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There is an entire week in Bulgarian folklore dedicated to the mythical maidens known the mermaids or the fairies (in Bulgarian rusalki). This week is usually believed to start on Pentecost and to last one week after it, with some regional variations in the exact dates. This will be topic of today’s folk studio on Radio Bulgaria. Of course, we have a bunch of your favorite Bulgarian folk songs, this time telling stories of young girls and mermaids.
According to popular belief, mermaids (in Bulgarian known as “rusalki” appear to humans in the image of white butterflies flying from the Danube. Legend has it that these are the souls of girls and young mothers. It is believed that mermaids are the sisters of the wood fairies (known here as “samodivi”). These are mythical maidens who inhabit the secret forest glades, rivers and springs.
Bulgarians in the past used to believe that mermaids leave their secret abode only once in the year and it is during the Mermaid Week (the so-called Rusalijska Nedelya). It is usually in springtime, a few weeks after Easter, after the Ascension and Pentecost. According to legend, the mermaids sprinkled the fields with live water, thus making them fruitful, just as the bread in the corn was coming to life. Therefore, once many villagers held great respect for mermaids. And to give tribute to them, no one worked on the Mermaid Sunday and the entire week following it. There was even a belief that if someone worked during this week, the mermaids would grow so angry that they might take revenge by sending him or her severe and incurable disease.
Such a story is told in a Bulgarian folk song. Maiden Dragana once fell asleep on the secretive Samodivska meadow where the sun sets and the moon rises. When she woke up, she saw several fairies standing beside and staring at her. They called out for her to go to the underworld, the afterlife, with them. Girl desperately begged them not to leave her at peace as she was an only child and her parents would not bear the loss. And she said she was so young that she had even failed to prepare her wedding dowry. The fairies replied that all they wanted was the canvas of silk and cotton that she had weaved during the Mermaid Week.
Popular belief has it that one can prevent from an encounter with mermaids during the Mermaid Week by wearing in one’s bosom a sprig of the herb wormwood, a clove of garlic and walnut leaves. There is one particularly important herb that could save you – rossen or "dewy” but it is very rare. However, villagers knew how to find meadows where the rossen herb grew in abundance. The beautiful red blossoms of the rossen bloom right through the Mermaid Week.
These were the favorite flowers of mermaids. At night, the mythic girls went to pick all the blossoms and used them for adornment. In such moments, they became good-natured and benevolent to people and healed from suffering from the mermaid disease. But in order to be healed, the patient had to spend the night on a meadow where this herb grew. For this reason, this ritual was called "walking on the dewy rossen grass." The sick started for the meadows late at night and returned before dawn without anyone seeing them.
Only during the Mermaid Sunday another curative ritual for the same disease was performed. The healers were men called rusalii. This was a group ordinary rural men who underwent ritual initiation. They were healers only during the Мermaid week. Roussalii could become men who had certain qualities - be honest and cooperative, physically strong and very agile dancers. During the Mermaid Sunday, they went from village to village and cured the ill with their ritual dance. Only the leading dancer knew the necessary herbs and spells used in the healing ritual. He personally prepared the ritual flag of the rusalii while playing in a circle around the diseased.
