Újszász is a town in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county, in the Northern Great Plain region of central Hungary.

Sights

• Orczy Castle (Akácfa u.): Built around 1830 in classicist style. Its builder was György Orczy.
• Orczy Castle (Abonyi út 1): The 1880s built at the end, eclectic style. Its builder was Andor Orczy.
• Roman Catholic (St. Stephen’s) Church: Built in 1807 in late Baroque style. It received its present – day neo-Romanesque form in the 1885 conversion.
• The crypt of the Orczy family
• Reformed belfry: made in 1949 .
• Reformed Church: Built in 1992 .
• Bust of St. Stephen: made in 2000 .
• Kopjafa: It was erected in memory of the heroes of the settlement.
• Statue of St. Vendel : Carved again in 2006 .
• The Zagyva River is also suitable for water hiking
• The Újszász Park Forest

Folk songs collected in the settlement 

In 1918, Béla Bartók collected a significant collection of folk music in Újszász. The result of his work is 155 recorded folk songs, several of which have since become part of the universal Hungarian folk song treasure. A special curiosity of the collection is that almost all of the material came from a informant. At the well-known Virágék, Béla Bartók playfully shaped the text in the folk song of the world: “Milk boiled into the hat of Borcsa Varga” in a playful way, to talk about the dear Newszász informant of his heart.

The maiden name of the informant was Borbála Varga, and the common language referred to her as Banga Borca. It is also mentioned in this folk song that “Bátor Mihály waits there”, and this person was the lady’s second husband at that time. So Bartók wanted to thank the lady for the joint work by writing her and her family into the song.

Borbála Varga was born in 1893 in Újszász and died in 1977. After her first husband, she was named Bernátné Dobóczi, but she remained a widow, and after her second husband she was named Mihály Bátor. It can be found in the collections as a informant under both names.

Banga Borcsa’s tombstone in a local cemetery also reveals the lady’s occupation: she was a midwife for 37 years, helping 4,500 children into the world – she is engraved on her grave.

Folk music researcher Géza Paulovics visited Újszász in 1962 and re-collected the songs recorded by Bartók.