Love Songs

262. A peacock with a flowering bough, detail of a mirror-case.
Somogy County

From every perspective, love songs occupy a central position within lyric poetry, their numbers and proportion surpassing that of any other lyric group of songs. They are the ensemble of both the oldest and the newest types of works, that is, the most stratified lyric group of songs. {482.} Through the stages of occasional songs, lyric development flows, the effect of love songs at the same time radiating to every neighbouring and related group of songs. If anywhere, it is here where barriers of genre cannot be lowered, so that it is also very difficult to group love songs according to uniform standards.

Predecessors of the love songs are the flower songs (virágének) of the medieval period. We are able to trace their influence and survival in phrase and images, and even in construction. In the notes written by János Sylvester Erdősy to accompany the first complete translation of the New Testament, published in 1541 at Sárvár, he observes that one must get used to the parables of Jesus, and that “it is easy for our people to get used to them, because the nature of such talk is not foreign to them. They live with such talk in their daily speech. It lives in songs, especially in the flower songs, through which every nation can admire the sharp nature of the Hungarian folk’s inventiveness, which is nothing other than Hungarian poetry”. This praise of János Sylvester Erdősy also gives the first brief formulation of the poetics of the Hungarian folksong. The comparison with the parables, the reference to speech in images, which may refer to the opening image of the folksongs and to their great variability, and the laudatory expression in regard to the adroitness expressed in this “discovery”, show that contrary to the opinion of his contemporaries, the famous translator felt the beauty and richness of the folk poetry of his era. Of course, at this time folk poetry and written poetry were not in any way sharply separated, so that the recognition could have been applied to both.

The sound of the flower songs often echoes in the love lyrics in the motif of the nest building bird, which is known in numerous variations:

Once a wee sweet birdie

Used to come to see me;

In my flower-garden

Made her nest and stayed she.

But the evil people,

They began to note it,

And the nest the bird built,

Off the tree they smote it.

Off the bird went flying,

Now her cage is empty;

These are words she sent back:

In the spring I’ll see thee.

But she never came back,

Little bird came not she,

P’haps she found some new love,

And she did forsake me.

If she fails to come back,

I shall know she found one,

And her aching heart there

Someone else must have won.

{483.} If she fails to fly back

When the wheat grows ripe-red,

Then I’ll know we won’t be

Nevermore united.

Kászonimpér (former Csik County)

Among the lyric songs the love songs are the least tied to occasion; most could be sung by anyone, regardless of difference in occupation or anything else. The great majority are typical and general; everybody can consider them his own. Although in lyric songs the individual does not express himself through the community but directly, he does so as one of the types of his society and not as a person different from others; the old types of songs spoke not of the emotions themselves, but rather of the effects of the emotions, and did not name the beloved, but rather mentioned her as a flower or bird.

In recent times we can observe the presence of many kinds of basic lyric situations, more shaded sentiments, various character types, etc. However, every basic situation, character type, and emotional state is almost immediately typified; instead of shading, praise or even judgement is expressed in effective images. Furthermore, sorrow appears to be a greater inspiration than happy love.

The result of the above-mentioned generalizing and typifying is to render fixtures, as it were, adjectives, personifications, etc., permanent, which sometimes creates a highly stylized atmosphere. It could easily appear as though in these love songs everything is symbolic, although in reality it is a matter of often repeated poetic devices, the legacy of the initial and, at the same time, elementary stages of the lyrical mode of expression, the meaning of which could already have faded away.

The extraordinarily rich love songs can be divided into a great many groups according to the basic lyrical situation and expression of sentiments. One or the other of these criteria can be distinguished from the other even historically. Thus the little bird who carries the love message is one of the most favoured elements:

Sweet birdie, sweet birdie,

Chattering sweet birdie,

Take what I’ve written her,

Fly to fair Hungary.

If she asks who sent it,

Tell her, bird, he sent it,

Whose despair and sorrow

E’er his heart do harrow

Till the woes have rent it.

Szuha (Heves County)

Fig. 208. Carved decoration on graveposts.
Nagyszalonta, former Bihar County. Early 20th century

The Hungarian folksong, which speaks of the garden of love, of its blossoming, its fragrant flowers, can be traced far back even historically. Songs recall the gardens of medieval fortresses, later the peasant gardens in front of the house, tended by the marriageable daughter:

{484.} Hi, ho, marjoram,

Larkspur, pink and sweet William,

Lily of the valley!

If your garden I could see,

There I’d pick red roses free,

Right my heart would rally.

Hi, ho, marjoram,

Larkspur, pink and sweet William,

Redolent lavender.

If your garden I could see,

And I could your gard’ner be,

That would do such good to me.

However, most of the songs praise the beauty of the beloved with rich images or intone the sorrow of the abandoned lover:

Loveliest fair angel,

Our world adorning,

Brighter is your laughter

Than the rosy morning.

Whiter still your face is

Than a driven snow-field,

Blacker are your two eyes

Than the beetle’s black wings.

Thank you sweetest angel,

That you so adored me,

But I thank you also

That from you you’ve shoved me.

On my life the sun shall

No more set nor rise up.

’Cause I have completely

Drained my bitter life’s cup.

Now my mind goes wand’ring,

Of my love bereaven,

Like a lonely swallow

Wheels below the heavens.

Szaján (former Torontál County)

Others tell us that love means heartbreak, it is fleeting, that nobody should love deeply because it is not worth it, that it is also unpleasant, because the world with its gossip brings ruin on lovers whose mothers forbid them to meet:

Grass there grows not such aplenty

As they are that bear me envy.

Thorny briar that I live in,

Kapos town I must be leavin’.

Much as I have loved you ever,

Now it is, dear, through and over;

Our true love’s done and ended

Just as your foes have intended.

{485.} They would banter as we chatted,

When I eyed you, they were at it.

Let their tongues wag, I don’t worry,

If I loved you, I am sorry.

Mother, you can stop your prating,

And the whole world its berating.

Much too often did you scold me,

May your ill works harm you, oldie!

Lovers are separated from one another primarily not by envy and motherly prohibition, but by social circumstances, which at one time were not only kept account of in the Hungarian villages but often remained an insurmountable barrier between young lovers:

Born a poor man ever I stayed that way,

Though my rose I loved her truly alway;

Envy it has took her away from me,

Now it has all made a beggar of me.

I would go and dwell in a far country

Where I am all strange to all and sundry.

Gladly would I go unto the world’s end,

So I don’t get no one with me burdened.

Zsigárd (former Pozsony County)

Don’t you come, don’t you come at our door anockin’,

If you should have less than three good pair of oxen.

To an ox-proud lad they gladly would me marry,

Down-and-outs are thrown out if too long they tarry.

Déva (former Hunyad County)

We find in these the pain of estrangement, abandonment, and permanent farewell, as well as refusal, rejection, and even a curse:

O I feel so poorly,

Death’s upon me surely,

It is my betrothed lover’s mother’s curses

Must have done it to me.

Dare not no one curse me,

Not even his mother,

just because her nutbrown, sloe-eyed darling son I

Never did love ever.

Had I loved him truly,

Now his wife I should be,

All under that church roof tall we should have sworn a

Marriage vow till doomsday.

Őcsény (Tolna County)

{486.} These groups of love songs are much more balanced than groups of other types of songs; the basic lyrics are strongly blended or “contaminated”; at the same time, it is precisely the love songs which were transformed most frequently into other kinds of songs (soldiers’, harvesters’, seasonal workers’, etc.). It is no wonder, therefore, that we meet with certain stanzas in four or five groups of love songs or other kinds of songs. Naturally, being lyric, love songs bear the closest, most intensive and reciprocal relationship to the songs of wandering and soldiers’ songs, though they are also related to love letters, cursing songs, and certain types of ballads as well as mocking songs and, in modern times, songs of migration to America and of seasonal workers.

The territorial division of various kinds of songs is fairly equally distributed. However, on the Great Plain the group of love songs is somewhat more accented than other groups. It is also true that the oldest love songs come in the largest numbers from the eastern edge of the Hungarian linguistic region (Székelys, Csángós of Moldavia).