The Form and Content of Folk Tales

Let us now continue our discussion by a closer investigation of the historical, contextual, formal, social, and functional questions of the Hungarian folk tale.

Research on the historical problems of the Hungarian folk tale must go in several directions. Thus scholars have examined the question: in researching Hungarian folk tales may typical strata of Hungarian folk tales be found, which refer back to pre-Conquest times, to Oriental connections? Is there such a stratum, and can one distinguish it from the types, motifs, and perhaps certain forms of the more generally known West European tales? Naturally, the earlier romantic view regarded most of Hungarian tales as an inalienable national possession. Even after a great deal of comparative examination and debate, no ultimate conclusion can be drawn. The tales that have been examined above call attention to the fact that some shamanistic images of the pre-Conquest Magyars do appear among the motifs of folk tales, and as we cannot find their western equivalents in the western material, we must regard the so-called oriental shamanistic stratum as the most ancient portion of Hungarian folk tales (cf. pp. 670–2). One motif thought to have originated from such shamanistic religious belief is the frequent motif of the castle that rotates on a duck’s (or other bird’s) foot. This, however, is not by any means characteristic of the Hungarian tales alone, for it is encountered frequently in other tales, especially those from Russia and East Europe. The motif of the rotating castle occurs at a very early stage in Celtic epic, and other West European analogues of it also indicate a wide distribution of the motif. More recent researchers have taken the standpoint that generally it is not the case of an isolated motif but that more likely several elements and motifs from images and narratives of shamanistic ceremonies and rites can be found, presumably in a genetic connection, in Hungarian folk tales. Recently, a Soviet researcher has observed the transmission of elements and stories of belief of shamanistic rites into tales of entertainment. While these rites had a claim to {571.} authenticity, and while they possessed a socially obligatory validity, the stories attached to them were not able to be included among the tale-type narratives. However, when their social authenticity and validity began to break down, and eventually ceased, elements and motifs fell one after the other into the simple entertaining tale-type stories. More and more of the Hungarian stories of folk belief got into the world of the Hungarian folk epic tales (cf. pp. 588–9). This process can be looked upon as normal, and the religious and semi-religious element must have become, during various historical periods, part of the material of fanciful, fairy tale stories.

Naturally, in the following we shall refer only in very broad outline to some traits of the very complex historical process. The oldest elements of the Hungarian tales that were also connected to each other genetically could have issued from pre-Conquest, shamanistic rites. We can thus look upon the following as such motifs: the topless tree, the castle rotating on a duck’s foot, the learning and trial of the shaman’s apprentice (the sorcerer’s apprentice in fairy tales), the cutting to pieces of the hero, and also the formula of the sigh of the hero when he is resurrected after being dismembered (”Oh, what a strange dream I have had”). Furthermore, we may list here the motif of the mirror that can see the whole world (namely the magic mirror of the shaman), although we know that this motif occurs elsewhere as well, e.g. in the motif corpus of the Gesta Romanorum. Although many among these motifs are related to folk-tale elements from other circles, still their appearance in tales of a similar type and their consistent, living existence in the Hungarian tale corpus permit the supposition that they are the surviving remnants of an older, uniform, shamanistic type of religious imagery.

Otherwise, as we have said, if it is difficult to isolate one by one these motifs from the material that is known in other places as well, it is even more difficult to isolate certain types of formulae. Since the previously mentioned formula “Oh, what a strange dream I have had,” can also be found outside the circle of shamanistic rite, our supposition here can be justified only by the non-accidental, non-sporadic occurrence of these elements.

It is a harder task to attach the opening formula “Once upon a time” (hol volt, hol nem volt) to the oldest layer of Hungarian narrative. Some people list it among the polarizing tale-openings of Slavic origin, while others feel that this type of formula is frequent in the Caucasian corpus of tales (Mingrel, Georgian, Armenian, etc.) and from there it got by chance to other places. As its occurrence in the Seldjuk–Turkish, Caucasian, and Hungarian material is normal, while in other places it is accidental, this formula too seems to belong to the pre-Conquest layer of the Hungarian corpus of tales.

We can add many more tale-type idioms, such as the question “What are you doing here where even the birds don’t fly?”, and the answer the helpful old witch gives to the hero of the tale: “You are lucky that you called me grandma!” Some researchers consider this formula also as a survival of the matriarchal state of society. This is all we can say so far about the oldest layer of the Hungarian folk tale, of the stratum that is most divergent from West European tales. Although even this difference {572.} is subject to debate, still we can consider these motifs and formulae as a uniformly related group, belonging to the shamanistic culture of the Hungarians.

Stith Thompson, in his great work on folk tales, devotes a few words to the place of the Hungarian folk tale in the European corpus. It seems that he considers significant only the unmistakably German features in the Hungarian folk tale (and in the Czech and South Slav tales as well), although in his reference he also speaks of the situation between the East European and West European domains of tales. Just as it is hard to introduce a nation’s corpus of tales in a brief survey, it is equally difficult to emphasize a few of its characteristic features, those that would primarily apply to this particular treasury of tales. There are separable, larger domains of tales in the European treasury of tales, and it is without a doubt that the place of the Hungarian folk tale is among the East European tales. And still, in not just one episode, the Hungarian folk also assimilated among its tales a more ancient heritage. The Magyars, Finno-Ugric in origin, inseparably amalgamated with Turkic tribes thousands of years before the Conquest, and this duality determined the basic tone of their culture even before the Conquest. It is also certain that the Inner Asian, Caucasian, Iranian cultures also influenced the Magyars before they arrived in our present homeland, when they then came into contact with Ancient Slavic and Byzantine culture. Furthermore, after 896 A.D., Hungary became one of the sensitive focal points connecting different cultures between East and West (cf. pp. 694–700). Undoubtedly all this added to the complexity of the history of Hungarian culture, and within it the culture of the peasantry; at the same time, it made Hungarian culture into a unifier, a synthesizer of many contradictory elements.

Indeed, Hungarian folk tales stand at the border of the West European world of tales, their colourful, rich character originating from this position. There are tales which give opportunity for discovering numerous historical and cultural layers: in a single tale many centuries and cultural currents may meet. If, therefore, we want to speak of characteristic features of Hungarian folk tales, we must first and foremost mention their being situated between East and West as a characteristic feature, side by side with what has been said of their narrative style and stylistic features. The geographical location assuring many different contacts is one of the major causes of the multi-layered nature of Hungarian folk tales and of their wealth, which suggests many complicated historical and ethnic contacts. And finally, we cannot overlook the recognition of the already often mentioned shamanistic elements in these tales, which can no longer be explained by the situation that the Hungarians are wedged between the great Slavic and Germanic blocks, but which rather suggest their historical past and also their more ancient ethnic connections.

271. Cover of a chapbook novel

After these questions of the contents of the tale, let us take a brief, closer look at the relationship between the customs of story telling and of social classes. Certain documents tell us that during the 18th century, story telling was frequent even among young men and women of the nobility. We know that the spoken tale, the comic story, was fashionable {573.} among burghers. In the 13th to 16th centuries people also listened to the “godless entertainers” and tellers of merry tales in front of the church. Data exist from the 18th century indicating that during the hard and long years of military service the telling of tales was one of the comforts to that small community of men which happened to be formed in a regiment. They took turns in telling tales, and if a man could not tell a tale, he was humiliated through certain ceremonial forms. There was also a way for the story teller to find out if his tale still interested his audience, or if it was better to finish it. If to the question “Bone?” they {574.} answered “Meat”, or in other places “Crock!”, he could continue. If the reply was silence or one or two words, he had to end his tale.

In the Nyírség, in 1938, the 86-year-old Mihály Fedics told about the story telling customs of his childhood. What did he say? “Back in the old days there was no lamp. The fire in the hearth gave light even in the spinning room, and the women sat around that... The men also gathered. They all had a guba (cf. p. 326). They folded it, put it down on the dirt floor of the house, and sat on it, or some liked to spread it out and lie down on it on their stomachs. The men sang and told stories there on the floor. There was silence. I listened mostly in the corner of the hearth and gathered all of it into my head. The men told the tales, and there were some who just said ‘now I am taking over!’ When he finished the story, another volunteered to tell one, or even if no one volunteered, the others passed it on to somebody, saying, ‘You tell it!’ When I was cutting cordwood, I told stories at the clearing of the forest, and I too learned. There was a big hut there, and seventy of us slept in it. We told stories in this but all night. The one who told the story yelled out sharply from time to time: ‘Bone.’ Then if they answered ‘Crock!’ he continued telling it, but if only two or three answered, then he didn’t go on anymore, because one after the other had fallen asleep during the tale as we had been working hard all day long. But I, even if story telling had gone on for weeks, could not have shut my eyes...” This is the confession of a passionate story learner and story teller, and at the same time an authentic narrative of story telling custom–or at least of its more major characteristics–of the rest and work periods, going back at least one or two centuries.

It is common knowledge that the solitary humming of a folksong is possible, but the folk tale can live only in a small, live community. There is no such thing as solitary story telling. Therefore, the relationship between the audience and the story teller is a more important factor than anything else. This relationship determines the very existence of the tale, the methods of transmitting it, and the artistic-narrative processes of retelling, and recreating. Good story tellers do not like to tell stories for just one or two listeners, and our experience is that it harms the performance and stylistic effect of the tale if the folklore collector shuts himself up with the story teller and does not record the narration amidst a participating, laughing, excited audience.

Researchers throughout Europe have observed how much the community and the repeated, diversified narration of certain tales help to develop stabilized forms. In the course of the narration these two forces continually battle with each other: on the one hand there is the story teller’s demand for recreation (this is often demanded by the listeners, who expect something new as well), and on the other hand, there is loyalty to tradition.

Examination of the Hungarian peasant story telling communities gives evidence that bigger or smaller story telling communities practically cover the entire peasant existence with a network. We know the small communities, restricted only to the family, where the parents, or even more the grandparents tell stories to the young ones; but we should also know that it is customary in certain places that the young husband {575.} tells stories to his wife. In telling stories to the children, the role of the mother is usually the most significant, alongside that of the grandparents, but this is not a rule.

We differentiate the communities and occasions of story telling according to whether they are within or outside the village. The communities of village story telling can develop during the various work opportunities. Even when resting at night during the hard work of harvesting, and during the bundling of tobacco, the harvesting of corn, the various occasions of field and vineyard work, during the evening rest of woodcutters, or during the long rest periods of village life (the late afternoons and evenings of winter months, in the spinneries that were still fashionable at the end of the last century and the first part of this one)–on all such occasions, besides games and songs of the young people, listening to the stories of the old folk was the main entertainment. Outside the village, we find communities of story telling primarily among the herdsmen and fishermen, who did not consider themselves peasants, and among the groups of soldiers and woodcutters, and men who did work in cities (e.g. in the building trade). But we also know of story-listening communities in men’s dormitories, among the industrial workers, as well as in workshops among the village artisans.

In our opinion the communities may be more permanent, or even if the community breaks up from time to time, similar periodically reform. Such are the communities outside the village. The two types also leave a mark on the transmission of stories. The permanent type of audience in the village assures a stability, the repetition of types and structures, and relative continuity, while the ones outside the village make possible the infiltration of new elements and content into the village corpus of tales.

It is among the characteristics of Hungarian communities that there are actual specialists in certain genres of tales. There are some who like to tell merry, erotic tales, others who like telling religious or magic stories, and their listeners keep demanding the same kind from them. There are some story tellers who are masters of weaving up-to-date material and references into the tale, which gives opportunity for interruption and comic comments. In fact, audience demands and expectations prompt the good story teller to chisel out the forms and structures of his most popular, most successfully narrated tales, to colour up the more interesting episodes, and with these changes make his tales even more memorable. These listening audiences are sharp critics of a bad performance, and put beginners at story telling and over-hasty performers into their place. We also know that certain story telling communities (and the occasional story listening communities–woodcutters, soldiers, fishermen, herdsmen–lead the way in this especially) like to listen to very long tales that last for days, with interruptions that understandably follow from their situation. During such occasions the story tellers actually strive to lengthen, to colour their tales more and more. All of this has a direct effect on the text of the tale itself and on the development of the tale and the method of its transmission.

But we also know of special occasions for telling tales. In the course of big fairs, migrations, servant work on estates or at the far end of the {576.} country, and even abroad, the Hungarian peasant story teller moved into newer and newer, strange communities of audiences as late as the turn of the last century and the beginning of our century, where he became acquainted with always newer story tellers and themes. These contacts and the common ethnic and linguistic boundaries made possible the often seemingly abrupt “migration” of the tales.

If the occasions for story telling and an attentive audience can be proved to have a direct or indirect effect on the text and the transmission of tales, a story teller’s personality may affect the development of the text at least as strongly. Today we see with increasing clarity that both communities of listeners and the custom of story telling truly exist and flourish only at places where a talented story teller is active. In the course of collecting folklore, we repeatedly meet cases when the genre of the folk tale, the prose epic flourishes in villages, in communities where story telling is still in practice and where several story tellers function, each with a different degree of talent. From similar observations it is certain that this was always the case in other countries also. Even in literary life, there are many mediocre imitators or retellers who swarm around outstanding authors.

We must attempt to collect the total repertoire of the greatest possible number of story tellers, and with this method open the way for an understanding of the nature of transmission better, to discover the laws of creative and destructive processes during the course of retelling. That is to say, oral tradition is in no way destructive, as many people used to claim.

Our experience is that a certain ballad or tale begins to “fall apart”, to get “spoiled” when the community no longer uses its traditions, when it is preserved only in the uncertain memory of individuals. Since records note only certain stages in such processes, the idea of splitting asunder, of falling apart, developed with erroneous one-sidedness.

Our own personal folklore collecting experience has proven that in numerous cases stories told in fragments or outlines, and generally told poorly, are inseparable from their narrators, and that when we have listened to the really good story teller, it turned out that the text that had been “told to shreds” could come to a new life and become enriched with new colours. Many of the tales recorded during the past decades are like this. Of course, these tales are full of carelessly spoken language; there are no finishing touches by an author. We have also noticed that the same story teller might relate the same story–even within a short span of time–either in a more rich form or more poorly.

The personality of story tellers is known only since recent research. Although János Kriza, collector of ballads and folk tales mentioned some Székely story tellers with great affection and noted their names already in 1863, that is all that is known about the persons who told the stories.

In the same year Ágost Greguss, an outstanding researcher of the Hungarian folk ballad, wrote the following in one of his articles: “Much depends on the man who told the tale, whether he was an accomplished or a clumsy story teller. That is the reason why collectors seek for those who are excellent at telling stories.” The correct basic theory was present; it just was not put into practice.

272. Cover of a chapbook novel

{577.} Good story tellers generally come from among the poor peasantry, even from the poorest, the rural labourers, as much foreign data also testifies. According to peasant etiquette, telling stories or even listening to them was not proper; if a well-to-do farmer told a story he usually just told an anecdote or two. Story telling flourished, and still exists sporadically even today, among the poor peasantry, and the best story tellers are found among them. Such was Mihály Fedics, one of the best known of the Hungarian story tellers, who was a day-labourer throughout his life and lived in the greatest poverty, and who in the last years of his life {578.} became a beggar, earning his way from village to village; Mihály Lacza, who lived in similar circumstances until 1945; the widow Mrs. Palkó, who came from a landless, small-peasant family and struggled with serious cares. Almost without exception, all those herdsmen, fishermen and peasant story tellers known from the Hungarian linguistic territory belonged to the poorest layer of the Hungarian peasantry.

Coming from a certain social class determines a person’s outlook, which is one basic reason why in folk tales an awareness of the social position and the oppression of the peasantry developed with such a definite sharpness both in symbolic stories as well as in clearly pointed remarks. In the narratives of poor peasant story tellers, who lived in poverty themselves, the bitter anger and often wild passion of the oppressed intensifies unrelentingly, and shines through the medieval parable or fires up the story of a poor young servant man. Furthermore, the desire for the poorest and weakest to be victorious in the tales, and for the haughty and evil lords to be humiliated, the power of the dragon to be broken by the son who was ridiculed and considered stupid, these features gain especially strong authenticity when narrated by a poor rural peasant worker. All these seemingly worn-out themes come to vigorous life on the lips of story tellers in the community of their similarly hard-up listeners, and carry the promise of oncoming justice.

Among Hungarian story tellers we can find all the examples of those types who, according to foreign descriptions, can be found among tellers in other nations. We know of story tellers who try to relate with the greatest possible authenticity what they learned from their predecessors and not only do they not alter the structure of the story, but cling even to the sentences. Naturally this authenticity in reproduction is relative. Others actually relish making changes. We know of numerous statements by Fedics in which he asserts that he freely varied the motif stock of his tales, and that the value of his narration lay in his ability to make the story ever more varied. This is the method of many good story tellers in Hungary, as the text analysis of old collections also testifies, and this is the reason why the Hungarian tale does not exhibit the rigid construction characteristic of many West European tales.

The life, the personal experience of the Hungarian story teller is also woven into the tale, and the vocabulary of the tale itself shows what sort of peasant work, what craft the narrator is at home with. And we can also follow with attention those characteristics of the narrator’s style which testify to the faithful preservation of dialectical peculiarities, or to the mixing of certain of their elements with foreign influences; we can observe the linguistic influences of the city, which increasingly have been stolen into the style of story tellers, the imitation of the so-called gentlemanly, city-like speech, etc. Naturally, the differences between male and female story tellers also unfold, showing up in textual construction and in the development and elaboration of peculiar episodes.

In short, the development of the text of the tale, its future fate, and the sequence of its variations and transitions depend in a great many ways on the story teller. Therefore recently we have been trying to observe who is likely to become “an apprentice” from among the listeners of an outstanding story teller, who shall only retell the story, how the content {579.} of the story is retained in the memory of ten- to twelve-year-old children, and what development is shown in content. Long years are necessary for such study, and although the results may be less than the energy spent, we think it is worth the while.

Earlier folklore records and observations of village life show that story telling was alive everywhere in Hungary: the audience liked to listen to lengthy fairy tales, quick rolling, fresh anecdotes, and high-spirited, mocking village tales. According to the recollection of the old story tellers, the village always respected the story tellers of “beautiful words and a great memory”. To learn tales never heard before and the words of home stories was an organic part of village life and of military life, of the bleak evenings itinerant workers spent away from home. Telling stories does not function in peasant existence the way it used to do. Story-telling occasions are coming to an end, or rather the character and content of communal gatherings is changing, and the old story themes are no longer part of the audience’s interest. Instead, they increasingly discuss the questions and events of everyday life.

The anecdotes and local mocking stories cling most adamantly to life. Listening to fairy tales, and the re-creation of that peculiar, magical atmosphere that lifts the unbelievable adventures of the tale into the world of reality, where the listeners identify with the hero, is an increasingly rare experience. Naturally, we no longer have many good story tellers. We do know of ethnic groups where tradition is still alive, even though the custom of story telling itself is becoming increasingly rare. Still we must see two processes: the gradual relegation to the background of magic tales and fairy tales, and the listener’s slow desertion of the story tellers, which also means that the active role played by the audience in the preservation and verification of the tale is about to end. More and more story tellers are becoming isolated in Hungary.

If we consider the formal, stylistic characteristics of story telling and tale narration, we first of all must say a few words about the strong dramatic character of performance and style. We cannot state that this dramatic manner of performance and structure is an exclusive characteristic of the Hungarian folk tale. Several researchers claim the same characteristic for Russian story telling, and we ourselves also have listened to Czech and Slovak story tellers whose performance testified to their great ability to dramatize, to create freshness and brilliant dialogues, even in the telling of brief, joking stories. Comparative examination has discovered numerous examples of this both in and outside of Europe.

Naturally, when we deal with the structure of the tales, we have in mind primarily the fairy tale as an example of dramatic structure: the three adventures which follow the introduction and in which the hero must struggle with increasing difficulties, and in which the third, the hardest of the adventures, already carries in itself the concluding events which relieve the tension. Although it seems to work through primitive devices, this structure resembles drama in its composition.

The Hungarian folk tale is dramatic in other ways as well. Drama is expressed by the way almost every good story teller, in the course of telling a story, builds it up through dramatically powerful scenes,{580.} a procedure that also testifies that this is not a matter of individual invention but a common tradition of Hungarian story telling, not because of chance, but in accordance with certain rules. The scenes which follow each other are always played through the dialogues of the participating characters; the more description of action, related by a third person, is rare. There are Hungarian tales in which the interpolated descriptive and explanatory parts almost disappear and are barely more than a signal, so that the entire story, which is now a series of scenes, appears through many witty, lively disputes and dialogues. And he who has been able to follow the events of a tale right to the end in the company with a devotedly listening peasant community, can testify to the dramatic method of a good story teller’s performance. The story tellers build up the climaxes of the dialogues, practically change tone as the different characters speak, and use every tool to arouse interest and create tension before their enthusiastic audience.

In the course of analyzing the formal concerns of the Hungarian tale, we must mention again a trait that we have already spoken of in regard to the story teller. At first, on the basis of older, formerly collected folk tales which have been somewhat “corrected”, we could scarcely believe how very lengthily, and with what great attention to detail, story tellers spin their tale, especially a wondrous fairy tale. It is true that some such authentic tales are known even from older collections. This generous expanding of details is characteristic of Hungarian tales, and is achieved without sacrificing the dramatic strength of the performance. Good story tellers are proficient at amassing even small incidents; they like to enlarge the story’s structure and fit in newer motifs.

When in 1872 László Arany said in conjunction with his volumes of Hungarian folk poetry collection (Magyar Népköltési Gyűjtemény) that he wanted to answer the question “what characterizes the Hungarian tale”, he wrote the following: “In our Hungarian tales it is primarily the complexity that differs from the tales of neighbouring peoples. None of them connect the various parts in such a random way as the Hungarian folk, especially those from the Great Plain; among the Germans it is more likely that the narrator forgets and leaves something out, and the Grimm brothers mention in regard to numerous tales that they have created the tale from two; our Hungarian collector runs into problems precisely because of the length of the tales, and the complications that get them into trouble in the narration. I believe the style of life of our people to be responsible for this situation..., their days spent with animals, their free evenings on the farmstead, their naturally silent character makes them very patient in listening to narratives.”

That slow pastoral and country life to which László Arany attributes this method of construction has long ceased to exist, but our good story tellers still narrate tales this way. They like prolonging the narrative so much that even the tale’s introductory formula is made into a separate, comic little story to mock the audience, and in tall tales the number of climaxes are expanded and increased. Among the best performers we can observe a tendency to enlarge the numerous small episodes, which results in performances that freely expand the motifs, to the brink of loquacity.

{581.} This is why as regards the types of the Hungarian folk tale we can always observe that transitional characters abound and that many types are amalgamated into an untroubled construction. Recently we have begun to investigate the laws with which certain types and motifs are more frequently attached to each other, and the regularity of affinity that can be demonstrated in these attractions and linkages. That is to say, we think that the law of affinity is one of the many theories to explain the development of new types, groups of types, and of historical changes within oral tradition. In our opinion this is how actual groups of types developed from types that stand near each other, yet each type possesses an individual character, such as, e.g. the tales of the type of Amor and Psyche (AaTh 425), the Grateful Dead (AaTh 505–508), etc.

But the related affinity of motifs and types makes it possible while relating the tale to unify the identical, the variable, and the many transitional forms. Therefore, a frequent practice in Hungarian folk tale is to mingle together several types, or at least to enrich them with motifs, freely borrowing from other story types. As Mihály Fedics, one of the best known Hungarian story tellers, mentioned on one occasion: “Somebody who knows only a few tales, even only ten, can make as many as a hundred out of them if he has a talent for it.” At another place he explained that the good story teller can shorten or enlarge according to his taste: “The end of the tale can be here on the porch, or far over there at the edge of the forest.” The story tellers boldly exercised this sovereign talent for forming and varying and are exercising it even today. We know a beautiful confession by one of the most outstandingly talented story tellers with the inclination to reshape, a forty-three-year-old fisherman, Ferenc Czapár: “It might go on even for a week before I finish a tale. It could be started about anything. About a table, a plate, whatever came to mind. The story is exactly like a small sapling. It grows. Man cuts it back, grafts it, cleans it, it will have leaves, fruit. A life is developing, just like man’s. Who would think what is going to become of it? The tale is just like that. Once I started a tale about how a young lady found a wooden box. She picked it up, and looked to see what was in it. She opened it, and it was a dragon. He then picked her up and carried her off. I was telling for a week what happened to her. The tale goes the way we want it, only the foundation is needed, and everything else can rest on that.”

A third formal feature of Hungarian folk tales, their colourfulness and perceptive strength, is connected with these features. We do not think that we are biased when we call attention to the sparkling brilliance, the formal wealth, the joke-spinning witticism of Hungarian tales, since such wonders of the folk tale also ornament all people’s treasury of tales.

There is a wondrous duplicity in the method of narrating a Hungarian tale–although it is not alone in this in Europe. This characteristic duplicity consists in a realistic method of depicting a ceaselessly flying wonder, the expression of magic. But it is precisely the realistic depiction of small details that continually are brought into the tales, motifs told in Hungarian and known all over Eurasia, details from the Hungarian countryside, from Hungarian peasant life, and also about heroes that accord with Hungarian temperament. And it cannot be otherwise. {582.} Among other characteristics, this poetic method of realistic depiction is what is a distinctive feature of Hungarian tales. No matter where the hero of the tale travels, the scene of the adventures in the Hungarian folk tale takes place is the world of the Hungarian peasant, in the village, in a farmstead’s yard; and even the royal city is more like a little village than one of the small towns. The royal court very often recalls the prestigious household of a prosperous farmer, and one of the fascinating contradictions of the folk tale are the mysterious adventures, the enchantments and miracles that transcend this world, all woven together with the small realities of everyday life. Even the magic tools in tales–a spittle, a drop of blood, a comb, a starving nag and other such things–form an inseparable bond of the most unbelievable adventures with the everyday sights of peasant observation. Let us not even analyse what peculiar charm is provided by features of folk tales which permit to tell about the most impossible adventures, the most grotesque ideas, with a matter-of-fact naturalness. Most certainly this mode of performance is the reason that folk tales were listened to with such identification within rural cottages in wintertime, and in the herdsmen’s quarters out on the faraway pusztas.

However, this is not the only reason to believe in the folk tale, and for the anxiety and joy that comes from identification with its adventures. The Hungarian folk tale, in almost all its genres, is first of all the expression of the social desires of the people, of its self esteem, its longing for justice and revenge.

Many people already have spoken of this matter in many different ways and have looked upon the reverent miracles of the tales, and the victory of the youngest and weakest son as expressing a desire for some kind of normative world of the desires. Perhaps we need to speak some more of the social tendencies expressed in folk tales. People preserved, listened to, and continued to create folk tales not least of all because this poetic genre expressed more completely than others, either in clear world-parables or in very understandably pictured parables, the people’s concerns, their feeling of exposure among cruel oppressors, and their triumphant hope for the victory of the weakest. We know from the statement of many peasants how much they identify their peasant fate with the fate of the hero who fights it out with dragons, wicked warriors, mendacious friars. The statements explain the symbols very clearly.

It is also very instructive that the tale of the young servant man who took cruel revenge on his evil master and priest (AaTh 1000–1029) belongs among the most popular, most often repeated tales, and we know many versions of this type. Our experience is that the telling of such tales has a liberating effect on the audience, who do not deny why they are fond of these very tales. There is playfulness, the pleasure taken in wonders, fondness for adventure, everything in the narrative that for many centuries has been able to please peasant listeners who wish to learn about unknown worlds. And the greater the oppression, the more peasants have to stoop under their cruel fate, the more their tales are expressions of social tension, one of the most important factors in retaining folk tales. Barren, disconsolate poverty, newer and newer {583.} sufferings were the lot of the Hungarian peasantry for many centuries. This peasant past still comes through the meandering, light, colourful sentences of their tales.