Lord 451.

He drove out the Romans and set up a ruling seat for himself

beside the Danube

in memory of the Don and other similar named rivers.

After a long while Ügyek, who was descended from

the heroic Hungarian clan, took as his wife

chieftain Őnedbelia's daughter Emes.

She gave birth to a son who was called Álmos.

He was named Álmos as a result of a divine miracle.

While Emes slept deeply The turul bird appeared:

Enclosing in his wings The child fathered by Lél.

She felt that from her womb A spring gushed forth,

From her loins a worthy line Of princes is being born.

And, widening, the spring Flows from east to west.

All the rivers beside which the Hungarians lived

they called Etil, similar in their language

to the name Attila, the ancestor of Álmos.

They regarded Álmos, born of a spring,

a reincarnation of King Attila,

and they hoped that, coming from the sky,

he would revive and guide his people...

who were now taxpayers to the Khazars.

"Write!" The Turkic people, that is the Hungarians,

have found themselves a dwelling place near Khazaria,

in the place named Levédia

after the first of them to become vajda.

The Hungarians comprise seven tribes,

they never had a foreign lord rule over them.

They were living alongside the Khazars,

and they fought all their wars together.

The prince of Khazaria, the divine khan,

for their heroism and alliance

gave a noble Khazar girl as a wife for Levédi,

as he did to the Byzantine emperor too.

so that she would bear him a child.

But as fate would have it

Levédi did not father a child with the Khazar woman.

Because the Pechenegs

declared war on the Khazars and defeated them.

So they were forced

to leave their own land and settle on the Turkic lands.

When, due to this, war broke out between them,

the Turkic army suffered a defeat,

and its people were split into two halves.

After a while the Khazar khan

sent for the ruler of the Turkic people.

I have sent for you because

since you are of noble birth, intelligent and brave,

and, among your Hungarians, the first in rank,

I will promote you prince of your people....

and in exchange...you should obey our words and our laws.

I am honoured by your goodwill,

and am sincerely grateful.

But I have insufficient power for that honour

so I am unable to obey you.

But there is another lord who is called Álmos.

Let him rather be the prince who will obey you.

The khan liked the idea and he sent his men

to the Hungarians so that

the said Álmos should be raised to the rank of prince.

You can rule for 40 years.

But if your strength fades and your judgement weakens

you must die earlier.

So be it.

The seven men, the Hungarians' seven princes

chose Álmos, being the most suitable, as their leader -

of their own free will and without dispute.

According to the ancient rite they let their blood drip

into one dish with the blood of Álmos,

and thus his oath was made law.

Our father Álmos was elevated

so that the Hungarian people should not fade out,

so they should become a nation again, so that he should guide

and revive his people who had become slaves!

Stand by me! I want to be Prince Álmos!

Hurray!

The Hungarians...

Sagittis Hungarorum libera nos, Domine!

At that time drought struck the Hungarians' land.

It was also overburdened with a mass of foreign peoples,

and they could not feed or raise their own kind.

Many of the Hungarians,

tiring of their increasing hunger and harrassment

turned to their princes:

permit us to seek a new home.

The seven princes

who to this day are known as the seven Hungarians,

seeing the will of the people

and that many of them had set off without permission,

held a council as to whether to leave their birthplace,

and take possession of a more suitable land.

Horse and cart, horse and cart...

Their choice fell on the Pannon plain,

not only due to divine inspiration

but because it reminded them of Sythia,

and by right of the blood of Álmos, as Attila's ancestor,

they regarded it as theirs.

They had ridden across it in battle and knew it well.

Moreover many of them had settled there earlier.

There was room for all.

As noted by an Arabian traveller...

Between the borders of the Moravians and the Bulgars

lies an uninhabited land to be crossed in ten days

which the unbelievers call the Avar plain.

In the year of our Lord 884

the seven Hungarians left Scythia and headed west

with Álmos and his son Árpád at their head,

and a mass of peoples from the same land

allied in rebelling against the Khazars.

Thus the Hungarians came to*

Here they settled for a while.

Many among them did not rest

but went straight on to Attila's country.

The dauntless continued their marauding campaigns.

Álmos struck camp in Kiev.

In memory of this the place is still called Álmos court,

and the stay of the Ugors in Kiev is remembered

through the names Hungarian hill and Hungarian place...

Earlier the Hungarians had defeated

the neighbouring Slavs time after time.

They treated them like slaves and levied heavy taxes.

In the time of Álmos, however, the Slavs,

who also worshipped idols,

and the Hungarians had become friends to such an extent that

some of the latter were happy to be in service in Kiev.

The mare is eating oats from the manger.

The master mucks out, his mate has the harrow.

Lunch in the kitchen, the table is knarled,

on it the pot, in it the pottage.

The vajda and his mate eat gustily.

The cellar is fusty, the porch full of ash,

The ridge lies fallow, and empty the furrow.

Soon the Hungarians had to get back into their saddles again.

They could not stay because of the eagles

that were swarming the trees like flies.

They consumed their cattle, even the horses.

All because God wanted

them to arrive in Hungary as soon as possible.

Pure allegory!

In the old days the Hungarians

called the Pechenegs the eagle people,

and because they again suffered a defeat

from the attacking eagle people, that is, Pechenegs,

they were forced to move on.

Thus it happened

that in the year of our Lord 895 the Hungarians,

with the exception of those

who held the land on which they were living dearer than their lives

- there are always some -

once again set forth to follow their leader and their star.

By then the Turkic people felt

that Árpád should be the leader rather than his father

since he was more suited in respect of his age

for this honour.

They spent three months crossing the mountains

and they came to the border of Hungary and Translyvania.

Old Álmos - just as Moses in his time was unable to enter

the Promised Land - could not enter Pannonia.

Because of this, for the benefit of his people,

he was killed in Transylvania.

Álmos, son and blessing of the sky,

with his sacrifice has won his people the right

never again to be forced to leave their new home.

The Hungarians found the uninhabited plain

too confined for their herds,

and, knowing that the Danube was a very good river,

and the inhabited parts beyond it very good land,

they decided to occupy it.

Under the terms of the agreement

that they made with the Moravian vajda Svatopluk,

the Lord gave the Hungarians Pannonia.

The great empire, the Hungarian homeland,

Where the corn bends under its own weight.

Where the clusters of grapes are full of fire,

The heroic Árpád won this lovely land.

Hungarians, when you hear this great name,

As if before the altar, in church you were,

Raise your hats

And thank him for your homeland.

PANNONlA

It happened in the year of our Lord 955,

when Fajsz, Árpád's grandson, was the leading prince,

that Hungary's valiant warriors

suffered a terrible defeat in the land of Bavaria.

The foolish minstrel laments, his lyre complains.

Czech, German and ltalian soldiers are sent into battle.

Armoured warriors smite the jerkined plunderers.

Swords are dented, shoed hooves crush the knights.

Flag in the dust.

Treacherous rascals!

Lock them up, into prison with them!

Slaughter the rats!

Behold the example!

The Saxon prince had all the prisoners killed bar seven.

He cut the ears off these seven

and sent them back to Pannonia with these words:

Go back to your Hungarians and tell them

never again to come to this place of suffering.

To emphasize his words, contrary to custom,

he had the chieftains Lél and Bulcsu hung.

In the old days the leading prince

should have died for what happened.

But since by now the true faith filled many souls

he only had to renounce his high rank.

Amen.

His successor was Taksony, Zoltan's son,

who was Árpád's son.

Every day of Taksony's life he tried

with power and persuasion

to preserve his country's heritage.

He put an end to the marauding campaigns

and put up defences against Germany.

Thanks to his father's wisdom he was able to live

in a good relationship with the one-time deadly enemy,

the Pechenegs, to the east of Hungary,

since Zoltán had brought him a Pecheneg wife.

Two sons were born to Taksony from that marriage,

the older of which, Géza, became Hungary's fifth leader.

Many Pecheneg braves arrived with Taksony's wife,

the majority of whom Taksony settled in the western marches,

close to the Székelys...

Fearing the Germans,

with the Russian vikings, and their allies the Pechenegs

they surrounded themselves with walls and marshes.

Peace reigned in the country and the borderlands.

Taksony kept his peace with everyone but Byzantium.

At the news of the defeat at the Battle of Augsburg

Byzantium stopped paying the tax due to the Hungarians

(which the Greeks called a present)

and this not only upset the generations' long

Hungarian-Byzantine peace, but also meant that

Taksony and his successors sought help towards

their peaceful integration among the Christian peoples

not from Byzantium, but from Rome,

through the intercession of the mighty Holy Roman emperor.

When Taksony, growing old,

moved from the prison of his body to the way of all flesh,

his firstborn son, Géza,

became the prince of the Hungarians.

Géza, the heroic, got his name from his Pecheneg mother.

It was earlier the title of the Turkic lstemi khan ancestor.

As was customary, Géza, the heir to the throne,

ruled in Bihar. As a chieftain too

he had his winter quarters here in the centre of the country,

on Deer Hill, named after his ancient mother,

the sacred animal of his people.

He was born in the old faith,

and when he was elevated to princely rank, he had his father

buried according to the law of our forebears on Csepel lsland.

But he himself, heeding to his sense

rather than his heart

soon had himself christened.

In Christianity he was called Stephen

after the first holy martyr, just as later his son too.

This was fitting for a prince seeing that

Stephen in Hungarian means "crowned".

His younger brother, an outstanding soldier

who commanded the land on the western frontier,

was given the Christian name Michael

after the archangel of the heavenly hosts.

He made sacrifices to the almighty god

and various imaginary gods.

When the prelate chided him for this he replied:

I'm rich and powerful enough for that.

Though prince Géza slipped into the pagan way of life...

...once he had become a Christian,

he raged against his reluctant subjects.

With extreme cruelty.

He used despotic means to deal with his people,

he mobilized all the leaders of his armies

in the interest of the true faith.

Those who dissented

he suppressed with threats and intimidation.

He killed many.

Yet he treated foreigners with compassion and generosity,

in particular the Christians.

And - following in his father's footsteps -

he kept peace with all the surrounding territories.

At that time Hungary became

a neighbour of the Byzantine and German Empires.

And since the two empires

had formed a close alliance through marriage,

Géza, if he did not want to be caught between the two,

had to make a move.

For known reasons he could only turn to Otto the Great -

and as we have seen - he had to get himself christened.

Learning of Géza's intention the Holy Roman Emperor

sent missionaries to Hungary.

We, Otto, royal emperor by the grace of God,

to Piligrim, the reverend bishop of Passau.

Our greetings and our grace.

We are sending Bishop Bruno of Sankt Gallen to you

and ask you to be of the utmost help to him

to guide him respectfully and with circumspection

as near as possible to the Hungarians,

with the necessary provisions for his journey.

We are delegating him there in order that their king

may have contact with our power as soon as possible.

You should take the greatest trouble

to ensure that this mission be fruitful

because - if our intention meets with success -

it could be extremely useful to you too...

God be with you!

Prince Géza ordered

that every Christian who wanted to enter his kingdom

should be recieved hospitably and assured of safety.

He authorized his priests to present themselves:

he was happy to hear their chants

by the light of torches at vespers,

being pleased that the seed of the blessing of God

sown in the garden of his bosom was sprouting.

Why should I say more?

The time ordained by heaven came,

he, together with his family, was a believer.

Believer? At any rate he had himself christened,

in the service of the Christian faith.

in the service of the Christian faith.

And, choosing 12 noblemen from the clans loyal to him,

he sent them to the royal meeting

held at the imperial court of Quedlinburg in the year 973.

The Danish and Czech rulers and the Polish heir apparent

attended the meeting, and many rulers

who called themselves free and independent sent envoys:

thus the Byzantine emperor and the hastily christened

Hungarian "kral" prince Géza.

His absence in person meant

that Hungary wanted to be part of Christian Europe,

but would not be the vassal of anyone,

not even the Holy Roman Emperor.

One night the Lord comforted him with a wonderful vision.

Peace be with you, Christ's chosen one.

I command your problems to cease.

It is not for you to undertake what is on your mind.

Just as biblical David's,

your hands too are sullied by human blood.

But you will have a son, as David had Solomon,

to whom the Lord will entrust all these things

according to the intentions of his divine providence.

He will be one of the Lord's chosen kings,

and will exchange the crown of earthly life

for an everlasting one.

Soon another envoy will come to you on a spiritual mission.

He will show you what you must do.

Not long after this

Prince Géza and his brother Michael

set out from their winter quarters on Deer Hill

to go hunting.

Greetings, prince!

In this deer whom you were hunting,

I was hunting you.

I am the envoy of the heavenly Father.

I have brought you a message.

Here in this place you should build your city,

and raise a church to the first bishop of the Hungarians.

It was surely no deer, it was the angel of God.

the meaning of the candles we saw on the deer's antlers?

They were not antlers, but wings,

not burning candles, but glittering feathers.

And it planted its feet there

so we should build my seat there and nowhere else.

The surest sign of Géza's turn to the west

was that he built his new permanent seat

west of the centre of the country, at Esztergom.

Because the Danube links that place

with the centre of the Holy Roman Empire,

From here in a few year's time

From here in a few year's time

he brought his son a wife of royal blood.

Thus he bound his country for more that a thousand years

to the bloodstream of Europe.

Today, exactly a thousand years after

St. Stephen founded his European state,

on St Stephen's Day "his servants", the minstrels

still recall the Hungarians' age-old leader animal,

the miraculous hind.

Where comes to life an ornate wide path

beside it comes to life a shallow fish pond.

Here in abundance grows the tiny sedge

of which the miraculous stag is very fond.

Hey, trilling minstrel, trilling minstrel!

Should you go out, my lord, King St. Stephen

hunting or bird catching,

you'll not find either game or birds

you'll only find the miraculous stag.

Hey, trilling minstrel, trilling minstrel!

Hurry not, hurry not, my lord, King St. Stephen,

hurry not my death. I'm surely not

the game you are shooting, but I am an envoy

sent from god the Father.

Hey, trilling minstrel, trilling minstrel!

On my forehead shining the bright rising sun,

on my side glowing the beautiful moon,

on my right kidney the heavenly night stars.

Hey, trilling minstrel, trilling minstrel!

On my antlers,

thousand antlers, on their tips growing

a hundred thousand bushes,

fire red, fire red, sleep the sleep of the dead.