The Text World of the Hungarian Folklore I. Texts of Folk Belief (ed. Éva Pócs)

Publishing of the book entitled „Texts of Folk Beliefs” (ed. Éva Pócs)

The first, approximately 500 pages volume of the series „Text World of the Hungarian Folklore” contains about 1200 Hungarian folk belief texts, in the encyclopaedic system developed in the course of the Hungarian folk belief research, divided into two large groups (mythical beings and magic/divination). The texts represent the thematic and geographical totality of the Hungarian folk belief system, including the territories and topics common with the folk religion (i.e. some features of the cult of saints, several aspects of the sacred communication, church magic, the magical use of sacramentals, religious divination etc.).

The textbook contains texts from a 170 year period from the beginning of the collection of folk belief up to our time, in the thematic order of the Encyclopaedia. We have made the selection of the texts in order that every important topic and subtopic (in case of belief legends every type and subtype) should be represented by a number of tetxts.

The volume has been prepared paralel to the encyclopaedia-like treatment of the Hungarian folk belief; it serves as an illustrative textbook for the „Encyclopaedia of Hungarian Folk Belief” which will be published in 2012, a year after publishing of the textbook. The two books together will serve as useful manuals and university coursebooks for several research branches.