896-1520. The first period is exceedingly poor in written remains of literature. In fact, the first and thus the oldest literary relic of the Hungarian language is a short “Funeral Sermon” (_Halotti Beszéd_), dating from the first third of the thirteenth century; and for 200 years after that date, we meet, with the exception of a Hungarian glossary of the year 1400, recently discovered at Schlaegl, in Upper Austria, with no example of a Hungarian literary work of even slight extent. From the middle of the fifteenth century we possess a fragment, called after the town where it was discovered, by Dr. Julius Zacher in 1862, the “_Königsberg_ (in Prussia) _Fragment_.” Thus, the number of extant, or hitherto discovered Hungarian works of even slight literary merit is, down to 1450 A.D., an almost negligible quantity. Mr. Szilády in his “Collection of Ancient Hungarian Poets” (_Régi Magyar Költők Tára_) has indeed communicated six and fifty mediæval Hungarian church-poems and other fragments; but of that number scarcely a dozen are original poems, the rest being mere translations of the then current church-poetry. The philologist may no doubt find much to glean from even this scant harvest of Hungarian Literature in the first period. For literature proper, it is of no account whatever. Yet it would be unfair to leave this period without even a passing mention of its oral literature, or epic and legendary stories, of which there must have been no small quantity in those agitated times. The Hungarian naïve epic is lost. A glance at the habits of the Finns will, however, suffice to satisfy the inquirer that the Hungarians, like their cousins in Russia, must have cultivated the art of recitation and oral handing down of the glorious deeds of their ancestors, to no small extent. We now know that the immense epic of the Finns, the _Kalevala_, has been transmitted from generation to generation by bards who had treasured up in their memories the endless _runot_ recording the deeds of Lemminkäinen, Väinämöinen, and Jlmarinen. The Hungarians, too, had their bards, called _igrigeczek_, or _hegedősök_ (violinists); and at the manors of the nobles or the courts of the kings, old heroic songs were recited about Attila, King of the Huns; his brother, Bleda; the fearful battle on the Catalaunian fields (Chalons-sur-Marne, 451 A.D.); the building of the castle of Buda; the siege of Aquileia; and the last fatal wedding of the terrible Hun. These Hun epics were widely known and recited in mediæval Hungary, as witnessed by the chronicles of those times. The people firmly believed themselves to be the successors of Attila’s hordes, and this belief, although absolutely discountenanced by modern historians, is still lingering in the spinning-halls of Hungarian villages, and in lecture halls in England and America.