Birtalan Ágnes: Kalmyk Folklore and Folk Culture in the Mid-19th Century: Philological Studies on the Basis of Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna’s Kalmyk Texts.
INTRODUCTION
the pupils of various educational institutions in Astrakhan, and the Manuscript did not contain those recorded in Kazan. "After the folk songs followed the recording of tales with more difficult [syntactic] structure. These [tales] were written down in Kalmyk script by young Kalmyks from various tribes, some of them attended the secondary school, some the surgical school, and others the elementary school and were considered to be good story-tellers. These tales written down in Kalmyk script were repeated sentence by sentence for me by my instructor according to the people's pronunciation. In this way we prepared the transcription that I read out to him and corrected [the parts] in instances I had heard improperly. The grammatical analysis and the interpretation of the tales followed thereafter. My tale collection prepared this way contains fifteen shorter and longer folk tales written down with Kalmyk letters and in an abbreviated Hungarian transcription. All the texts recorded from the Kalmyk tongue are transcribed in both ways [i. e. in Kalmyk script and in translation]." 2 8 On the basis of the above statement all the fifteen tales of the Manuscript originate from Astrakhan. Whether the Kazan-collection has disappeared or its manuscript still awaits rediscovery in an archive or private collection is conjecture, however, some parts might be included into the Manuscript. The fieldwork method tested among the Tatars in Kazan was used by him among the Kalmyks, i. e. he looked for a school where he was able to find teachers of the language and students from various Kalmyk tribes. The main residence for his research in Astrakhan was the "Kalmyk foster home and school" (he named it in Hungarian "Khalymik növelde és iskola"), and as he stated (cf. above) he had the opportunity to talk to pupils in the elementary school and also the students of the surgery. 2 9 "Just as the Christian Tatar School in Kazan, the Kalmyk foster home and school - which is sponsored by the Kalmyk nation - was a lucky choice for me. To hear the seventy-five young Kalmyks from various tribes every day and to talk to them continuously was the best method to study the vernacular tongue." 3 0 In his Preface to the Grammar Bálint rejected the possibility of conducting himself a kind of "resident field work" beyond the city in the tents of the nomads. He emphasised its inadequacy for him, but did not deny the effectiveness and advantage of this kind of research, just. Nonetheless, working with the teachers and schoolboys for a shorter period - and his time was limited -, and in addition visiting the bazaar proved to be for him a successful method of collecting linguistic and folklore material: 2 8 "A dalok gyűjtését követte a nehezebb szerkezetű népmeséké, melyeket részint a gymnasiumba, részint a sebészeti tanodába, részint pedig az elemi iskolába járó és jó mesélőknek tartott, különböző törzsű, fiatal khalymikok Írtak össze khálymik írással. Ezen khálymik irásu meséket tanítóm a népkiejtés szerént nekem mondatolta és igy láttuk el átírással; ezen átírást azután én fölolvastam és a netán roszul hallottakat kijavítok, erre következett a mese nyelvtani fejtegetése és értelmezése. Az igy eszközölt mesegyűjteményem 15 hosszabb és rövidebb népmesét tartalmaz khalymik betűkkel és rövidített magyaros átírással. A khalymik nyelvből gyűjtött anyag mind ilyen kettős írású " Bálint: Jelentése p 12. Unfortunately , material written in Kalmyk script have not been discovered in Bálint's heritage. 2'' Grammar, p. XII. 1 0 "Valamint Kazánban a keresztyén tatár iskola, úgy Asztrakhánban is a khalymik növelde és iskola, mely a khalymikság költségén tartatik főn, nagy szerencsémre szolgált, mert a különféle törzsből összegyűjtött 75 fiatal khalvmikot naponkét hallani s velők folytonosan társalogni, a lehető legjobb mód volt tanulmányozhatnom a nép nyelvét." In: Bálint: Jelentése, p. 10 (cf. Kara: Bálint Gábor keleti levelei.). 12
