• Artwork By [Design] – Miklós Szüts
• Baritone Vocals – György Melis (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6, 2-1)
• Conductor – György Lehel (tracks: 2-7, 2-8), János Ferencsik (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6), Zoltán Vásárhelyi (tracks: 2-9 to 2-11)
• Contralto Vocals – Erzsébet Komlóssy (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6), Márta Szirmay (tracks: 2-8), Zsuzsa Barlay (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6)
• Engineer [Balance Engineer] – Judit Lukács
• Orchestra – Budapest Symphony Orchestra (tracks: 2-7, 2-8), Hungarian State Orchestra (tracks: 2-9 to 2-11), Hungarian Radio And Television Chorus* (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6, 2-9 to 2-11), Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6)
• Photography – Gyula Holics
• Producer [Recording Producer] – János Mátyás
• Soprano Vocals – Éva Andor (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6)
• Tenor Vocals – József Simándy (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6), Sándor Palcsó (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6)

The setting is a spinning room in the Székely region

In the first scene, a man and woman say farewell before he is taken away. A little girl tries to stop him leaving. Two gendarmes appear at the doorway, search the room; the man goes out. In the second scene the woman bemoans her fate. Women and girls from the village enter in the third scene, attend to chores around the spinning room and a young woman sings a lively song of their life with so many men absent from home. There is a dance and they try to comfort the lone woman. The woman sings of thirty-three weeping willow branches and thirty-three peacocks, then a neighbour enters with a song about animals bought at the market (with their distinctive sounds). The fourth scene is a choral exchange between the young men who have entered and the young women who exchange taunts. In a pantomime a young man dresses as a ghost but is beaten by the girls. The fifth scene involves a young man Lázlós singing to his mother that he is dying of heartache, and there follows a traditional folk-song of spinning gold and silver, and the ballad ‘Ilona Görög’ (Helen). Scene six introduces a masker, disguised as a flea claiming riches but looking for lodgings, and seeking food. However, the gendarmes return - the man they arrested has protested his innocence. An old woman claims to know the real culprit – it is the 'flea' who is now hiding in a corner. In the final scene the man is reunited with the woman he loves and the village celebrates in song and dance.

Kodály wrote of the beauty and variety of Hungarian folk songs "like jewels sparkling in a strange, ancient fire"; these form the thread of the work, while his accompaniments are "full of colour, lush chromaticism and contrapuntal effects based on close canon and imitation".