Egy keresztény kor előtti székely házasságkötési rítus hipotézise
Hypothesis on a Székely Marriage Rite from the Age before Christianity

Summary/Abstract: The study sets out from the hypothesis that the Székely community, as an ethnic, cultural and social entity, had already possessed a system of traditions of initiation of its own, even before the Hungarian settlement in the Carpathian Basin. This community built its fate changing events – birth, marriage and death – into a culture of traditions and rites, which have strategic importance from the point of view of organizing, controlling and regulating society. In the author’s opinion, even in this early form of existence the separate regulations and strive for autonomous actions of the Székely community are already well detectable. This is manifested also in the fact that they still have not totally accepted the globalizing expectations, principles and norms of the European Christian churches, i. e. the different ritualizations of the human fate changing traditions. In order to confirm this hypothesis, this study highlights the bunning (doing the bride’s hair into a bun), a peculiar form of marriage, applied even today in order to legitimize a girl’s abduction (an illegitimate way of acquiring a wife).

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