The Holy Crown of Hungary

There is no other nation in the world, who would keep in such a high reverence, have such a high
respect for, love with such a mystical adoration their national relic as the Hungarians do with their
crown, the Hungarian Holy Crown. There is no other nation to be found, whose national relic's
source, origin and age are so much unanswered, surrounded with such a mystery, and went through
such fantastic adventures as did the crown of the Hungarians.

Believed to be the crown of the first Hungarian king, Saint Stephen I. (1000-1038), this crown was
pawned or lost, stolen or seized, stashed or rescued and was kept in more royal courts, towns,
castles and citadels than any other nation's coronation jewel. Wars were waged for this crown and it
happened that it was dug underground in an iron chest or in a crude oil barrel. Every time the Holy
Crown returned to Hungary, it brought about an elevated emotional, solemn atmosphere in the
entire country, and its power was so enormous over the nation that the people knelt down before
the coach carrying the crown.

One of the most recent and maybe the most interesting events around the crown happened at the
end of the World War II. At the beginning of December 1944, in order to save it from the Red Army,
the crown was transferred to the town of Kszeg, and at the end of that month to the small village of
Velem near the Austrian border, where it remained until early in 1945. By then, however, the
strategic situation had become so bad that the keepers themselves also had to leave the country. On
March 27, the crown started on its way to Austria escorted by Ern Pajts, the last commander of the
Crown Guard, and six of his soldiers. This journey lasted until the beginning of April, when they found
themselves in Mattsee, 25 kilometres from Salzburg. At the Mattsee station, Ern Pajts decided
that, on account of the perils of the situation, the relics had to be buried. One night, towards the end
of the month, he put the treasures in a military petrol barrel cut in half and buried this several
metres into the ground. While they were engaged in this, Arrow Cross were men also present,
including the Arrow Cross Deputy Prime Minister Jen Szllsi. The crown keepers were digging with
cocked guns in their pockets: they feared being killed by the Arrow Cross men after the work had
been done. A few days later, they were taken prisoner by the American Army.

The Americans promised to Pajts to return the crown to the Hungarian people only when Hungary
was completely liberated. During the harsh Communist dictatorship there could be no hope of this,
at least not before and immediately after the 1956 Revolution. Kept in Fort Knox, the regalia were
only to become the subject of serious discussion from the middle of the seventies since the
Hungarian authorities tried to raise the subject at just about every diplomatic meeting. But at the
same time, Americans also had to quell the opposition of Hungarian exiles in America, most of whom
were opposed from the very beginning to the government of the United States "crowning Kdr", as
they said at the time. Although the US did not succeed in completely dampening this opposition,
there was an attempt to work out a formula acceptable to everyone. According to this, the crown "is
being returned to the Hungarian people" - and not to the Communist leadership - by the Uni ted
States government, and it was to be exhibited in a public place. In addition, and this was, perhaps,
the severest condition, Jnos Kdr, the First Secretary of the party, could not be present at the
handing-over ceremony. Since the Hungarian government very badly needed this international
recognition and, especially, the financial help they assumed would follow, the American conditions
were accepted. On January 6, 1978, in the building of the Hungarian Parliament, the American
delegation officially handed over to the Hungarian people their coronation regalia, which had been
out of the country for 33 years.
VOCABULARY

divide and rule - to keep control over people who might oppose you, by encouraging disagreement
or fighting among them

to crown it all used for talking about the last and worst thing in a series of bad things that have
happened

the jewel in someone's crown the best or most valuable thing that someone owns or has achieved

crown prince a prince who will become king after the present king or queen dies

sceptre a decorated stick that a king or queen carries at ceremonies

cloak a long thick loose coat without sleeves, that fastens around your neck

orb, globe a small gold ball with a cross on top that a king or queen carries as part of a ceremony

follower someone who believes what a religion or system of ideas teaches, or who supports the
person who established them

camp follower someone who supports a group or political party but does not officially belong to it,
especially in order to get an advantage

GRAMMAR BITS

Possessive Structures

Can you say school's principal or bank's manager?

No, but! Normally you wouldn't say school's principal or bank's manager - you'd say school
principal and bank manager.

Let's have a look at why:

In English, we can use nouns to modify other nouns. So we can say a computer expert - somebody
who is an expert, a specialist, in computers, is a computer expert - not a computer's expert!
Somebody who's in charge of a company is a company director. A producer who works in radio is a
radio producer. And in the same way a person who is the manager of a bank is a bank manager, and
a principal of a school is a school principal.
In some languages you can't do this; but in English, you can just put the two nouns together, and
that's what we use.

Can we ever say school's principal or bank's manager?

Well the answer really is 'no' but very, very occasionally you might want to talk about the fact that
the principal of a school doesn't belong to that school it belongs to this school, to our school, and in
that case we might say no, no, no, he's not your school's principal, he's our school's principal; but
notice there we're not really talking about his job, we're talking about which school he belongs to.

Common mistake

The most common mistake that people make with possessives is to avoid them, and to use of. So,
instead of saying the dog's bone, people say the bone of the dog or the woman's husband is the
husband of the woman.

Sometimes people say the book of my son, as opposed to saying it's my son's book.

It's my son's book! Pronunciation is kind of interesting with possessives, because often we don't
pronounce that 's' sound very clearly and so people often don't hear the possessive 's'. One of the
problems in learning to use it is that you need to learn to recognise when it's there, because often it's
said so quickly that it's easy to miss.

The other thing that is interesting is that the pronunciation changes, depending on the ending of the
word. So if the words ends already in an 's' or a 'sh' sound, or a 'ch' sound, or a 'ge' sound, we have to
put an es on the end, so we would say the judge, but the judge's wig, or the church, but the church's
congregation.

Plural possessives: what are the rules?

The rules are only to do with how they're written down, with the orthography. To really confuse
everybody, if it's plural, we put an apostrophe after the 's'. So, if we say the girls' boyfriends and
we're talking about several girls, we put the apostrophe after the 's' when we write it. If we're talking
about one girl, a girl's homework, we put the apostrophe before the 's.