Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/20

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xvi
INTRODUCTION.

Foremost in the ranks of the latter party was the late Stephen Gyárfás, who denied that a lingua Cumenesca had ever existed, and that the various extant specimens are the remnants of the language of a people of Magyar descent, who had become Turks during the lapse of centuries.[1] His most powerful antagonist is Count Gejza Kuun, the learned editor of the Codex Cumanicus,[2] who espouses the cause of the Turkish party. Besides the valuable Glossary preserved in the Codex, several versions of the Lord's Prayer and other scraps of the Cumanian tongue are in existence, and have been examined by competent scholars, and pronounced to be of undoubted Turkish origin.[3]

Jazygo-Cumanians have been quoted in the note, and so we

  1. Cf. The History of the Cumanians, and also The Nationality and Language of the Jazygo-Cumanians, by Stephen Gyárfás. Budapest, 1882.
  2. Budapest, 1880. The original MS. is in the Bibliotheca Marciana in Venice. It was discovered by Cornides in 1770. Klaproth first made it known in his "Mémoirs relatifs à l'Asie," III. and Roesler published a specimen of its grammar in his "Romänische Studien," pp. 352-356.
  3. Count Géjza Kuun has, we are glad to say, not yet spoken his last word; for that indefatigable scholar is busily engaged on a large work on his favorite subject, which, judging by the extracts he read (June 1st, 1885) before the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, promises to rank with the best writings of modern philologists.
    It may be of interest here to quote one of the Cumanian children's rhymes:

    Heli, heli, jáde üzürmeny
    üzbe her!
    Zeboralle, sarmamamile,
    Alo bizon sasarma,
    Düzüsztürmo dücsürmö
    Hej ala hilala
    Zeboralle diicsiirmo.
    (Wolan, wolan, ich löse das Gelübde,
    Der Lenz ist da I '
    Mit Gebeten, Zauberzeichen
    Mache ich den Zauber
    Unschädlich. Ich preise dich!
    Es ist nur ein Gott.
    Mit Gebeten preise ich dich).

    Vide Ungarische Revue, viii.-ix., Heft, 1885, p. 644.