n the first volume of Rumanian Folk Music (Instrumental Melodies) I portions of Bela Bart6k's subsequently-discarded preface, concern ing the fate of his folklore publications, are presented in explanation of the editorial processes necessary for achieving the publication. 1 By way of introduction to this revised edition of a previous, although in complete, published version of the Rumanian Carols and Christmas Songs (Colinde), we refer again to the author's suppressed lines which pertain to this volume: The second publication by the same publisher was to include my collection of Rumanian Colindas (Winter-solstice songs). Their extremely interesting texts were supposed to appear in original as well as in English. After several years of delay, the translation to English prose was completed, one part in adequate archaic English, the rest (by someone else) in most unsuitable Kitchen-English. The publisher did not wish to change this, though. Result: I published the book at my own expense; however, only the musical part, because of lack of sufficient funds. The texts are still in manuscript, even today. 2 Our primary aim, therefore, has been to unite the Rumanian poetic texts and translations with the musical part, in one volume, as was the desire of the author."

N January 30, 1944, Bela Bart6k, writing from Asheville, North O Carolina, where he had gone to regain his strength after a long period of ill-health in 1943, commented, Here I have started on a very interesting (and, as usual, lengthy) work, the kind I have never done before. Properly speaking, it is not a musical work: I am arranging and writing out fair copies of Rumanian folksong texts'! Although the date has not as yet been established, the first draft of the Rumanian folk texts as texts per se was written-if an apparent age of the MS. can be considered a clue-sometime before Bartok had emigrated to the United States in 1940. This draft (see description below) had been forwarded for etymological data, according to the non-Bart6kian autography appearing thereon. The identity of the informant or informants involved and the circumstances surrounding this matter remain unknown at the present writing. After Bart6k had made offset prints of the music examples of the 2 first two volumes of Rumanian F olk Music in 1940, the printed but incomplete draft of Vol. II (Vocal Melodies)-comprising 304 of the ultimate total of 659 pages-was sent to Nicholas Vama~escu, then di rector of "The Romanian Radio Hour" (Station W. ]. L. B. , Detroit, 3 Michigan), for correction of the texts, in April, 1941. 1 Letter to Joseph Szigeti, in Bartok Bela levelei (ed. Janos Demeny; Budapest: Miivelt Nep Konyvkiado, 1951), p. 184.

he wealth and variety of artistic creations evolved by the Ru- T manian people in the course of the centuries have long alerted the interest of foreign scholars whom circumstances brought to the lands of the Rumanians. The Polish chronicler Matthew Stryjcovski (16th century), the Genovese Franco Sivori, secretary of the 16th century reigning prince Petru Cercel, the Magyar poet Balassius (Balassa Balint 16th century), Paul Strassburg, the envoy of Sweden's 17th century King Gustav Adolph, the Silesian poet Martin Opitz (17th century), the German Johannes Troester (17th century), and many others have left us many accounts, often praises, all precious testimonials providing a better knowledge of past times. The first notations of Rumanian popular melodies known to us like- wise go back to the 16th and 17th centuries. The tablatures for organ left by the musician Jan of Lublin, by the Franciscan monk John Caioni, who was of Rumanian origin himself, and by Daniel Speer, and, indeed, those recorded in the manuscript known to musicologists as the Codex Vietoris, are not, however, to be considered as true collections of folklore. Nor do the ten "Walachische Tanze und Lieder" collected and published in Western notation by the Austrian Franz Joseph Sulzer, in the second volume of his Geschichte des Transalpinischen Daciens, das ist: der Wala- chei, M oldau, und Bassarabiens, printed in Vienna in 1781, come under the heading of a folklore collection as we understand the term today.