The book contains 339 Carpatho-Rusyn (in contemporary terms, Magyar-Orosz, i.e. Uhro-Rusyn) folk songs collected by Mihály Fincicky (1842–1916), a longstanding mayor of Ungvár/Uzhhorod. The songs are presented translated into Hungarian; unfortunately, the original Rusyn materials is considered to be lost. In his brief Foreword, the compiler mentioned that most of the songs were the so-called kolomyikas (named after the Hutsul town of Kolomyia in historical Galicia/Halychyna, now Ivano-Frankivsk oblast of Ukraine). It is remarkable that Fincicky strived to preserve the original rhythm of these songs (four-line stanzas written in iambic tetra- and trimeter).

It is worth noting that this book was preceded by another collection, Magyarországi orosz népdalok (Hungarian Rusyn Folk Songs), published by the Subcarpathian historian Tivadar Lehoczky (Sárospatak, 1864). However, Lehoczky only collected songs from the Bereg Region where he lived and worked, while Fincicky meant to cover other regions inhabited by Carpatho-Rusyns (Ung, Máramoros, Zemplén and Sáros).

Fincicky also collected over 90 Rusyn fairy tales which, however, were published only in 1970 in Hungarian and in 1975 in back translation into Ukrainian. His literary oeuvres included translations of short stories written by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Sologub and Nestor Kukolnik (the latter was a Russian author of Carpatho-Rusyn origin).