In Bulgarian folk tradition, a girl who never went out singing with the lazarki was not considered marriageable, and the singing started as young as five. The rounds ran to about twelve. After that you were expected to have done it already.
Groups formed by neighborhood, and a big village fielded several. Each one elected a leader, called the buenets in some districts and the voivode or krasnitsa in others, and the girls rehearsed through the weeks of the fast under women who had sung the same parts as children. Costume mattered enough that they borrowed clothes from women married the year before, bridal pieces still fresh in the chest.
None of this floats free of the calendar. It is fixed to the one bright Saturday wedged between Lent and Holy Week, which is why the songs are about waking up rather than mourning.
That is a real demand on a ten-year-old. A working group needed songs for a marriageable daughter, for a young man, for a small child, for an old couple, for a household in mourning, and the older women drilled them precisely so nobody stalled at a door. Payment came in eggs.
The endings are stranger than the visits. In the spring, singing rounds Bulgarians call lazaruvane, the girls finish at a well or a river and throw their wreaths into the water, which closes the day away from the houses entirely.
In Lyulyakovo they carry a male doll named Lazarus dressed as a bride, in a white shirt and pinafore with an apron, a red cloak, flowers, and wreaths. A dead man in wedding clothes, carried by girls who are being looked over as wives.
Not much of this runs on its own now. Bulgarian reporting on the feast describes villages where the custom has been forgotten outright, and others where there are simply not enough girls left to make up a group, so what survives often survives as a staged public event. The community cultural centers that keep it alive were named on a UNESCO register of good safeguarding practices in 2017.
Trikala turned that into open competition, judging the best decorated basket, the best turned-out group, and the rarest song anyone can still remember. Rare is the interesting category. It rewards households for hanging on to material that had otherwise stopped circulating.
Cyprus casts a child as the corpse. The children dress in yellow flowers, one lies down and stays down, and he only gets up when the others sing him up, which makes the song the thing that does the work rather than the story around it.
Elsewhere the figure is an object. On Skyros, Lazarus is a large slotted spoon with wooden crosses for hands, dressed in baby clothes and carried around. On Kerkyra, a man in a red shirt carries a cane topped with a wooden head, walks with musicians, and sells small decorated pieces treated as lucky.
The verse worked on fear as much as pity. Its plot ends with the beggar carried into paradise and the rich man in torment, which is a pointed thing to sing at somebody who has not yet handed over a coin.
It stuck to the language. To sing Lazarus, петь Лазаря, now means to put on poverty and misfortune you do not have, whining for advantage, and the dictionary sense carries open mockery. A begging song aimed at the rich turned into an accusation you throw at people who complain too loudly.
Groups formed by neighborhood, and a big village fielded several. Each one elected a leader, called the buenets in some districts and the voivode or krasnitsa in others, and the girls rehearsed through the weeks of the fast under women who had sung the same parts as children. Costume mattered enough that they borrowed clothes from women married the year before, bridal pieces still fresh in the chest.
None of this floats free of the calendar. It is fixed to the one bright Saturday wedged between Lent and Holy Week, which is why the songs are about waking up rather than mourning.
The household picks the song, not the singers
The repertoire is not a set list. The hosts tell the girls who to sing for, in words along the lines of we have a maid, or a bachelor, or a little boy, sing us something for them, and the group has to produce the right song on the doorstep.That is a real demand on a ten-year-old. A working group needed songs for a marriageable daughter, for a young man, for a small child, for an old couple, for a household in mourning, and the older women drilled them precisely so nobody stalled at a door. Payment came in eggs.
The endings are stranger than the visits. In the spring, singing rounds Bulgarians call lazaruvane, the girls finish at a well or a river and throw their wreaths into the water, which closes the day away from the houses entirely.
In Lyulyakovo they carry a male doll named Lazarus dressed as a bride, in a white shirt and pinafore with an apron, a red cloak, flowers, and wreaths. A dead man in wedding clothes, carried by girls who are being looked over as wives.
Not much of this runs on its own now. Bulgarian reporting on the feast describes villages where the custom has been forgotten outright, and others where there are simply not enough girls left to make up a group, so what survives often survives as a staged public event. The community cultural centers that keep it alive were named on a UNESCO register of good safeguarding practices in 2017.
Greece hands the part to a child in yellow flowers
The Greek mainland runs the custom as the Lazarines, mostly in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, where young women walk the village with baskets of flowers and sing at each house. The point is partly to be seen. A girl of the right age is on display to every family with a son.Trikala turned that into open competition, judging the best decorated basket, the best turned-out group, and the rarest song anyone can still remember. Rare is the interesting category. It rewards households for hanging on to material that had otherwise stopped circulating.
Cyprus casts a child as the corpse. The children dress in yellow flowers, one lies down and stays down, and he only gets up when the others sing him up, which makes the song the thing that does the work rather than the story around it.
Elsewhere the figure is an object. On Skyros, Lazarus is a large slotted spoon with wooden crosses for hands, dressed in baby clothes and carried around. On Kerkyra, a man in a red shirt carries a cane topped with a wooden head, walks with musicians, and sells small decorated pieces treated as lucky.
Russia sings a completely different Lazarus
The Russian song tradition attached to the name has almost nothing to do with the man raised at Bethany. Beggars and wandering pilgrims sang a spiritual verse about the other Lazarus, the sore-covered poor man at the rich man's gate in Luke 16, and they sang it at doors and gates for alms.The verse worked on fear as much as pity. Its plot ends with the beggar carried into paradise and the rich man in torment, which is a pointed thing to sing at somebody who has not yet handed over a coin.
It stuck to the language. To sing Lazarus, петь Лазаря, now means to put on poverty and misfortune you do not have, whining for advantage, and the dictionary sense carries open mockery. A begging song aimed at the rich turned into an accusation you throw at people who complain too loudly.
