The oral tradition consists of tales, songs, sayings, riddles, spells, blessings and curses created by communities and handed down orally from one generation to another. These narratives are not authored by named individuals. They originate in the beliefs, life, work, history and culture of the people, and are an expression of the community's collective experience, the mythic imagination, and the desire to explain, educate and entertain.

Bulgarian traditional narratives come in various forms: myths, legends, epics, ritual songs, folk ballads, fairy tales, moral tales and other tale types. They may be either sung or spoken.

Sung Narratives

"The Bulgarian folk song embraces all spheres of life, work, customs and beliefs, and contains traits of ancient heathen and Christian rites, images of supernatural creatures, legends of heroes (yunaks and haidouts, Momchil, Krali Marko), and historical events. Predominantly monophonic, the Bulgarian folk song has preserved numerous ancient elements. This is an art form that originated from the cohesion of poetry and music and combined with dance, it is among the most ingenious in Europe."

Heroic Epics

The wonderful heroic epic stories were always sung in a special style with 9 or 10 syllables to each line depending on the region they came from. The heroes were often historical figures, warrior leaders from the 13th and 14th centuries, who became overlaid with an earlier Bulgarian mythology. Heroes such as Momchil, Krali Marko (King Marko, also known as Marko Kralevity) and Doichin reflected human strengths and weaknesses on a grand scale. The tales are raw, exciting and poetic, and as powerful as any classical tragedy.

There are tales about Krali Marko in The Red Blood Rose, Breathing The Dawn and Beyond Nine Forests. The hero Doichin features in The Dark-Eyed Warrior.

Songs from the period of Turkish Rule

The five hundred-year period of Ottoman domination was a hard and cruel time for the Bulgarians. This was reflected in the development of a whole new genre of narrative folk songs called "haidoushki pesni", named after the haidouti, outlawed Bulgarian freedom fighters. These songs gave expression to the experiences of the Bulgarian people and their struggle against oppression. They tell of brave exploits by the haidouti, victories and tragedies, rape, pillage and resistance, and the survival of love in almost unbearable adversity. These songs still retain many traditional folk elements, and are often very poignant, poetic and inspiring.

Ritual Songs

Ritual songs are musically varied in style and form. There are ritual songs for almost every occasion to mark the passage of the annual cycle and the stages in each person's life. Many tell, or hint at stories from early mythologies, or contain symbols whose meanings have become obscured by the passage of time. Some are an unusual mix of Christian and pre-Christian elements, particularly the Christmas and St George's Day songs.  A Dragon Speaks to a Fir Tree is an example of a ritual wedding song.

Folk Ballads

Like ritual songs, folk ballads are musically varied. Their content ranges from stories of human experience to mythological songs. Here you'll find songs about subjects such as: the sun's wedding to an earthly maiden; the caprices of the samodivi, the wild  nymphs of the forests and waters; dead people who walk with the living; pre-ordained mortal murder and passion.

Myths

Myths are sacred stories about gods, goddesses, and the deeds of the divine and semi-divine beings and beasts that come from our beliefs about the universe. Unlike Norse or Celtic mythology, no coherent structured body of pre-Christian Bulgarian myth has survived into modern times. Indeed, Bulgarian myth draws on the three mythologies of its ancestral cultures: Thracian, Slavic and Proto-Bulgarian. (See the Folklore page for more information.)

However, mixed, merged and modified versions of these have come down to us over the centuries, and now live on in many of the Bulgarian sung narratives, as well as in the spoken wonder tales, legends and blessings, spells and curses.

The Veda Slovena

In addition, there is the mystery of the so-called Veda Slovena, a purported Slavic equivalent of the Indian Vedas. In 1874, the two volumes of the Veda Slovena ("Bulgarian folk songs of the pre-historical and pre-Christian age") compiled by Stephen Verkovitch, were published, creating a controversy about its authenticity that still rages today.

The songs were collected from remote Pomak (Bulgarian Muslim) communities in the Rhodopi mountains and contained not only legends about the origins of the plough, the sickle, the boat, wheat and wine, but a complete structured cosmogony including the Indian god Vishnu, the Thracian Orpheus and the Trojan War. Many of the tales are undoubtedly genuine, but the balance of current opinion is that the overall work is probably a fake, although an artistic work in its own right.

 

Spoken Narratives

The world's traditional tales (often known as folk tales) can be classified by theme. The best known system is Aarne-Thompson's complex but useful list of over 2000 tale types.

The following list describes only broad categories of Bulgarian traditional narratives.

Magic Tales

Often known as "fairy tales" or "wonder tales", these are stories with a strong magical component. There are heroes, heroines, dragons, samodivi (wood and water nymphs), vampires, talking horses and people with magic powers. Marriage is the main goal/theme in most Bulgarian fairy tales, and the main characters are those who are ready to get married.

Read about Bulgarian Dragons. See the Folklore page for more on Bulgarian vampires and samodivi. 

Folk and Animal Tales

These are stories about human experience, and about animals with human characteristics. Bulgarian folk tales often have a dark humour and include stories about tests of wit and wisdom. Many of the animal tales feature the wolf and the bear.

Legends

Legends usually lie somewhere between historical fact and myth. They include tales from folk lore about how places got their names, and explanations about the origins of natural phenomena and calendar customs.  The story, Why March has 31 Days is an example.

Trickster Tales

Tales about the darkly comic trickster characters, Hitur Petur (Sly Peter) and Nastraddin Hodja, are cruelly beautiful expressions of Bulgarian wit and humour. Hitur Petur is a crafty, slightly sinister Bulgarian peasant, and Nastraddin Hodja is a Turkish Islamic wise fool. There are many tales about the nefarious deeds of these two characters, including stories in which they try and outwit each other. Read anecdotes about Nastraddin Hodja and Hitur Petur.

Blessings, Spells and Curses

A wonderful treasury of folk belief, custom and practice.

Riddles, Proverbs and Sayings

Proverbial Bulgarian wit and wisdom. See some examples of Riddles and Proverbs and Sayings

CLICK HERE FOR SOME SAMPLE BULGARIAN TALES!

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