If you have browsed over tourist leaflets about Bulgaria, you have probably seen the smiling faces of young girls dressed in colorful folk costumes. Their dresses are embroidered with silk threads and they wear belts with silver buckles on their waists, coin necklaces, and on their heads – wreaths of flowers, sequins, ribbons and soft grass. Dressed in this way, young girls in the past used to take part in the ancient rituals of “lazaruvane” and “kumichane” practiced on the weekend before Easter. Today these rituals unite the recollections of elderly women and the desire of young girls to revive and keep Bulgarian traditions alive.

The ritual known in Bulgaria as “lazaruvane” is a springtime female ritual that was performed on the eve of Palm Sunday. On that day, the Orthodox Church marks the resurrection of Lazarus, and the folk tradition celebrates the revival of nature after the severe winter. The rebirth of nature in popular notions was related to the vitality and virtuousness of young girls eager to fall in love and get married. With their ritual songs and dances, they make a transition from childhood and youth to maturity and giving new life.

From early dawn, villages in Bulgaria on Lazarus Saturday were bustling with groups of young girls called “lazarki” who were singing and dancing. The leader of the dance guided a chain of anything from five to fifteen dancers from house to house, paying a short visit to every family and performing dances and songs expressing good wishes for health, prosperity and fertility for all the family members and their livestock. On Saint Lazarus Day, the ban on dancing and having fun during the Great Lent was lifted.  The dance the girls performed is unique in its rhythm and steps in Bulgarian folklore because the girls move their feet in a different, more languid, way. Sometimes this chain dance is performed to the accompaniment of only the clattering noise of their metal necklaces.

The songs young girls perform on Saint Lazarus Saturday contain wishes of health, fertility, beauty for girls and courage for lads. But most of all, they sing about love and marriage. That is why the clothing of the girls is reminiscent of the bridal garments and the “lazaruvane ritual” is considered to be a pre-marital ritual. The hosts of each house give the girls unpainted eggs because these are believed to be symbols of new life.

A song about a young mother tells us how the young bride is advised to dress her little daughter in red, put green flowers on her head and send her to the lazarki to teach her to dance.

According to the old tradition, the song must be performed without musical accompaniment and is performed by the trio of the Bisserov sisters (from the village of Pirin, near Blagoevgrad).

Another song accompanying the ritual of “lazaruvane” from the Shoppe region is performed in the typical Shoppe diaphonic singing according to the local vocal tradition. It is from the cycle of pre-wedding songs.

When the girls have been to all houses in the village, they start singing a song with the lyrics: “Go away, Lazarus, but come again next year and then you will find me as a bride already”.

Here is a performance of the female group from the village of Knyazevo near Yambol.

On the following day, Palm Sunday, or the Day of Flowers here, there are the most exciting moments of these maiden rituals, the so-called “kumichane”. Wearing the same festive clothes, the procession of the lazarki girls crosses the village wearing willow twigs and flowers picked as a ritual sign of the arrival of spring. They go to the river and each of them places her wreath made of willow branches or flowers into the river. The girl whose wreath floats fastest is given the right to be leader of the dance next year, or the so-called “kumitsa”. The feast continues in her house later where her mother has laid a rich table.

The longest and most festive chain dance of all girls usually took place at noon in the village square.  The whole village gathered there. The mood was very joyous because the girls engage in bantering and flirting to show which lad they liked. 
This was how this day was celebrated in Bulgarian villages in the past, and some of these rituals are still practiced to this day in some regions of Bulgaria.

Translated by Rossitsa Petcova