Foreword

The Hungarians, who were Finno-Ugric in origin but who incorporated Turkic elements into their culture, occupied their country in the Carpathian Basin at the very end of the 9th century. Their culture, which was characteristic of the steppe, was influenced by the economic and social conditions of Central Europe, the conversion to Christianity, and the numerous neighbouring nations. For this reason it has been said that "Hungary is Europe in a nutshell". Here, folk cultures combine the traditions of East and West into a unit unique to and characteristic only of Hungary. In our work we attempt to illuminate her multiple yet unified character from as many aspects as possible.

Every book is meant for a smaller or larger community of readers. The author's job is the harder, his responsibility the greater, the wider the circle to which he wishes to offer something new. We feel this burden increasingly now that we have undertaken to inform experts and interested laymen alike about what our discipline has concluded regarding the traditional culture of the Hungarian people. The task is difficult not only because we must explore the most important territories of life, but also because we must do so in such a way as to disperse those romantic conceptions which even today often cling to the Hungarian people.

Though experts and lay public make different demands in regard to a book, the two can be reconciled. This is why we attempt a general synthesis without becoming immersed in smaller, or what we judge to be less significant, details. For the experts we include at the end of the volume a selected bibliography, with the help of which they can further research areas of interest to them. We serve both groups by including sufficient sketches, maps and photographs to make the message more understandable and more interesting. There are many debated questions in our field, since the raw material now being uncovered in ever growing quantities continues to raise new problems. We therefore first summarize the results of the debates already settled, or thought by us to have been settled, so that the reader can see the most recent but already established conclusions.

We wish to offer an outline summary of the entire field of Hungarian folk knowledge, a summary which extends into areas of social, material, and intellectual culture, social, material anthropology and folklore. This culture was for centuries primarily a tradition carried and reshaped by the peasantry, who from the time of its development in the Middle Ages was forced for the most part to be self-sufficient both in the material and intellectual areas. This type of culture is much older and more comprehensive than the culture of the ruling classes, and can with justice be called communal, since the widest strata of people passed it on to succeeding generations through tradition.