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A Nation's Sacred Destiny, Part One: Heroic Legends of the Huns and the Magyars
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14214 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
4,649 Words |
| Author
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Steven Béla Várdy and Agnes Huszár Várdy
Steven Béla Várdy is department chairman and professor of
history at Duquesne University and adjunct professor of East
European history at the University of Pittsburgh. Agnes
Huszár Várdy, his wife, is associate professor or comparative
literature at Robert Morris College and also teaches Hungarian
language and culture at the University of Pittusburgh. Part
One of this articles appeared in the July issues of THE WORLD
& I. |
Heroic legends are among the most highly prized intellectual possessions of humankind. They relate to the deeds or alleged deeds of great personalities, and--along with the lives and achievements of these heroes--they also describe the evolution of their people. In this respect heroic legends are similar to the great epics of world history, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the German Nibelungenlied, or the Finnish Kalevala. The major differences between legends and epics are their length and their genre. Legends are much shorter and are written in prose.
During the Middle Ages, most legends dealt with the lives of saints. This still holds true in Hungary, where the term legenda refers to the life stories of the canonized saints. A number of medieval Western legends, however, also described the deeds of national heroes, such as King Arthur, Charlemagne, El Cid, or Richard the Lion-Hearted. Occasionally, they portrayed the lives of folk heroes, as was the case with Robin Hood and his merry men. In Hungary, these secular legends are called monda, a term whose meaning is very similar to the German Sage.
Traditionally, common folk did not distinguish between legends and fairy tales. To them, both were equally true and equally credible. Since the nineteenth century, however, these two literary forms have come to be differentiated from one another. Fairy tales (fabulae incredibiles) have become associated more with poetry than with history, while legends (fabulae credibiles) have come to be treated as romanticized history. This also holds true for myths, which are distinguishable from legends only in terms of their time. Myths portray a more ancient past than do legends, and therefore they are thought to be more removed from reality.
The history of the origins of people and the deeds of their earliest heroes are so intertwined in legends that the two are almost indistinguishable from one another, the best example of which is the case of the founders of Rome, the brothers Romulus and Remus. This also holds true for the Hungarians or Magyars, who are relative newcomers to Hungary (ninth century A.D.) and whose historical roots are lost not only in the mists of time but also in the vastness of the Eurasian steppes. And while nowadays our knowledge about Magyar origins is decidedly greater and more detailed than only a few generations ago, not even today can we dispense with their heroic legends as sources for their history.
Like all other historical legends, the legends of the Magyars were produced by history itself.
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