The Folklore Collection from Dzūkija by Aukusti Robert Niemi

This collection presents folklore recorded by the Finnish folklorist Aukusti Robert Niemi in 1911 in Dzūkija, in the parishes of Valkininkai, Perloja, Merkinė, Nedzingė, and Marcinkonys (approximately 2,000 items), the majority of which consists of songs. The folklorist made considerable efforts to publish the songs from Dzūkija as a separate collection, as he had done with the material he collected in Aukštaitija in 1910, which was published in 1912 as a separate book titled Lietuvių dainos ir giesmės šiaur-rytinėje Lietuvoje / Lithuanian Songs and Multipart Songs in North-Eastern Lithuania. Unfortunately, this plan was never realized. A. R. Niemi’s manuscript folklore collection from Dzūkija is notable in that one part of it has survived as the original manuscript, while another exists only as a handwritten copy made during the preparation of the material for publication. The original manuscript is preserved as the archival file LTR 627 (with its copy designated LTR 627a). The portion that survives only as a handwritten copy, which allows reconstruction of the complete collection, is stored as the archival file LTR 628. A small bundle of original manuscripts from this collection (141 texts) is archived separately as the file LTR 628a. To reflect the entirety of the folklore collection from Dzūkija as a document of significance for Lithuanian folkloristics, The Folklore Collection from Dzūkija by Aukusti Robert Niemi presents all the archival files: LTR 627, LTR 627a, LTR 628, and LTR 628a. The collections LTR 627 and LTR 628 preserve a consistent numbering of recorded folklore texts: the collection LTR 627, with some exceptions, includes approximately one thousand folklore items recorded by A. R. Niemi (1–1000), while the collection LTR 628 begins with number 1001. It should be noted that the consistency of the folklore collection from Dzūkija is disrupted by a bundle of folklore from various regions of Lithuania, appended to LTR 627: riddles, proverbs, and sayings considered to be copies from the collections of the Lithuanian Society for Science. This “insert” may have appeared during the documentation of the collection for archival preservation, at a time when factual information on A. R. Niemi’s folkloric activity in Lithuania was still scarce. The collection presents scanned images of original manuscripts and of handwritten copies, along with texts from the original manuscripts (LTR 627, LTR 628a) adapted according to established editorial criteria. The texts of handwritten copies that lack reliability due to poor copying are presented only as scanned images. Additionally, details of the folklore items have been entered into the Lithuanian Folklore Archives database along with other related information (such as details about the informant, the collector, the place and date of recording, and notes), while the locations of the song recordings are linked to the Geography Bank of the Aruodai Information System. It should be noted that details about the informants, the place of recording, and other information were not transferred to the handwritten copies; therefore, the texts from the archival file LTR 628 are presented without metadata, except in cases where such details could be identified from the surviving original manuscript, LTR 628a.