The Complete Works vol. 82: The Chełm Region. The supplement to volumes 33-34 of CWOK. Collected from the manuscripts and printed sources and edited by E. Miller, musicological editing by B. Linette. Poznań 2004, pp. LXXXVI+410, illustrations.
Volume 82 is the supplement of the monograph of the Chełm region, which was publishes as volumes 33 and 34 in the years 1890-91. Kolberg managed to publish only its first part. The second part was published posthumously by I. Kopernicki from Kolberg’s materials. The supplementary volume includes ethnographic and folkloric material from the region which was not included in the monograph and commentaries to texts and melodies from the 19th century edition.
The present volume starts with an introduction, which describes the Kolberg’s research in the region, his research method undertaken in the preparation of this monograph and the content of the monograph. In addition, there details about his cooperation with Maria Hemplówna are disclosed. She assisted Kolberg in collecting the material and contributed to this monograph. Another issues discussed in the introductory chapter are connected to the manuscripts and editorial methods.
Materials from ‘The Chełm Region’ omitted by Kolberg and Kopernicki in volumes 33 and 34, published in the present volume include: a few notes to chapters ‘Lud’ [The People], 21 notes to ‘Pieśni i melodie obrzędowe’ [Songs and ritual melodies], 48 notes to ‘Pieśni powszechne’ [Universal songs], 4 notes to ‘Pieśni szlacheckie i mieszczańskie’ [Gentry and peasant songs], 21 notes to ‘Pieśni z rękopisu Andrzeja Wojtasa’ [Songs from the manuscript of Andrzej Wojas’, 54 ‘Tańce i melodie bez tekstu’ [Dances and melodies without text], the germs of the description of beliefs, a few stories and proverbs, and ‘Język’ [Speech]. This material comes from Kolberg own research conducted in the years 1859 and 1866-70, which documents mainly musical folklore, some information got from the literature and manuscripts of Maria Hemplówna, an ethnographer from Tarnowo near Chełm. She had strong connections with this region and she cooperated with Kolberg by collecting a valuable folkloric and ethnographic material. The most distinguishing is a set of 151 songs and instrumental melodies collected mainly by Kolberg during his field research, an extensive dictionary of Russian folk by Maria Hemplówna, and a few interviews written down by her in order to illustrate the Chełm dialect, as well as a set of songs by A. Wojtas collected among court service.
Commentaries to volumes 33-34 provided on a basis of a manuscripts’ analysis include the information about the author, date, bibliographical reference and so on. Moreover they include printed material, differences between the printed version and manuscript, and cues on Kopernicki’s interference into the text.
The materials published in this volume, along with the content of the monograph by Kolberg is a unique documentation of folk culture of the Russian-Polish borderland situated between the Bug and Wieprz Rivers, and between Drohiczyn on north and Tomaszów Lubelski on south. They illustrate, among other things, the unknown from other sources period of development of Ukrainian dialects from the 1860s and 1870s.
