Short stories
The Good People of Palóc
A jó palócok
Kálmán Mikszáth · 1882
Opening lines
Az napról kezdem, mikor a felhők elé harangoztak Bodokon.
I begin with the day when they rang the bells against the clouds in Bodok.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Fifteen short stories, often tragic, set in the Palóc country, the author's native region, where the same villages recur from one tale to the next: Bodok, Majornok, Gózon, the Bágy stream. A lost lamb is sought, people talk of the hair of the Péri girls, of Zsófi Tímár's widowhood, of old Filcsik, said to be a pagan, or of the Virgin of Gózon on a pilgrimage day. The peasants are portrayed with their beliefs and their way of judging.
Context
The collection appears in 1882 from Légrády, a year after the Tót atyafiak, and these two volumes of stories at last win the author recognition, after years of efforts without echo. In them he returns to the country of his childhood and to the stories he had lived or heard there; most of the villages are invented, but they have real models. The book, often reissued, appeared in English in London, with an introduction by Clifton Bingham, and again in 2025, in a bilingual edition.
Who it is for
Fifteen stories of a few pages each, to be read one at a time; there is a bilingual Hungarian and English edition, and no French translation has been located.
Prizes and reception
The book that, with the Tót atyafiak, made its author known, and that opened a new era in the portrayal of peasants.
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