Hungarian Folk Tales

As part of my research for this series, I have been looking into the main characters' history and cultures of origin. One of the reasons I think it is important to study the folk stories and fairytales of these cultures is that you can learn a lot about a people by the oldest stories that they hold on to and continue to tell. I grew up primarily with Russian, English, and Irish folk stories, as well as the animated retellings of fairytales that we all grew up with. From the oldest stories and their retellings, I learned about the values, morality, and sense of humor of my family's cultures. If you study enough folk stories from around the world, you will encounter more than common themes. You will start to see the differences in what makes a character relatable or worth rooting for. Just as with cooking from all around the world, when we try other dishes we get a sense of what other cultures consider good or bad. It is the same with folk stories, every culture has a different twist and flavor of "what makes a good story" or "what makes a character worth rooting for."

Another reason for studying folk stories is to gather inspiration for my stories as they are urban fantasy and my favorite type of urban fantasy incorporates elements of real cultures and celebrates them.

This post will focus on the Hungarian influences, and I will leave the Celtic and Polish research I have done for another post. It has been challenging to find sources on Hungarian religion pre-Christianity but from what I have been able to find, they were animists in some ways and there is an emphasis on animals and humans being very close. One way we can see this is in their folk stories. Many stories have animals stepping up as either a guide and savior of the main character or sometimes as hilarious antagonists.

Most of my information, so far, has come from the animated series Hungarian Folk Tales I found on YouTube. This series ran from the 1980s to 2012 and has been dubbed into English. I have linked to two of the stories that really stood out to me. If you click on the image, the first one will take you to Pepper Pot Peter. I find the story entertaining, the animation is delightful and the theme song is catchy. The second one that I linked to the second image is King Kitty. This one is delightfully ridiculous and I think wins as my favorite Hungarian folktale. It features one of my favorite ending phrases of "if X did not stop, they would still be doing Y to this very day." and that just makes me happy and I can't tell you why.

I hope you follow the links and get the song stuck in your head and that you enjoy the stories! Let me know if you have a favorite folk or fairytale or anything like that in the comments below.