Note 23 — II

This is a Pomak song. The Pomaks are the descendants of those who in the seventeenth century (perhaps also earlier) were forcibly converted to Islam. Their folk-songs, customs and language are Bulgarian. They speak the purest Bulgarian, save that the men count with Turkish numerals. (The women, who can count up to 100, use the Bulgarian language.) The Pomaks live for the most part in the Rhodope Mountains and in the Lovac district of northern Bulgaria. They are endowed, as a rule, with meagre intelligence, so that the educational endeavours of the Bulgarian Government had perforce to be abandoned, since very few of these reluctant pupils ever left the lowest class. The most exalted situation they aspire to is to serve as clerks to Muhammedan priests. Nevertheless, they despise the Turks and call their language the language of pigs.