Forrai Ibolya: Néprajzi Közlemények 30. évfolyam - Népi írásbeliség a bukovinai székelyeknél (Budapest, 1987)

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form were collected into booklets by those 'Székelys' who were able to write (so called'kolligatum') where other important events and dates of their history were also noted, and were bequeathed to suitable younger man partly in written form, partly by oral tradition. The inhabitants of the five Bukovinian settlements have been practically living outside of the official Hungarian state border for more than 200 years. Their clergymen and their teachers frequently were of foreign origin who did not even speak Hungarian. Nevertheless they wanted to preserve their own national identity, their mother tongue, their culture and this way they have developed an autocratic, spiritual culture of their own, based on folk poetry. They had difficulties in obtaining Hungarian books and if they did, those have not always met their requirements or suited their tastes, so they have made hand-written books of their own, which were sold and bought and borrowed the same way as printed books nowadays. Besides collected religious songs and mundane folk-poetry part of these books (mainly those of recent past), deals with historical events of their origin, the massacre of Mádéfalva their residing in Moldva and final settling down in Bukovina and above these mentions important events of the period when they have been living under Austrian and later Romanian rule and finally their transmigration to Hungary. Into the texture of their village history is woven the history of their own lives, setting this way an example to their fellow countrymen. Our present book gives a survey of this manuscript literature. The editor