This is the shortest of the ten stories in Yordan Yovkov’s “Legends of the Stara Planina” (1927), translated from the Bulgarian by Tsvetoslav Shalev.
Stefan, son, Stefan
Wherever you might be, call to me!
— folk song
One summer’s evening, old man Vulyo, a long time forest warden, and I sat under the large walnut trees on the outskirts of the village. The sun was sinking behind the woods of Razboyna, and opposite us, upon the blue crags of the Balkan, the crimson fires of dusk were dying away. Right above us rose a tall, rocky tor, already wrapped in shadow, resembling a great bird with drooping wings, under which the village houses huddled side by side like baby chicks. And straight across the ribs of this tor, like a crumpled black ribbon, the copses darkened in the gloom.
They were three: Cherkovna, Starcha and Tsiganska. But whenever wind blew, only one ever rustled, while the rest kept silent. Whenever the south winds rolled in from the flat plains of Romanya and set the branches of the Cherkovna swaying, she would rustle, while the Starcha and the Tsiganska, lying in the lee, kept quiet: as if they were listening to the old haidouk legends the Cherkovna was telling them. A few days later, however, when the wind changed direction, in the same dark and mysterious tongue, they would speak to the Cherkovna.
Nor do I recall any other memory from childhood filled with such enchantment as the chatter of those ancient forests. I remember how, as small children, on starry summer evenings, we would go out into the yard, where the box trees darkened. To the north, we could see the dark treetops of the copses etched against the bright sky. A terrifying noise reached us from there: as if thousands of streams were pouring invisible torrents, waterfalls roared, or as though in the depths of the forest, yudas and samodivas had gathered, dancing in the green dancing-grounds, shouting and laughing.
“The Cherkovna is roaring, the weather’s going to turn,” our mother would simply say. A chill was drifting in, a star was falling from the sky, and we were hurrying back home. We were thinking least of all, of course, about the weather. We were returning home carrying only the tremor of fear and curiosity about what was taking place outside, what was happening in the woods, under the dark canopy of the rustling, centuries-old trees.
And that evening too, the Cherkovna was rustling. It was rustling, but still softly, and restrained. Old man Vulyo and I looked out towards the meadow at the foot of the Starcha. A horo was underway there. But then the bagpipe fell silent, a wave of laughter and loud chatter drifted over to us, and nimble maidens came rushing down towards the village, in groups and one by one. As was the custom, they were hurrying to fetch their pails and come back there for water.
‘The young sure are enjoying themselves!’ I said to old man Vulyo. As he was rolling a cigarette, he raised his eyes up: something flashed in them mockingly, and a smile played on his lips.
‘Hmm… that’s nothing,’ he said. ‘What about way back when? The maidens were different back then, and the lads too.’
‘What about the things of times past?’ he continued after a moment. ‘Where is that rich attire? If only you could somehow see a maiden all dressed up and adorned in those clothes of yesteryear. Those little waistcoats of scarlet and green satin, shining like a sun; the printed Holy Sepulchre aprons, the red felt slippers with bright silk braid, the strings of mahmoudies and gold coins. And what beauties there were back then! Fair-skinned and dark-eyed, tall, and their hair reached right down past their sashes. The bachelors, all handsome shepherds — they were strapping lads too. What a horo used to form down there at Zlatna Oresha. How many times, I remember, Stefan played from the copse, whilst the horo danced below to the tune of his flute. Have you heard of Stefan, the haidouk?’
He was a shepherd — one of those shepherds of yesteryear with tasselled bags and long crooks, whose flocks darkened the meadows as though a dark mist were falling. There are no such shepherds left now. Rarely was there anyone to match him in handsomeness and strength, but he became famous above all because no one could play the flute as he did. The maidens and young brides bleaching cloth at the Oresha stood frozen, sheets in hand, listening to his playing. Travellers would stop in their tracks, forget themselves upon their horses and couldn’t get enough of his music.
Summertime, Stefan grazed his flock along the green meadows of the Balkan, rested through the midday heat beneath the thick shade of the sycamores. But as autumn came, as the meadows withered, the forest leaves reddened, and thick mists crept along the crest of the Balkan like giant snakes — then he, together with all the shepherds, would come down from the mountain. His flute announced he was back, and the maidens would head to the farthest cheshma to catch sight of him. But Stefan stayed in the village only for a bit — a day or two, long enough to hand out the long-awaited gifts, the carved distaffs and water-yokes. Soon he was heading south, to where the cranes flew off, and the great flocks of sheep were headed too, for in those days the shepherds spent the winter down in the plains of Romanya. And in spring, when the cuckoo called from the green foliage, it announced that the shepherds were coming back.
So it happened every year. But the last spring Stefan returned greatly changed. Lost in thought, sad, he didn’t come down to the village during the horo for the big feasts, with his mates he was silent and cold. It was plain to see he was hiding something in his soul. But the old flockmaster knew everything, the other shepherds knew it too.
‘She stole his wits, that girl from the lowlands,’ the flockmaster would say to the band of shepherds, when sometimes, sat in a wide circle, they ate together. ‘Stole his wits, it’s no good…’
The shepherds glanced at Stefan and chuckled. While he, straight and slender as a poplar, had already slung his tasselled bag over his shoulder, grabbed his crook and heavy cloak, and was heading after his flock. He sought to break away and be left alone as soon as he could. He always kept to himself like that. And often, when a quiet, warm night descended; when the full moon drifted before a swarm of tiny stars; when the Balkan, wrapped in a silvery mist, rose like a wall, and the woods lay silent in black shadows — he, having scattered his flock in a wide trailing arc behind him, would walk along some ridge and play. His flute did not merely play, it spoke; now it would soar higher and higher, trembling in rapture and joy, now it would bend low and weep, lamenting. In those hours, droplets of dew gathered on the grasses and glistened like tears. But then Stefan would drop that mournful tune and take up another, a merry one, for a horo. Joy broke out everywhere; the moon, now turned towards the forest, laughed, and the stars flickered rapidly. With a dull, deep sigh, the flute gave out its last cry and fell silent…
Summer passed, and Stefan could hide it no longer. When the time came to set off for Romanya, he told his mother that he was going to marry Elena, the fair-haired daughter of old man Nikola, at whose sheepfold they spent every winter. His mother said nothing, but went straight to her brother, the famous and wealthy chorbadzhi Dimcho. The very sheep Stefan grazed belonged to him. The chorbadzhi boiled over with rage, shouting and storming that he would have no barefoot, wretched peasant girl for a daughter-in-law. He told his sister that Stefan would spend this winter up in the Balkan, but secretly sent the flockmaster with word to Elena’s father that Stefan had been betrothed and would be married off the coming Sunday. The family believed it, and whether from pain, or whether from shame, that very winter they married Elena to another.
Had her husband been any other man, Stefan would have killed him. But the man was his sworn brother, and for that sworn brotherhood he had taken an oath in church. Stefan came back, yet he went neither to the sheepfold nor to his own home. From that day on, he disappeared. Soon after, one night, the houses of chorbadzhi Dimcho were set aflame. It was no secret to anyone that this was Stefan’s terrible revenge, that he was now a haidouk, wandering in the Balkan nearby with dire threats against his uncle. He went about mostly alone, doing harm to no one. Many heard his flute echoing through thick ravines. His mother, left entirely alone, was driven out of her mind with grief. Stefan’s last words gave her no peace. ‘You are wrong,’ he had told her, ‘you separated me from Elena. I never want to see you again!’ Often, hearing from folk that Stefan had been seen somewhere, she would go there, roaming the Balkan, and her desperate, mournful cries woke the lonely wilds. But Stefan never showed himself.
Yet to others he showed himself. He would even come down for the horo. More than once, when a great horo was swaying at Starcha, a flute would call out from among the thick trees of the copse. Everyone fell silent, captivated by the sweet notes of the flute as though by magic. Maidens and lads exchanged glances, whispering: ‘It’s Stefan — look, he’s with his band!’ And there, from high up in the copse, the flute would play for a horo. At those wildly merry, playful sounds, no one could hold back. Faces lit up with smiles, hands joined of their own accord, and in an instant a wondrous horo began to sway, a horo without talking, without noise. Eyes cast down, listening intently to the flute, they all danced in silence, nothing was heard but the steady, rhythmic thud of feet, with only bracelets and necklaces ringing. With a mournful cry, the flute fell silent. With a heavy sigh, everyone raised their eyes to where a few shadows were disappearing among the great trees.
Word spread swiftly throughout the village: Stefan had come back, Stefan had played at the horo. His ill-fated mother heard it too, and as the last of the girls and young wives came back from the cheshmas, a dark shadow was trudging up the steep slope towards the copses. It was his mother. The maidens paused and heard her heart-rending cry drift down to them, before dying away in the darkness and the rustling of the copses. And when, in the cool morning of the following day, Stefan and his band awoke beneath the criss-crossed beeches where they had spent the night, far off across the bare screes they saw a woman plodding along. A faint, harrowing cry reached their ears.
‘Stefan, it’s your mother again!’
‘Come out and show yourself to her at last — she is a mother.’
‘Ah, this can be borne no longer! We too have mothers. We left them behind to weep and mourn in black for us, we want to forget them. Yet here, hour after hour, your mother reminds us of them. It cannot go on, the heart falters, resolve gives way… Stefan, we shall commit a terrible sin, we shall draw lots, we shall kill your mother!’
So spoke the stern, grim haidouks, whose hardened hearts, even, were moved to pity. But Stefan did not hear. He remained standing where he was, head rested on his hand, lost in thought, and sad. Shortly after, he disappeared. His mother never learned where his lonely grave lay.
Old man Vulyo finished his tale. We both fell silent, then got up to head back. Twilight was gathering. My soul was brimful with the imagery of that wondrous tale. The Cherkovna rustled with a low, dull murmur. And I fancied I could see the stooped figure of the mother crawling across the screes, fancied I could hear her desperate cry.
The Cherkovna rustled on. It was as though she were telling the mournful, tragic story of the shepherd’s sorrow.
Source: Йордан Йовков, „Овчарова жалба”, in Събрани съчинения в шест тома, том втори, „Български писател”, София, 1976, под общата редакция на Симеон Султанов.
* Source edition, no existing translation consulted, machine translation used diagnostically only, LLM used for proofing and source-checking. As I continue to work on future translations, I’ll do my best to rely on LLM less and less.
A few words left untranslated
the Balkan (Балканът) — Not the peninsula. In Bulgarian the word with the definite article means the mountain range itself, the Stara Planina, which runs the width of the country and gives the collection its title. The peninsula was named after the mountain rather than the other way round; the word came in from Turkish balkan, a wooded ridge. The mountain would be accurate and would lose the name people actually use.
Romanya (Ромъня) — The lowlands to the south, in Thrace: the winter pastures the flocks were driven to each autumn and returned from each spring. The name descends from Rum, the land of the Romans — the Ottoman word for the Eastern Roman lands they had inherited, which survives in Rumelia. It is not Romania, which lies in the other direction. I have kept the sound of the word as Yovkov’s shepherds would have said it.
mahmoudies (махмудии) — Gold coins struck under Sultan Mahmud II, pierced and strung into necklaces and headdresses. They were worn rather than spent: a girl’s dowry carried on her body, and the family’s standing legible at a glance across a horo.
yuda (юда) — A female spirit of the wild: of mountains, high places and whirlwinds. Unlike the fairies of English folklore she is genuinely dangerous — she strikes people with sickness and carries them off. No English word carries both the beauty and the threat.
samodiva (самодива) — Her better-known relative, and the one still alive in Bulgarian imagination: a young woman of the forests and springs, hair loose, who dances in a ring at night. The “green dancing-grounds” of the sentence are the clearings where those rings were said to be found in the grass the next morning. Nymph and sprite both send the reader to the wrong shelf.
horo (хоро) — The chain dance: an open or closed line of dancers holding hands or one another’s belts, led from one end, curving round. English has round dance and circle dance, but both name a category rather than this dance — and horo also means the occasion itself, the gathering where courting was done in public view.
Zlatna Oresha (Златна Ореша) — A place name: Golden Walnut. Kept as a name because that is what it is, but worth knowing the meaning, since the reader of the Bulgarian gets it for free.
haidouk (хайдутин) — An outlaw of the mountains. From Turkish haydut, ultimately Hungarian hajdú. In the folk tradition he is not simply a bandit — he has taken to the forest after a wrong done to him, and the songs are on his side. Bandit loses the honour, rebel and freedom fighter overstate it.
chorbadzhi (чорбаджия) — A village notable: a wealthy man, often standing between the village and the Ottoman authorities as tax-farmer or intermediary. From Turkish çorbacı, literally soup-man, originally a janissary officer’s rank — the commander who ate from his regiment’s kettle — later transferred to Christian notables. The word carries wealth and a certain suspicion at once, which squire and headman do not.
cheshma (чешма) — A public drinking fountain: stone, spouted, running continuously from a spring, and in most villages the only water and the main meeting place. From Turkish çeşme, from Persian čašma, spring — literally an eye. Fountain suggests ornament, standpipe suggests plumbing, and neither suggests the walk there and back that half the story turns on.
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