Folk Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarians
Folk Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarians (, , ) is an ethnographic collection of folk songs collected by Stefan Verković, considered to be his most valuable contribution in the field of Bulgarian folklore. It was published in Serbian in 1860, in Belgrade. Background The book contains 335 folk songs that are lyrical and were therefore called female by Verković. The songs were collected by him during his time as a Serbian ethological agent in then-Ottoman town of Serres (today in Greece). The collected material was from the eastern parts of the Macedonian region. The title, preface, notes and explanations of the songs are in Serbian, and at the end there is an explanation of some unknown words in Serbian. However, the songs are in their original form. In the preface, Verković states that he called the songs "Bulgarian" as opposed to Slavic because "if you ask a Macedonian Slav "What are you?", he will immediately answer to you: "I am Bulgarian and I call my language Bulgarian". He also clarifies that the Macedonian Bulgarians were formerly called Slavs in the books of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples, and only later in the First Bulgarian Empire, did they adopt the