Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/18

 xiv full well how dangerous it is to build up theories on a mere similarity of names amongst barbarous or semi-barbarous races. The first reliable information we have about them is that about the year 1116 A.D. Bisseni and Siculi formed the body-guard of the Magyar King Stephen II. in his war against the Czechs. They supplied the vanguard of the army of King Géjza against Henry of Austria about 1146. More than half a century later, i.e. A.D. 1211, Andreas II. presented some uninhabited territory in Transylvania to the Teutonic knights; and, in a deed dated 1213, William, Bishop of Transylvania, granted the tithes of his territory to the same order, but reserved to himself the right of collecting them from all Magyar or Székely immigrants who might settle on the lands in question. King Béla IV. ordered the Székelys to supply him with one hundred mounted warriors in war; and later on, to show them his gratitude for their faithful services, he created them military nobles: "Quod non sub certo numero (in a body as hitherto) sed eo modo sicut servientes regales, per se et personaliter armata nobiscum exercituare teneantur." The Székelys of Hungary Proper gradually disappear, but the Siculi of Transylvania figure throughout the pages of Hungarian history as a separate people, with institutions and privileges of their own, and acting as a sort of border-fencibles in the numerous wars with the enemies of the Magyars. They furnished a separate title to the Prince of Transylvania, and, although recent reforms have swept away old barriers, yet one still hears people speaking of the three nations of