
A collection of Hungarian folk tales gathered by Merény László brings listeners into a world where ordinary life and magic intertwine. One standout story follows a destitute youth, famed for his striking looks and a golden tooth, known simply as Szép Miklós. While cutting hay in the fields, a white pelican swoops down, dropping a sealed, violet‑ink letter addressed to him.
The letter, penned by the fairy maiden Ilona, invites Miklós to the mysterious Tündérszép realm and urges him to follow the bird’s flight path. Driven by curiosity and a longing for wonder, he abandons his humble home and sets out on a long, perilous trek across seas, glass‑capped mountains, and other uncanny lands. Upon reaching the fairy kingdom, he encounters the queen’s court, where he is given a puzzling task involving three horses and a towering heap of grain, hinting at the challenges that await him in this enchanted world.
Language
hu
Duration
~2 hours (169K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Albert László (This book was produced with permission using text made available from the Hungarian Electronic Library. The text was amended after comparison with public domain scanned images of the original publication from the Google Books project.)
Release date
2012-01-13
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects
1837–1907
A 19th-century Hungarian collector of fairy tales, he helped preserve the strange, lively world of folk storytelling for later readers. His work is linked with early printed collections that drew on the rich oral traditions of Hungary.
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