"Popular poetry is the true poetry. We must strive to assure its supremacy in literature. When once the people begin to reign in poetry, they will be nearer to that political power which it is one of the aims of the century to give them." Arany said "Amen!" The same year in which Petőfi wrote this (1847), Edward Szigligeti's first popular play, The Horse-Herd, was performed. Szigligeti introduced the peasants on to the stage and showed them in dramatic conflicts as the centre of serious interest; before his time they had only furnished the episodic humorous elements in a play.
John Erdélyi (1814–1868) began a work similar to that of Bishop Percy in England. He studied folk-lore and collected a number of songs, tales and ballads, which had previously been disdained. In his preface he declared that the collection formed one link of the chain which would bind the different classes of the community together.
The two great currents, the democratic and the patriotic, united, and augmenting each other's power and rapidity, gave new direction and force to Hungarian genius.
