László Merényi

Born in Pomáz on August 18, 1837, he was educated privately before continuing his studies in Késmárk and Kecskemét, then spending about a year and a half at the law faculty of the University of Pest. Rather than follow a legal career, he turned toward folklore and language.

Working on behalf of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he spent six years in Transylvania collecting Székely dialect material and folktales. That large body of fieldwork was not published in print, but it shows how deeply he was involved in preserving spoken tradition. Later he worked for several years as an accounting clerk in the finance ministry, leaving the post because of illness and returning to folklore collecting.

He is remembered as a Hungarian folktale collector and as the author or compiler of volumes such as Sajóvölgyi eredeti népmesék and Dunamelléki eredeti népmesék. He died in Budapest in 1907, leaving behind work that still matters to readers interested in folk imagination, regional voices, and the history of storytelling.