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.
FOLKLORE GENRES
Be Muuchk who has a mind similar to a steed 47 8 hit by the thunderbolt. Let your Udwl who left playfully 4 7'' come back in the future. BÁLINT'S SONGS IN THE KALMYK. CORPUS The Kalmyk corpus has obviously preserved the common poetic features of the folk songs of the Mongolian cultural area and variants of Kalmyk songs can still be traced among the Altai- and XinjiangOirats. Nevertheless, the influence of the Russian cultural environment is fairly apparent in Kalmyk folk song-collections - including Bálint's texts as well. The first records of Kalmyk folk songs were written down by the team of Peter Simon Pallas' expedition. Out of the seven songs (Pallas defines them as "verliebte und Klaglieder") five are regrettably given only in German translation and two love songs, also in the Kalmyk language, in a fairly good transcription that follows the rules of German pronunciation. 480 These two songs have been extensively analysed by me with regards their linguistic features, especially structure, genre and poetics. 48 1 Concerning Bálint's material, the most important corpus is Ramstedt's collection of folk songs edited and published by Pentti Aalto. The items of Kalmiikische Lieder were recorded in Astrakhan in 1903, where Ramstedt collected 22 tales, 90 riddles, 105 proverbs and 40 songs. 48 2 Numerous songs were noted down and handed to Ramstedt by the Baga-Dörböt (Kalm. BayDörwd) princess Ölzete Tudutova, which Ramstedt transcribed with Oirat letters into his field diary. 48. Some of Ramstedt's songs emerge in Rudnev's collection as well, while some of Tundutova's songs are included only in Rudnev's collection. 48 4 An interesting corpus of folk and revolutionary songs was published by M. Trituz in 1934 and republished by John R. Krueger in 1993. The booklet contains some stanzas and motifs that can be paralleled with Bálint's songs (cf. below). 48 5 A thematic song-collection with a detailed introduction was also published in 1989 and devotes itself to representing the most famous songs by genre and historical period(pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary times). 48 6 A description of the thematic framework used for the classification of the songs follows. Attempts to classify the archival and newly collected songs have been made by Kalmyk folklorists. Songs belonging to the repertoire of rituals and wedding performances are treated either separately (even if they show the characteristics of lyric or epic songs and not the features of the ritual poetics), 48 7 or are discussed in the genre system of lyric and epic songs - this dichotomy of interpretation is evident in the 47 8 Bálint Aranzal, Kalm. Arnzl is a mythical horse, frequently figuring in epics (tales and heroic epics), in detail cf. Fifth tale Basangova (BordZanova) interpreted that he is "quick minded" 47 9 Bálint alilji, cf. Kalm. äl'wlx "Spaß treiben, mutwillig sein; spielen (die Katze)" (R. 22), äl'lx "koketniCat", ZemanCivat' " (Mun 18), Khal. atialax "to lark about/around, to play the fool, to joke" (Bawden 13). 48 0 Pallas, Peter Simon: Sam[m]lungen historischer Nachrichten über die mongolischen Völkerschaften. 1. St. Petersburg, Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften 1776. pp. 153-157, besides the love songs there are two unique historical songs remembering the return of the Torguts to their homeland in 1771 and one conversation song between a dying soldier and his beloved girl: the analysis of the two song written also in Kalmyk, cf. Birtalan, Ágnes: Zwei kalmückische Volkslieder aus dem 1 8. Jahrhundert In: AOH XL1. (1987) pp. 53-74. 48 1 Birtalan: Zwei kalmückische Volkslieder. 48 2 Ramstedt, Gustaf John - Balinov, S. - Aalto. Pentti: Kalmückische Lieder. In: JSFOu 63. (1962) pp. 1-127. on p. 6. 48 1 Ramstedt - Balinov - Aalto: Kalmückische Lieder, p 6. 48 4 Cf. Ramstedt - Balinov - Aalto: Kalmückische Lieder, p. 6, and Rudnev, A. D.: Mclodii mongol'skih plemjon. In: Zapiski Imperalorskago Russkago Geografiőeskago Obsőestvapo otdeleniju Etnografii XXXIV. (1909) pp. 395-^430 48 5 Xal mg dun Sbornik kalmyckih pesen. Ed. Krueger, John R. (The Mongolia Society Special Papers 12). Bloomington, Indiana, The Mongolia Society 1993. 48 6 Törskn yazrin dud. Xal'mg ulsin kezängk boln ödgä caga dud. Ed. Okna, B. Eist, Xal'mg degtr yaryai 1989 [The songs of the motherland], 48 7 On the features of the structure of various lyric genres, cf. Birtalan, Ágnes: Syntactic features as means in the identification of Mongolian lyric folk genres. On the example of Oirad folk songs collected by B. Ya. Vladimirlsov (manuscript). 73
