Tóth Arnold: Vőfélykönyvek és vőfélyversek a 19. században - Officina Musei 22. (Miskolc, 2015)
Summary
Kisgyőr, discussed herein. General conclusions could be much better substantiated if results of new case studies, such as the Kisgyőr one, were available. 4) Variation and distribution A numerical assessment has shown that the overwhelming majority (approximately one half) of vőfély verses are unique and without any folkloristic variants. The proportion of direct copies from chapbooks has been found to amount to a mere 10 per cent, much less than expected. These two findings suggest that wedding usher verses were products of a real creative/re-creative process, allowing individual authorial invention to play a relatively significant part. The ways of variation and distribution of them, however, follow the general rules of the variation and distribution of other types of folklore works. In addition to direct copying, the formation of contaminated chains of stanzas, a frequent occurrence of migrant stanzas and migrant couplets and the functional differentiation of texts may result in variants being produced. Verse form and rhyming are of pivotal importance: monorhymed quatrains normally stay together, while double couplets tend to be detached into separate couplets that migrate between texts. Of particular interest are the findings on the direction of the distribution of texts. On top of copying from chapbooks to manuscripts, there was a great deal of copying between manuscripts, as well as of creating handwritten records of oral tradition and from memory. For the chapbook titled The Great Plans Wedding Usher Book, firm data are available to substantiate that the verses published in this chapbook could have had existed in manuscript before, that is to say, chapbook authors also drew on manuscript collections that came into their hands. Accordingly, the genre of vőfély verses was created and passed down, across the 19th century, through the constant cycle of oral, manuscript and print communication. 5) Findings relating to cultural and social history The wedding usher books covered by this research suggest that the writing and use of vőfély books were strongly linked to Hungary’s Reformed denomination. This may be explained either by higher levels of literacy and traditions of college studentship, or the traditional roles of ‘people’s officials’ rooted in a democratic stance of the Reformed church. Accordingly, miscellaneous collections primarily feature, on top of wedding celebration verses, religious texts (catechism, Christmas and Easter songs written to the tunes of psalms, biblical poems and funeral songs). Out of these, funeral farewell verses represent the largest group and are the most closely related to vőfély verses from the form, substance and function points of view (see ‘farewells to the bride’). A possible focus of further research may be a detailed comparison between the two genres, as well as the exploration and publication of manuscript sources containing both vőfély verses and funeral farewell verses/funeral songs. As far as the history of rural literacy is concerned, it should be noted that there was a gradual rise in the number of manuscripts towards the end of the century. 540
