“PLAYING-CARDS ARE MY CALENDAR AND PRAYERBOOK”
“PLAYING-CARDS ARE MY CALENDAR AND PRAYERBOOK”

Summary/Abstract: The international tale type catalogue lists a joke or anecdote with the words of the title of my paper. The same explanation of cards, within a similar story is known in the French, English, Irish, Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Icelandic popular literature of the 19th century. As BOLTE, the grand master of comparative folklore research, has shown in his studies (1901, 1903), which serve even today as the basic list of old variants, the “spiritual explanation of the playing cards” theme was very popular in Europe in the 19th century. The oldest known version (analyzed by GAIDOZ) is a chapbook printed by David Jones (1766) Cydymaith diddan. According to BOLTE the oldest French Version was the Explication morale du jeu de Cartes (1809), and the German one was the chapbook Das Kartenspiel in der Kirche (1805–1814). GYÖRGY has shown that KÓNYI (a Hungarian writer publishing the first Hungarian variant) was using an older German publication, the seven volumes collection of German anecdotes, Vade mecum (1764–1772 by Friedrich Nicolai in Berlin), where in volume VII, p. 130 (published 1777) the same anecdote appeared as Karten-Encyclopädie. Exactly the same text was reprinted in another German collection of anecdotes (Säke mit Anekdoten gefüllt, 1788 in first group “Erster Sack”, pp. 82–83, as nr. 116).

• Details
• Contents