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Folk stories on the family

“The man is half a man, and the woman- half a woman. They roam the earth like that, until they meet and get married to make a whole person”, reads a short story from Northern Bulgaria. It will be no exaggeration to say that the notion of soul mates is present in different cultures. This edition of Folk Studio looks into Bulgarian fairytales and sayings about the family and family life.

Today a lot of Bulgarians prefer cohabitation to marriage. According to sociologists, people choose cohabitation out of fear to create a long-term bond. Nevertheless, marriage has not lost its romantic touch.
“The family is an essential part of society”- this sentence is an invariable part of every Bulgarian wedding ceremony. It illustrates a contemporary understanding of the family and its social role.
In the past people did not have any choice. A marriage was inconceivable without the blessings of the young couple’s parents.
By tradition, the man has a most important role in the community. He was made by God first, therefore he is a mainstay of marriage. God entrusted him with cultivating the land, planting and mowing the fields, as well as cutting down trees for firewood. It is the man that builds the house. His work is so important that nobody should cross his way. A lot more duties has the man, which must not be performed by the woman, folk wisdom has it. “The woman should not work a man’s job because this is bad for the household”, people used to say in the past. “The man is head of the house, the woman is its soul”, a Bulgarian saying goes. Interestingly, it was men that would do religious rituals at home. Women participated mostly in birth and funeral ceremonies, as well as in rituals related to various illnesses.

“Rich is the man, who has a good woman by his side”, Bulgarian folk wisdom also says and adds “…since if you have a bad wife, you do not need enemies”. The faith in the power of the family and the oneness of the community were a major incentive for the strict observance of social roles. Although of secondary importance, the role of the woman was also essential. “A good woman is a gemstone”, old people used to say. The woman was responsible for making the food, maintaining the household and bringing up the children. Up until recently, as researchers say, the bread in Bulgarian villages was prepared by women alone.

A very interesting Bulgarian fairytale tells about a father who summoned his five sons before his death. He told them the following story: “Once upon a time there was an oak tree in the forest. One day a woodcutter went into the woods, chopped down the oak and carried it back home. He made good wooden boards out of it. In the autumn a cooper visited the woodcutter, bought the boards from him and made a big barrel. Every autumn he poured new and bubbling wine in the barrel and then sold it. Everything was going smoothly, while the barrel was whole. Once one of the barrel’s hoops broke and the staves got loose. The wine ran out and the whole barrel fell apart. The cooper’s children grabbed the hoops and rolled them down the streets, while the cooper’s wife burnt up the staves and bottoms of the nice barrel”. After finishing the story, the father said: “The barrel, my children, is the family, the hoops are the family members, the staves are consensus, and the wine is happiness and worthy life. As long as the family lives in agreement, life will be happy. A house whose members disagree with one another would rather be burnt away. Keep the barrel’s staves intact, my dear sons!”, the father concluded.
This fairytale illustrates how parents in the past tried to nurture in their children reverence and respect for the family. Today the story is included in many children’s books, but just for the record, it can also be found on the internet- the place where present-day children most often look for the answers of their questions.

English version: Vyara Popova

По публикацията работи: Albena Bezovska


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