Matyóföld: three neighboring settlements-Mezôkövesd, Tard and Szentistván-bounded by the Sajó and the Tisza in the western half of Borsod County. The inhabitants, the Matyós, Roman Catholics in a sea of largely Calvinist neighboring communities, became a distinctive ethnographic group only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They made their living working rented lands at some distance from the settlements proper, and later, took on seasonal work as agricultural laborers far from home. Strongly traditionalist communities, the Matyós evolved their embroidery and celebrated Matyó peasant wear in the course of the nineteenth century.