Arany Atyácska

Fish is simmering in a kettle beside a sunlit table at the top of a tree that has no top. The old man sitting there has seven braids spilling over his shoulders, a face that glows like comb honey and eyes shaped like water lilies, and when someone brings him a hard question he lowers his head and thinks while the pot bubbles. This is Arany Atyácska, the Golden Little Father, lord of the Upper World in Hungarian legend. He is almost exactly as old as the book he lives in: István Komjáthy’s *Mondák könyve*, the *Book of Legends*, first published in 1955.

Komjáthy was a teacher and literary editor, born in 1917 in Ekel on the Csallóköz, the long Danube island, and dead by 1963. In his afterword he explains that at school he had been taught that the old Hungarian mythology had vanished without trace, and that he no longer believed it. A generation of fieldworkers, Antal Reguly, Bernát Munkácsi and József Pápay among them, had brought home the songs of the Mansi and Khanty, the Hungarians’ nearest linguistic relatives on the far side of the Urals. Folklorists had filled shelves with Hungarian tales. Komjáthy drew on all of it, together with the archaeology of Gyula László and the medieval chronicles, and built a world. His own glossary is candid about where its lord came from: Arany Atyácska is the supreme god found among the kindred peoples, the Mansi Numi Tárem, and the name itself is borrowed from the Khanty bear songs. The historian Zoltán Oszkár Szőts, revisiting the book in 2021, calls it a work of literature whose scattered ethnographic pieces are held together by Komjáthy’s own enviable imagination. Nobody ever prayed to Arany Atyácska. People read him, in edition after edition, and many of them grew up assuming he was ancient.

The raw materials are older than the god. Numi-Tórem, as the linguist László Fejes glosses the Mansi name, means something like “upper god, upper sky”. Komjáthy also heard an echo of the idea in a New Year greeting from his own Csallóköz childhood, *Felső nagy ég, alsó kék ég*, “great upper sky, blue lower sky”. And the tree comes straight out of Hungarian folktale, where the sky-high tree starts out as thin as a little finger at its foot, and by the time it is as thick as a man’s waist nobody can see to the top. In the book, the Upper World sits in its crown.

Up there the old man keeps a golden palace on a grassy hill, with a seven-banded gate and a golden forest beside it. A silver stream runs past the door. Behind the palace stands a diamond forest and in it the World Mountain, each face set with diamonds of its own colour: yellow to the south, red to the north, silver-white to the east, pitch-black to the west. He keeps golden bees. He sets fish traps and snares like any householder on the steppe, which is part of the charm of him. The god of this heaven checks his traps.

One cheerful afternoon, with a hundred hives full and every fish trap heavy with carp and red-finned bream, he bellows for the iron rope and the silver cradle, because he means to swing some of the children out over the sea. They crowd round and he sorts them. The Moon Princess has torn her apron on a thorn. The Wind King has a bleeding ear from chasing foxes, which was forbidden. The little Fire-Smith King has soot on his apron again. The Sun King, who mended three fish traps and learned his charm-words that day, gets in, with the small Air Fairy beside him, and down they go.

That swing becomes a creation. The children rock above the sea for seven days, beg for a raft, and are sent a thumb-sized boy they name Hüvelykpiciny, Thumbling. Thumbling climbs a silver ladder to the palace to complain that the raft goes wherever the wind shoves it. Arany Atyácska hands him the skin of a diving duck. On the third dive the boy brings up a handful of earth, which swells into land, then a forest, then a meadow around a round lake. The new land spins like a devil’s reel until the old man lends four whales to stand it on and unbuckles his own silver-buttoned belt to fence it in, and a ring of mountains rises where the belt lies. Then comes a biting wind and a fall of thick, starry snow, and Thumbling is told to mix it with mud and shape people, beasts and birds. Komjáthy says outright that the base of this story is a Mansi creation legend.

The flood is his other great myth, and here the Golden Father is less serene. As a young god he spat into the sea by accident and the spittle became a rock that came trundling after him. He struck it with a willow switch and it turned into Lúdvérc, Komjáthy’s name for the fiery sprite of Hungarian folk belief. Lúdvérc tried a creation of his own, dived in a duck skin and hid the earth under his tongue, lied about it, and swelled until his head was the size of a house. Made to spit, he spat out crags and mountains, and the old man hurled him into the seventy-seventh depth. When Lúdvérc crept back and talked the fairies and giants into idleness, Arany Atyácska opened the sluice of his silver stream and let it pour down for seven days and seven nights.

He built the rescue raft in secret beside the World Mountain, washing each morning in the water of life and death to gain the strength that let him fell trees as thick as a man’s waist. Lúdvérc bribed a serving girl with blue ribbons to hide the washing water, and the old man simply washed in the dew instead, which brought down a fog so thick that the spy could not see the end of his own nose. The second bribe worked better. The girl served her master beer brewed from barley and hops, and he got so merrily drunk that the summer down on earth shone brighter, and he told her everything. It made no difference in the end. On the last day of the hundredth year he let the raft down on an iron rope just as the waves reached the last summit, and people and one pair of every beast climbed aboard. Komjáthy’s afterword describes the story as a Hungarian folktale and a Mansi legend melted together.

The rest of the book fills in a household. His sons are the Sun King, Napkirály, and the Wind King, Szélkirály, and the Fire-Smith King, whom a young hero is the first to call Hadak Ura, the Lord of Hosts. That name has its own history, since Hadúr was a Romantic poet’s invention of the 1820s. There is a Moon Princess and the little Air Fairy. Beside him in the verses stands Hajnal Anyácska, the Dawn Mother, whose palace has a rainbow for its vault and as many windows as there are days in the year. Near the end the family sits in council, and when Hadak Ura proposes to gird a sleeping young Hun called Attila with the magic sword, Arany Atyácska nods. By then silver fairy thread is tangled through his golden braids.

His powers, read straight off the page, are those of a patient householder who happens to own the sky. He makes nothing with his own hands if a messenger can do it, gives the tools and the instructions, and lets the thing grow. He can drown the world by lifting one sluice, raise a mist by washing his face, and brighten a summer by laughing. His limits are just as domestic. A girl with three ribbons can nearly undo him, a cup of beer loosens his tongue, and the earth he orders into being will not keep still until he pins it. Outside the book he has one weakness more. Online encyclopedias now list him without citation as the consort of the Dawn Mother and father of Hadúr, and guess that he may be Isten or Tengri under another name; one Hungarian article even gives him a wife called Arany Anyácska, a name that does not appear in Komjáthy at all. Nobody knows where she came from, which is how a god acquires relatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Arany Atyácska?

Arany Atyácska, the “Golden Little Father”, is the lord of the Upper World in István Komjáthy’s *Mondák könyve* (1955), a retelling of Hungarian and Hun legends. He lives in a golden palace at the top of the Tree Without a Top and oversees the creation of the earth and the great flood.

Is Arany Atyácska an ancient Hungarian god?

No. Arany Atyácska is a literary figure created by István Komjáthy for his 1955 *Book of Legends*. Komjáthy’s own glossary says he modelled the figure on Numi-Tórem, the high god of the Mansi, and borrowed the name from Khanty bear songs, and the historian Zoltán Oszkár Szőts calls the book a work of literature.

How does Arany Atyácska create the world?

In Komjáthy’s version, Arany Atyácska gives a thumb-sized boy called Hüvelykpiciny the skin of a diving duck, and on his third dive the boy brings up earth that swells into land. Arany Atyácska then steadies the spinning earth on four whales, rings it with his silver-buttoned belt, which becomes mountains, and has people and animals shaped from snow mixed with mud. Komjáthy says the story is based on a Mansi creation legend.

Who are Arany Atyácska’s children?

In the *Mondák könyve*, Arany Atyácska’s sons are the Sun King (Napkirály), the Wind King (Szélkirály) and the Fire-Smith King, who is also called Hadak Ura, the Lord of Hosts. The book also names a Moon Princess and a little Air Fairy, and pairs Arany Atyácska in verse with Hajnal Anyácska, the Dawn Mother.

Why does Arany Atyácska flood the world?

Arany Atyácska floods the world to destroy Lúdvérc, a sprite born from his own spittle, who had tempted the fairies and giants into idleness. He opens the sluice of his silver stream for seven days and nights, but first builds a raft in secret and lowers it on an iron rope to save people and a pair of every animal.

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