BUDA, NOW PART OF BUDAPEST · OTTOMAN 1541 TO 1686
HUNGARIAN
YOUR FIRST · THE DANUBE AND THE PLAIN
The black soup is still to come.
AS ERDÉLYI PRINTED IT, 1862
Hátra van még a fekete leves.
HAAT-ro von mayg o FEH-keh-teh LEH-vesh
HUNGARIAN
WHAT IT MEANS
The hard part has not happened yet. It does not say that was bad. It says wait.
WHEN IT IS SAID
To someone relieved too early. The exams are over and the results are not out. The meal was good and the bill has not come. The guest has been charming and hasn't yet asked for the loan.
It is usually said dryly, by someone older who has been through it, to someone who has not. Half amused and half serious, it is a warning given fondly, not unkindly.
STILL SAID IN HUNGARY TODAY
Erdélyi gives no note on its use. The reading above is ours, from how the saying is used now.
THE BLACK SOUP
Black soup, fekete leves, is coffee. It came last at a Hungarian table, after everything else had been cleared. So the course you are still waiting on is the one to think about.
WHERE IT MAY COME FROM
The story told with it is that in 1541 the Turks took Buda, feasted the captain Bálint Török in their camp, pressed him to stay for the black soup, and in the time it took to come, the city was taken. He died a prisoner. Hungarian scholars doubt it. Coffee is unlikely to have reached a Hungarian table that early, and the tale appears long afterwards. Erdélyi prints the saying without it.
The siege, in full
In 1526 the Turks beat Hungary at Mohács and the king died fleeing. He left no son, so two men claimed the crown: one backed by Austria, one by the Sultan. The country split between them.
By 1541 the Austrian side was besieging Buda, the capital. The Sultan, Suleiman, marched north saying he came to defend the infant son of John Zápolya, the Hungarian king he had backed, so he arrived as the city's protector.
He drove the Austrians off. Then he asked the Hungarian lords to his camp outside the walls, to receive them with honour. They came, and the meal went on a long time.
While it did, his soldiers walked into Buda through gates left open for a friend. By the time the lords rose from the table the garrison had been changed and the city was his. Nobody fought. The welcome did the work.
Bálint Török was at that table. He never went home. He was taken to Constantinople, now Istanbul, and died in prison there nine or ten years later. The Turks kept Buda for a hundred and forty-five years.
Word by word
Hátra van még a fekete leves.
- hátra van
- is still behind, still to come
- még
- yet
- a
- the
- fekete
- black
- leves
- soup
AN OBSERVATION
A saying survives on an object nobody at the table would recognise now. The coffee is forgotten; the dread of the last course is not.
NOT SETTLED
The siege story is told with the saying everywhere, and Hungarian scholars doubt it: coffee had barely reached a Hungarian table by 1541, and the tale surfaces much later.
So where does it come from? Nobody has traced the saying earlier than Szirmay in 1804.
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ERDÉLYI, 1862
Válogatott magyar közmondások
Erdélyi János, Pest, 1862. Page 151, entry no. 4247
Marked “Sz.” for Szirmay, 1804. Erdélyi is reprinting it, not taking it down himself.
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