Fairy Ilona

Fairy Ilona is one of the best-known figures in Csallóköz mythology – Csallóköz itself was called Fairy Garden, Golden Garden, and “was previously populated by fairies”. ; "Fairies are generally told about, and by name they are only called fairy Ilona. They tell that she once visited Csallóköz, and swam on the Danube in the form of a swan. When this landscape was so beautiful that it was called the golden garden, many fairies inhabited it at that time, and the islands of the great Danube were their favorite places of entertainment, no other people could enter them, unless by some wonderful magical arts, or if someone was especially liked, they took them with them to their water fairy palaces and took them into their service, there was unspeakable light and beauty in their dwellings, everything shone with gold and diamonds, they themselves appeared among other people in the form of orphan girls, and whoever did good to them was rewarded a thousand times, their underwater domains spread far and wide, reaching even under the seas. Whoever came to them, they subjected to difficult tests, and if they showed firm loyalty showed them, they showered them with favors, but rarely did they last long, the coldly thrown back to a miserable life. The one woke up to a miserable pastoral state, and he never found out how he got out of there. — Those fairies no longer exist down here. They ascended to the stars, and if they exist, they do not come into contact with mortal people, because they are always more evil.” – wrote Csaplár Csallóközi, especially in his study entitled Folk Customs of the Danube-Szerdahely Region, from whom and from which Arnold Ipolyi also included it as data in Hungarian mythology.