The article is dedicated to the dialectological research of the linguist Samuel Cambel with a special regard to his collection of original dialectal folk narratives from Eastern and Central Slovakia. The authoress considers Cambel's works as well as other published or archived materials concerning the author and the time in which he worked. She demonstrates the significance of Cambel's dialectological research for establishing the base of collection of the folk oral tradition. Taking into consideration the philosophical, historical and social development in Slovakia, the authoress highlights the scientific qualities of Cambel's collecting activities. She evaluates the qualitative and quantitative aspects of his collection of the dialectal texts and in this way stresses its significance for the modern folkloristics. The paper aims to draw attention to the collecting activities of the several dialectologists that have not been exposed yet. Those scholars who were not folklorists collected numerous folk narratives while making research in the linguistic field.