Volume 59/1: Materials for the Ethnography of Western and Southern Slavs. Part 1. Lusatia

The Lusatia volume of ‘Materials for the Ethnography of consists of three parts. The first one includes translations into the Polish language, by Kolberg, of excerpts from the work of L. Haupt B J. E. Smolerj ‘Pjesnicki homych a delnych Łuziskich Serbow’, published in the years 1841-1843. Kolberg translated a broad description of wedding rites with songs that accompany them (texts of which were left in their original form) and parts of other chapters concerning customs and rites. In the second part, there were included Lusatian materials that come from the archives of A. Kucharski, a slavist, who conducted investigations on the history, literature and language of Lusatians, in the years 1826-1827. In Kolberg’s collection there were preserved 253 Lusatian songs (some with melodies) and notes on the language that come from Kucharski’s manuscriptal heritage which, until then, was considered lost. Songs and samples of live speech recorded by Kucharski in the field basically come from Lower Lusatia. The third part comprises some scarce glossary and bibliographical notes by Kolberg. The introductory notes by three editors concern, among other issues, the question of the authorship of these sources, reconstruction of the chronology of their origin, and in relation to the manuscripts from Kucharski’s archive, also the language side of the notes.