Tóth Arnold: Vőfélykönyvek és vőfélyversek a 19. században - Officina Musei 22. (Miskolc, 2015)
Summary
A variant of the same is a quatrain with a double couplet, occasionally developing into six-line or ten-line stanzas. A presumable influence of 11-syllable and 13-syllable lines of new-style folk songs is shown by the very frequent disruption and fluctuation of the properly caesuraed, isometric 12-syllable scheme in vőfély verses. 3) Changes throughout the 19th century The most important historical change is a shift in the proportions of texts types, text groups and text forms used within the genre. The number of prose orations and solemn speeches in a preacher-like tone, prominent at the beginning of the period, was more or less halved by the end of the century and replaced by rhymed verses in certain thematic/functional positions (e.g. of calling verses). Wedding-time jesting verses were practically axed from the repertoire by the early 20th century and limited to a couple of text types. (The “jesting recruiting verse” and the “wedding ushers’ dispute on marriage” would remain in use for long throughout Hungary.) There was a simultaneous increase in the number and diversity of verses recited to introduce the various courses of the wedding dinner being served. Such verses take up nearly half or one-third of, in particular, late chapbooks. Such shifts in proportions and structural changes are, of course, interconnected with a transformation of the process of wedding celebrations and the role of wedding ushers. The economic and social transformation taking place in the late 19th century (embourgeoisement of the peasantry) arguably brought about both a strengthening of the custom of rural weddings with vőfély verses and a simplification resulting in a diminishing use of vőfély verses. The number of manuscript vőfély books existing at the time and the chances of finding them today in the various regions are likely to be closely related to the regional extent of this transformation of folk culture. Changes in the scenario of wedding celebrations can hardly be traced in vőfély books. In the case of manuscript books, the reasons are numerous. Miscellaneous collections and ‘associatively-written’ manuscript books are, by nature, not suitable as a basis for a study into the sequence of events of any wedding celebration. Existence or non-existence of certain texts may be the only indication in this regard. For multi-authored/multi-generation manuscripts, the time span covered and the ever- expanding system of text units stemming from each other make it impossible to identify changes in the sequence of events. (Later authors only add to or complement the existing body of text.) And the scenario-type and single-authored manuscripts, as well as those written down in one go have often turned out to be fragments of the original. Apparently, chapbooks functioned the other way round to manuscripts by not recording existing customs, but rather promoting a scenario defined by an author or publisher. Therefore, vőfély books and vőfély verses should not be the basis for any attempt to reconstruct the process of wedding celebrations in the 19th century. Continued investigation into these changes could be a main focus of further research. To that end, the vőfély book material from Makó, which has not yet been fully reviewed and thoroughly analysed, can be of better use than the one from 539
