Aszfaltolvasztó kazánba hányt, szalonnasütéskor elpusztult, nyirkos pincében megpenészedett Kriza-kéziratok nyomában. Kísérlet a Gergely Pál konstruálta legenda lebontására
On the Trail of a Legend: the Fate of János Kriza's Manuscripts

Summary/Abstract: In 1863 the Unitarian minister and bishop János Kriza (1811–1875) published Vadrózsák (Wild Roses) Volume 1, the first great collection of folklore containing works assembled with the help of an entire network of collectors, ministers and teachers.The canonization of the entire Transylvanian folklore and folk collections was based on this selective anthology.Subsequent research into other academic and ecclesiastic archives, identified additional texts which had not been included in the 1863 volume.This paper follows the tracks of the manuscripts and deals with the legend created by Pál Gergely (1902–1982), curator of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.According to Gergely, somewhere around 1949 he discovered a huge collection of the Kriza's unpublished manuscripts in the basement of the Academy.This paper documents Gergely’s ever-changing narrative; verifies his statements compared to known facts, and, proposes a possible version of the truth about the story: perhaps the Academy overlooked the folklore manu- scripts, believing that medieval codexes held higher value. Gergely was a great storyteller; but since he was not a scholar, he was often not taken seriously. The role of Ágnes Kovács (1919–1990) the folklorist in creating the myth must have been merely that of an editor/publisher.

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