Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/19

Rh Transylvania, viz. the Magyars, the Székelys, and the Saxons. Whether they ever spoke a language of their own we are unable to say; they speak several dialects, which have been carefully studied by Kriza, himself a Székely by birth, and which possess peculiarities not to be found amongst the Magyars, or any other part of the realm of St. Stephen. A passage in a work entitled "Hungaria et Attiia," by Nicolaus Oláh, Archbishop of Esztergom (died 1568), might, perhaps, be quoted to prove that an independent Székely language had existed once, but there is an ambiguity about the statement of the learned prelate which makes it useless to the philologist. At any rate, we do not possess a single scrap of the old language, if it ever existed.

Having thus made ourselves acquainted with the Székelys, we may proceed to consider the other Magyar-speaking nationalities.

The Csángós are Hungarian settlers in Moldavia; there are so many similarities in their tongue to the Székely dialects that Hunfalvy appears to be quite confident that they are a people of Székely origin. Of late years an attempt has been made to resettle them in the less populous crown lands in Hungary; the result, as one might expect, is, that some are content, whilst others lust after the flesh-pots of Moldavia.

Next come the Kúns (Cumanians). The non-Magyar writers, who have made the old language of this people their study, declare it, with almost unanimous consent, to be a Turkish dialect, whereas the Magyar writers, with very few exceptions, staunchly defend the Magyar origin of the Cumanians.