THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE KÖRMÖCBÁNYAI TÁNCSZÓ

[Dance rhyme from Kremnitz]

Abstract

The author of this paper examines one of the earliest texts of old Hungarian erotic poetry. The short song known by the name Körmöcbányai táncszó (Dance Rhyme from Kremnitz] was written down on the cover of a register book by Johann Kreusl, a town clerk of Kremnica,. According to Mária Ludányi, the Körmöcbányai tánc- szó was probably translated from German; its motifs (an old woman dressed in a young woman’s clothes, who starts dancing and frisking about like a goat) evoke a poem by Neidhart von Reuenthal. The author of the paper sets out to reconstruct the contemporary context of the song. She points out that the term ‘agnő’ in the poem referred indeed to an old woman in the given period. However, it was also used to describe a lazy, useless woman regardless of her age. Depending on which meaning is favoured, the poem may be related either to the concept of the fountain of youth or to the image of a bad woman from a “world turned upside down”. The song does not bear the marks of a one-time translation of the period. If it is really a translated text, the transfer may have been a communal one. The author outlines further on the bilingual, German and Hungarian urban environment in which the song may be viewed as the result of code switching between these languages.