The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #11532   Message #3120586
Posted By: Jim Dixon
24-Mar-11 - 02:59 PM
Thread Name: Lyr add: Anathea
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Anathea
The original can be found in several old books of Hungarian folk songs. The trouble is, Google Books does a lousy job of digitizing Hungarian—so you can see the pages but you can't copy and paste. It would be a tedious (and maybe pointless) job for me to retype the Hungarian, especially since I don't read or write Hungarian, so I won't attempt it, beyond this first verse, anyway:

Fehér László lovat lopott,
A fekete halom alatt;
Minden nyereg-szerszámostul,
Csikós fékkel, kantárostul.

Which Google translate renders thus:

László Fehér has stolen horses
The black under the pile;
Every saddle-szerszámostul,
Horseman brake kantárostul.

Not much help, is it?

Anyway, that version has 24 verses, and can be found in:

Népdalok és Mondák [Folk songs and legends] By János Erdályi (Pesten: József Beimel, 1846), page 383.

By the way, it seems to be customary that in Hungarian, surnames come before given names, and the order is reversed when Hungarian names are cited in an English text.

Thus the sister's name is Fehér Anna in Hungarian or Anna Fehér in English. So I guess calling her "Anathea" is sort of a mondegreen.