Folklore is the intellectual knowledge of the people in a particular country that is all that appears in popular traditions, folk customs, folk-poetry, folk dance and in folk music. Practical knowledge is expressed in handicraft and folk art.

Hajdúság has an ample ethnographic spectrum. The relics of the advanced market-town peasant culture and the traces of archaic way of style of shepherds, marsh-dwellers and people in swamps who all lived near the nature can equally be found here. A particular duality is a characteristic feature of this area regarding small-scale farming. The archaic processes and the advanced agricultural technology are present jointly and simultaneously that is the intensive farming and nomadic stock-farming in the plains of Hortobágy.

The town of Debrecen is situated in the intersection of particular ethnographic regions. The products of the craftsmen lived here were widely preferred and they had important part in the folk culture and folk art of the wider area. The local history part of the permanent exhibition of Déri Museum displays the rich collections of everyday articles of former citizens in Debrecen called “the Cívis” citizens.

The folk culture of the Hajdú-town situated in the vicinity of Debrecen shows several identical features. However, despite the common history these town do not have a unified folk culture and local characteristics can be found everywhere. In Hajdúböszörmény the adorned plank houses, in Hajdúszoboszló the special customs of sounding on New Year’s Eve, in Hajdúdorog the Greek Catholic traditions excel in the other neighbouring Protestant towns and villages while the folk culture in Balmazújváros has been enriched by the traditions of German people settled here in the eighteenth century.

Hortobágy is situated in the region of our county. Apart from the famous nine-arch bridge, the exhibitions in the Shepherd’s Museum and in the Körszín (Round Shed) show the unified shepherd’s culture developed here and preserve the shepherds’ adorned personal belongings as relics of shepherd’s art.

Shepherd’s dance called ”botoló” (dance with crooks) is an integrated part of the shepherd’s culture in Hortobágy. This dance is linked with the Hungarian soldier’s dance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries called Hajdú-dance where the music was provided by pipers, drummers then later by gipsy musicians after the violin had become a widely spread musical instrument. The most competent and professional dancers were herdsmen, shepherds and swineherds who once used crooks, shepherd’s hooks and swineherd’s axe.