Folk Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarians

Lore & Background

Stefan Verković collected the songs during his time as a Serbian ethological agent in the then-Ottoman town of Serres (today in Greece). The material came from the eastern parts of the Macedonian region. The book's title, preface, notes, and explanations are in Serbian, and it includes a dedication to Julia Hunyadi, princess consort of Serbia. The songs themselves are presented in their original form, with an explanation of unknown words in Serbian at the end.

In the preface, Verković explains his use of the term 'Bulgarian' for the songs, stating that a Macedonian Slav, when asked, would answer 'I am Bulgarian and I call my language Bulgarian.' He also notes that Macedonian Bulgarians were called Slavs in the books of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples (9th century), and later adopted the name 'Bulgarian' as a political rather than ethnic name.

Verković planned a second volume, but due to his involvement in the Veda Slovena debate, it was not published until 1920 in Petrograd as 'Сборникъ Верковича. Ι. Народныя пѣсни македонскихъ болгаръ.' The collection was republished in 1961 in Skopje by Kiril Penušliski under the title 'Македонски народни песни,' omitting references to 'Macedonian Bulgarians' and the original foreword. Bulgarian sources state this was intended to obliterate Bulgarian historical memory and build a new Macedonian identity. A second republication in Bulgarian by Petar Dinekov in 1966 included a translation of the preface and an introductory study.

Reader's Guide

The collection is regarded as Verković's most valuable contribution to Bulgarian folklore, yet it has been subject to criticism and reinterpretation. Bulgarian literary historian Petar Dinekov noted numerous inaccuracies, irregularities, and inconsistencies in the recordings, including corrupted language, unfinished materials, and unstable metrics due to haste and lack of musical sense, as the songs were mostly recited rather than sung. The collection's significance lies in its documentation of 19th-century folk songs from the Macedonian region, but its reception has been shaped by competing national narratives. The 1961 Macedonian republication, which omitted references to Bulgarian ethnicity, reflects the ongoing dispute over the identity of the region's Slavic population. The original 1860 edition remains a primary source for studying the folk traditions and linguistic features of the area, despite its technical flaws.

Did You Know?

• 270 of the 335 songs were collected from a single singer, Dafina of the Serres region, whom Verković called the 'Bulgarian female Homer.'
• The book's subtitle is 'Book One: Female Songs,' as the songs were lyrical and sung only by women.
• The 1961 Skopje republication omitted all references to 'Macedonian Bulgarians' and the original foreword explaining Bulgarian ethnicity.
• Petar Dinekov criticized the collection for having too many inaccuracies, including corrupted language and unstable metrics due to hasty recording.

The Forging of a National Identity Under Ottoman Rule

For centuries, the Slavic-speaking communities of Macedonia existed as a loosely defined collective without the markers of modern national consciousness, with the label 'Bulgarian' carrying primarily a social connotation tied to rural, Slav-speaking peasant life rather than a distinct ethnic category. The transformation from this diffuse social designation into a coherent national identity unfolded gradually through the nineteenth century, driven by the broader rise of nationalism within the Ottoman Empire. As the classical millet system began to erode, religious affiliation increasingly became entangled with ethnic allegiance. A pivotal moment arrived in 1847, when the Ottoman Sultan first employed the semi-official term 'Bulgarian Millet,' signaling tacit recognition of Bulgarians as a distinct ethno-linguistic community. This was followed by the formal recognition of the Bulgarian Uniates in 1860 and the Bulgarian Exarchists in 1870. Through these institutional milestones, what had been a loose social label was progressively recast as a marker of national belonging, laying the groundwork for the collective identity that later generations would inherit.

Rival Nationalisms and the Struggle for Allegiance

After the Treaty of San Stefano initially placed most of Macedonia within a Greater Bulgaria, the intervention of Greece, Serbia, Austro-Hungary, and the United Kingdom led to the Treaty of Berlin, which returned the region to Ottoman control. This diplomatic reversal set the stage for an intense three-way competition among Bulgarian, Greek, and Serbian national movements, each seeking to claim Macedonia's largely unaffiliated Christian population. Churches and schools became the primary instruments through which each camp attempted to implant a 'proper' national consciousness. The establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 marked a particularly charged period, as the majority of Slavic speakers naturally gravitated toward the Slavic-speaking church over the Greek one. Yet the choice of the Exarchate was far from a straightforward act of national devotion; it was shaped by a complex web of local loyalties. Greek and Serbian movements generally followed directives from their respective capital cities, whereas Bulgarian actors in the region began to treat the term 'Macedonian' as a marker of political loyalty, gradually cultivating a distinct regional spirit that ran parallel to, and sometimes diverged from, the broader national project.

The Verdict of Outside Observers

A remarkable chorus of nineteenth-century travelers, ethnographers, and linguists consistently identified the Slavic inhabitants of Macedonia as Bulgarians, drawing a clear ethnographic line along the Šar Mountains that separated them from the Serbs to the north. Among those who made this determination were the Slovak philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik in 1842, the French geologist Ami Boué in the 1840s and 1850s, the French ethnographer Guillaume Lejean in 1861, the English travel writers Georgina Muir Mackenzie and Paulina Irby in 1867, the Russian ethnographer Mikhail Mirkovich also in 1867, the Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben in 1868, the German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann in 1869, the German geographer Heinrich Kiepert in 1876, and the Austrian diplomat Karl Sax in 1877. By the early twentieth century, Encyclopædia Britannica recorded that Macedonian Bulgarians constituted the majority of the population across the entire region. This broad international consensus, spanning multiple national traditions of scholarship, reinforced the perception that the Slavic communities of Macedonia formed a distinct group from their Serbian neighbors to the north, even as the internal boundaries of that group remained contested and fluid.

Allegiance as a Flexible Political Choice

Contemporary observers who visited Macedonia during the nineteenth century frequently noted that the local Slavic population's alignment with one national camp or another was far from a fixed ethnic belonging. Instead, they described these affiliations using language of politics and faction—referring to 'parties,' 'sides,' and 'wings'—suggesting that choosing a national label was a pragmatic, often reversible decision rather than an expression of deep-seated identity. Many foreign visitors initially assumed the local Slavs spoke Bulgarian, but more perceptive analysts concluded that the language of Macedonian Slavs was neither straightforwardly Bulgarian nor Serbian. For a significant portion of the population, any expression of national identity remained shallow, imposed from above through educational propaganda or the pressure of armed bands rather than emerging organically from within the community. This absence of a firmly rooted collective ethnic identity meant that the various national movements operating in the region could freely manipulate census data and demographic information to serve their own agendas, further blurring the lines between genuine belonging and politically engineered allegiance.

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