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Катя Михайлова. Странстващият сляп певец просяк във 
фолклорната култура на славяните. (Katya Mihailova. The Wandering 
Blind Singer-Beggar in Slavic Folk Culture). Sofia: Ab Publishing 
House, 2006. Notes.  Illustrations.  Appendix.  527 pp.  ISBN 954-737-
615-2 [In Bulgarian, with an abstract in English]. 
 

Two main facts emerge from a quick glance over the literature on 
the art and role of folk singers in Slavic folk culture: most of it is 
centered upon single ethnic groups, or upon a particular type of singer. 
Attention to heroic epics and heroic epic singers far outweighs that given 
to other folk genres and their performers. Yet, ironically, as the author 
argues, not many published texts of epics were collected from blind 
mendicant singers, their core repertoire consisting rather of religious and 
legendary epics. 

Katya Mihailova’s impressive monograph, a result of long term 
effort, focuses on the blind itinerant professional mendicant singer as a 
phenomenon common to all Slavic cultures. She distinguishes him from 
several other types of itinerant professional singers and from non-
professional epic singers found all across Europe from the Middle Ages 
to the early 20th century. She then proceeds to an in-depth cross-cultural 
analysis of his semantics (ascribed cultural meanings), functions and 
repertoire across all major Slavic groups. A daunting task such as this 
has not been undertaken before. Katya Mihailova is well suited to the 
task by training as a Slavist and her experience as a folklorist and field 
worker at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Folklore.  

The material on which this study is based is enormous. Primary 
sources are drawn from all major Slavic groups, especially Bulgarian, 
Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, 
Slovak, Czech. They include: (1) songs, tales, legends from the repertoire 
of mendicant singers, begging prayers, blessings and curses, secret signs, 
beggars’ secret languages;  (2) songs, tales, legends, rituals, in which the 
beggar features as a character, proverbs and sayings; (3) interviews with 
informants, eyewitnesses to the phenomenon; (4) travelogues, essays, 
memoirs, regional and area studies, etc., providing data on the 
biographies, lifestyle, customs and organization of mendicant singers; (5) 
church murals and other types of ecclesiastical art depicting singers and 
song themes; (6) material collected by the author through fieldwork in 
1987-88 and 1999 (mostly Bulgarian, but also some Polish, Slovak and 
Ukrainian) – some texts, but also recollections of older people (the 
phenomenon ceased to exist in most Slavic countries, except Poland and 

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Ukraine, about 60 years ago); (7) material from numerous archives and 
museums in all Slavic countries - among the more rare and valuable are 
the manuscript collections of the Ukrainian National Academy of 
Sciences’ Institute of Arts, Folkloristics and Ethnology in Kiev 
(especially the archives of Porfirii Martynovych and Kliment Kvitka); 
and the musical manuscripts collection of Matica Slovenska in Martin, 
Slovakia, from the 1970’s and 1980’s (the only comprehensive regional 
study of this kind in Slovakia); (8) published material on beggars in 
general and on mendicant singers in particular.  

Discussing the main types of itinerant professional epic singers 
among the Slavs in the context of other European traditions from the 
Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, Mihailova takes into account the 
way in which each Slavic group through time has experienced varying 
degrees of cultural and historical influence on the part of the two major 
branches of European culture – Byzantine-Slavic and Western European. 
Four main types of singer are outlined, which meet the two main criteria 
- itinerant way of living and the practice of epic singing as a craft or 
profession. They are then distinguished based on the oppositions of 
‘high’ vs. ‘low’ and secular vs. religious culture. Comparison of 
historical records about their existence reveals that the institution of 
professional mendicant singing has survived the longest among the Slavs 
and the South Slavs in particular as a result of the retention of a rural 
patriarchal way of life in the context of foreign domination. The main 
object of this study is thus differentiated from a wide range of other 
itinerant professional performers (troubadours, trouvères, minnesingers, 
jongleurs, Spielleute, minstrels, skomorokhi, vagantes, goliardowie, 
dijaci, pivorezi, etc.) as representing “low” religious art. It is also 
distinguished from non-professional epic singers, who remain rooted in 
their community, engage in farming like everyone else and have no 
special status. The case for this distinction is reinforced by the claim that 
only the itinerant blind mendicant singers maintain a vast obligatory 
repertoire of religious epics and enjoy special societal attitudes toward 
them. Among the Slavs, some representatives of this type of singer are 
the dziady, zˇebráci, kaliki perehozˇie, nisˇtie starcy, starci, lirniki, 
kobzari, bandurysty, slepi guslari, bozˇeci, pitacˇi.  

The author compares the common beggar and the mendicant singer 
in terms of the kinds of cultural meanings socially ascribed to them. She 
concludes that they share the same traits – a sacred nature (an incarnation 
of a deity, a link with the world of the dead); poverty; physical disability 
precluding the option of normal labor and invoking special attitudes; 



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mobility (undertaking physical/spatial and symbolic transitions). 
However, the mendicant singer is additionally characterized by blindness 
(ordinary beggars may be sighted), possession of a home and family, 
even a wife and children, yet still earning a living by receiving alms for 
his art. He is also marked by different clothing and attributes, and, above 
all, by his stringed musical instrument, essential for his craft. The most 
important aspect of the two, Mihailova argues, is their conceptualization 
as mediators on a vertical as well as horizontal plane, between the world 
of the sacred and that of the profane (Heaven and Earth), between the 
relatively closed village community and the outside world.  

The core repertoire of the mendicant epic singers, the author argues, 
is in direct relationship with the above characteristics, i.e. it is religious 
and legendary epics, and not heroic epics as is often assumed. Religious 
songs and begging prayers were a mandatory part of the training these 
singers underwent, without knowledge of which they could not practice 
their craft. This, however, is not a totally new revelation – Natalie 
Kononenko, for one, has argued the same for the Ukrainian minstrels. 
Still, the detailed analysis of most common themes and motifs and their 
symbolic meanings across all Slavic groups validates the argument for 
Slavic folk culture in general. It concludes that most songs are folkloric 
versions of three major genres of the official Christian literature – Gospel 
parables, exempla, and vitae of martyrs and hermits. The ideas of sin and 
retribution, charity, and norms of a righteous life on earth, as well as the 
fate of souls after death in the world beyond dominate in these songs. 
The eschatological theme of the Last Judgement, with its two sub-themes 
(individual punishment and punishment of entire peoples or humankind 
as a whole), is given particular attention. Its treatment in songs and 
church pictorial art are found to reveal an interesting dynamic between 
Christian norms and folk norms in the context of rural life. In the absence 
of an autonomous Church in Bulgaria under the Ottomans, for example, 
the author contends, there was no rigid distinction between official and 
unofficial Christian culture, thus resulting in a form of Christianity 
referred to as popular or folk Christianity. In such contexts, painters of 
village churches have tended to incorporate local lifestyles and traditions 
in their depictions of scenes from the Last Judgement, whereas these 
forms of pictorial art have also influenced verbal folklore. This, however, 
assumes perhaps too active and direct a role for the village folk, let alone 
blind mendicant musicians, to play as keen “observers” and discussants 
of religious pictorial art. The symbolic analysis of conceptualizations of 
Heaven and Hell, the soul’s journey after death, the bridge to the other 

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world, is subtle and convincing – pointing out similarities and 
differences between pre-Christian and Christian notions.  

The semantic analysis of this repertoire is complemented by a 
functional one tracing the kinds of use to which societies put mendicant 
singing as an institution. Time and place, of course, determine each 
performance and its dominant function, but, the author contends, all 
functions are usually intertwined and present to a greater or lesser extent. 
The liminality of the singers corresponds with the liminality of the times 
and places of their performances – during important religious holidays 
and festivals, periods of fasting (for Christmas and Easter), at life cycle 
rituals, etc. (i.e., during times of transition from a cosmic and societal 
perspective), and in front of churches, at the thresholds of homes, on 
roads, bridges, windows. The parallels and distinctions drawn by 
Mihailova between the actions, repertoire and conceptualization of 
mendicant singers and those of young adult men and women engaged in 
group seasonal rites found in all Slavic cultures (e.g., the Bulgarian 
koledari and lazarki, the Serbian lazarice, the Russian v'iunoshniki, the 
Polish dziady smigustne, etc.), are original and revealing. The following 
functions that mendicant singing performs are discussed: ethical and 
morally assertive, normative, socially integrative, ethno-consolidating, 
educative and patriotic (especially among the South Slavs under Ottoman 
rule, but also among the Ukrainians). Mendicant singers often functioned 
also as prophets, healers, advisers, mediators between the clergy and the 
laity, and even as a kind of church preacher. 

The author also briefly outlines the gradual changes in the repertoire 
and functions of Slavic mendicant singers that have occurred since the 
late 1800’s. Most of these changes mark a trend toward blending with 
another popular group of performers, the country fair singers. Societal 
attitudes toward them have also changed and have become more 
ambivalent. 

Mihailova’s study makes a number of significant contributions. It is 
the first comprehensive cross-cultural study on blind mendicant singers 
in Slavic folk culture. Continuous and well-founded parallels are drawn 
between the East, West and South Slavs. It introduces a great deal of 
new, unpublished material, both collected in the field by the author 
herself and derived from rare archival sources. Plausible evidence is 
presented for the existence in (Southwest) Bulgaria of blind mendicant 
singers contrary to many assumptions that South Slavic singers were 
sighted or merely the stuff of legend (Kononenko, Ukrainian Minstrels: 
And the Blind Shall Sing, ix, xi; Lord, The Singer of Tales: 18-20). 



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Evidence is also provided for the existence of the institution of 
mendicant singers in medieval Bulgaria. Yet, the author rejects the 
existence of schools for training such singers. Indeed, available data on 
the issue is inconclusive and the issue is still open for debate. Some of 
the other observations made in the study have already been made by 
others with regard to a single Slavic group, or to non-Slavic cultures, or 
other types of folk singers (cross-cultural variation is significant, but 
recurring patterns are common, see, e.g., Finnegan: Oral Poetry: Its 
Nature, Significance and Social Context, 170-213; Kononenko). 
However, the detailed and comprehensive analysis of the main issues 
across all Slavic cultures in the context of Byzantine and Western 
European influences, makes this book a valuable tool for all Slavists. The 
study certainly is of general interest, too, but readers with no knowledge 
of any Slavic language, as well as many Bulgarian readers, will find it 
difficult to navigate through texts and quotes for which no translation is 
available. All texts are given in the original language. One would 
probably wish that, when medieval Western Europe is discussed, there 
were less heavy a reliance on a few Soviet-era authors, reputable as they 
may be. It is unfortunate that the work does not include an index. Worse, 
there is no complete bibliography – references and notes are combined 
and placed at the end of each chapter making it difficult to grasp the 
scope of the consulted works. Also, in the absence of a general list of 
references, the way of citation is confusing at times, when, e.g., a 
reference is given as ‘Op. cit.’ and the previous full quote is several 
pages back (e.g., chapters 2 and 4, pp. 109 and 111; 229 and 231). These 
shortcomings, however, are, more or less, compensated for by an 
impressive appendix, which provides valuable additional primary 
material: 35 pages of mostly color photos of blind singers, beggars, 
musical instruments, church murals and icons; 30 pages of secret signs 
and vocabulary used by beggars; about 30 pages of begging prayers, 
blessings and curses; close to 60 pages of begging songs (including some 
archival recordings from the Poles'e region); beggars’ religious tales and 
legends. Katya Mihailova’s monograph marks a milestone in the area of 
Slavic folklore studies.  

 
Liliana Perkowski 
University of Virginia 

 
 
 

FOLKLORICA 2007, Vol. XII