HUNGARIANS IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR BY EUGENE PIVÁNY. ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN KEMÉNY. REPRINTED FROM ,,DONGÓ", TENTH ANNIVERSARY NUMBER CLEVELAND, O. 1913. I Although the Hungarian has but recently become an "element" in the great American "melting pot," he has been by no means a stranger on this continent. He seems to have even preceded here all European races except the Norsemen, for the Tyrker, or Turk, who, according to the Icelandic saga, discovered grapes at Vinland about the year 1000 A. D., could have been no other than an Hungarian1. In Sir Humphrey Gilbert's illfated expedition to New Foundland in 1583 we find an Hungarian humanist, Stephanus Parmenius Budæus, who had been selected by Sir Humphrey, on account of his learning and his elegant Latin verse, to be the historian of the expedition. Even the "fake" Hungarian nobleman appeared quite at the beginnings of colonial history, the first known example of this, fortunately not very numerous, species being no less a personage than the redoubtable Captain John Smith, President of Virginia, Admiral of New England, etc. He alleged to have received a patent of nobility, or grant of arms, from Sigismund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, a copy of which is on file in the College of Arms in London. Hungarian historians, however, pronounced it to be a forgery, and a very clumsy one at that. 1 Most of the latter translators and commentators of the Heimskringla take Tyrker to have been German. The question hinges on the translation of the Icelandic words "á thyrsku." It is difficult to see how they can be translated with "in German' instead of "in Turkish." (Turk and Turkish were then the appellations given to the Hungarians and their language.) |
