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

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INFORMATION Many books essays are dealing with the history of the 'Székelys' that is the Magyars, living in Eastern Transylvania. Very little is known though of that manuscript literature what turned up during recent ethnographical researches in the last couple of decades. All these recently discovered recollections date from our century. According to their number and content these written recollections of the Bukovinian 'Székelys' are now considered to belong to the traditional Hungarian folk-literature. Owing to the fact that the 'Székelys' were practically cut off from the sources of their mother tongue and culture their literature is more conservative and more restricted in literary genre, and it has been formed later than the literature of other ethnic groups of the Hungarian population. Notwithstanding the disadvantages deriving from historical, economic and social constraint, from the middle of the 19th century it forms an organical part of the Hungarian folk-culture. These manuscript recollections have taken shape in connection with the religious service of the Roman Catholic Church which is sporadically represented in the given area and this way its main genres the religious song (so called 'cantilena') as well as other songs connected to religious occasions and events (litanies, patronal festival songs, funeral orations, mourning songs e.t.c). These songs and other mundane recollections in poetic