28 THE FOLK SONG CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: WHEN HEP, HEP IS NOT HOP, HOP Martina Pavlicová – Lucie Uhlíková The demand for a comprehensive study of musical folklore was accepted in Czech folklore studies more than a century ago, but the two components of a song—the tune and the text—have been studied separately for many reasons. On the one hand, a song is a unit where one component conditions the other. The tune determines the number of syllables of the verse and vice versa; the link between specifc tunes and lyrics is often regionally specifc. Through this, the characteristic features of the folklore of individual regions are studied. On the other hand, the two components of a song also function independently— the same tune is associated with diferent lyrics, and variants of one text may work with diferent tunes. The history of interest in folk song also shows that music and words have not been studied equally. The reasons for this include the complexity of musical notation versus writing down the text in the actual song collection, as well as various purposes related to the context of the time or the personal interest of the researchers. In the Romantic period, poets relied on folk song lyrics, in which they were inspired to compose echoes 1 and forgeries 2 . They sought a pure national language but also a national spirit in folklore, as we can see, for example, in Johann Gottfried Herder 3 . 1. The echo represents a genre type created by the stylization of the poetics of folk song. It is considered an aesthetic model in the pre-romantic and romantic contexts. The echo seeks to express new content through a “national” experienced form (Peterka 2004: 457). The origins of echo poetry date back to the end of the 18 th century, frst appearing in English literature, and beginning to appear in Czech literature at the beginning of the 19 th century. They are mainly associated with the work of F. L. Čelakovský. 2. For more on European forgeries, see Otáhal, Milan 1986: Význam bojů o rukopisy [The Signifcance of the Struggle for ‘The Manuscripts’]. In T. G. Masaryk a naše současnost II. Praha: Nové cesty myšlení. 40–71. Available at: <http://www.rukopisy- rkz.cz/rkz/gagan/jag/rukopisy/dokument/otah-1.htm>. 3. Cf. Johann Gottfried Herder 1778–1779: Volkslieder. 2 vols. Leipzig: Weygand (see especially the preface to the second volume).