1520-1711.
Amidst the din and excitement of the endless wars in Hungary, both civil
and foreign, during the seventeenth century, the agitated mind of the
common people vented itself in numerous ditties, skits and lampoons,
which, after the name of one of the national parties, have been called
_Kurucz-poetry_. It consists almost exclusively of largely unprinted
little poems, mostly political, and depicts the agonies and torments
of the patriots. Some of them are good and true in tone, and even
powerful in the expression of hatred and satire. The one ever-memorable
folk-poem of that time, however, was not written in words. The profound
passions aroused by the last great revolution under the romantic Francis
Rákóczy II., towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of
the eighteenth century, were incarnated in inimitable fashion in the
“_Rákóczy march_,” the most fanaticising of all war-marches. Whoever
actually composed it (tradition ascribes it to a Hungarian gipsy-woman by
the name of Panna Czinka), that march spells a whole period of Hungarian
history, just as Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ spells a whole period of
English life. The Magyar nation was at the end of the seventeenth century
far too unpractised in literary architecture to rear its pangs and
longings into a dome of words. It was, however, then as now sufficiently
imbued with the power of musical creation, to embody its woes in the
fiery rhythms of the most heroic of martial songs.