Hála József, Landgraf Ildikó: Magyarországi bányászmondák (Érc- és Ásványbányászati Múzeumi füzetek 24-25., Rudabánya, 2001)

Miners' legends from Hungary (Summary)

the individual mines and mining towns were founded, which are products of the poedc folk imagination. In these stories plants, animals or supernatural beings indicate the site of some valuable raw material to a shepherd, a hunter, or a lime burner. The legends of this type resemble the so-called mines and treasure legends. Just like these, also the legends of deposit discovery or mine founding may be either folk belief legends or historical ones. In the view of the authors it is right to range all of them into the same thematic group, both in the study itself and in the text selection, namely to the Historical legends. Miners have preserved quite a number of toponymical legends about the mountains, valleys, and peculiar geologic features of their region. In fact, these constitute one of the most numerous subgroups of the Historical legends group. A considerable number of the Historical legends put the narrated events without more specific dating into the remote past, often to the time of the Tartar invasion or of the Turkish wars. This holds true for the miners' historical legends, too. Heroes of the Hungarian history (kings, soldiers, etc.) turn up in some rare cases only. The protagonists of the Sin and punishment subgroup are punished, in most cases by death, for cruelty, murder, false evidence, or other crimes committed against the prevailing social order. In the miners' legends belonging to this subgroup these miners who amuse themselves, revel in the mine, are lecherous, or commit blasphemy. A peculiar type of the miners' legends is the "Venetian's legend" which can be ranged in none of the above-mentioned thematic subgroups. In the legends of this type a taciturn and mysterious stranger, a Southerner (in most cases a Venetian) is searching for mineral wealth, mostly in the Alps or in the Midmountains of Germany. He succeeds, becomes rich and can live in great splendour. This type of legend is widespread over the entire area of the Alps, in the Sudetes, in the German Midmountains, in Slovakia and in the historical Upper Hungary. Of course, some details may differ from region to region. Another typical miners' legend is the story about a disaster causing the death of several hundred miners, while their wives are amusing themselves dancing with the owner of the mine. This story is known from written sources but it has been preserved by the oral folklore as well. The theme was repeatedly elaborated on in the literature. In earlier times this legend may have been known all over Europe, coming to the Hungarian miners' tradition from Germany. The development of the specific miners' beliefs and their survival up to the near past can be explained by the miners' special conditions of work and way of life. The folk belief legends of the Hungarian miners have been grouped by the authors as follows (keeping in eye the international classification). 1. Fate, destiny, omina. Approaching accidents and disasters were predicted from various omens. Such were e.g. strange noises (interpreted as signals of a