Folklore Creatures
Bulgarian folklore is an impressive manifestation of self-awareness and knowledge of the World. It is inseparable from agrarian sociality and the people's historical experience. On the one hand, it is within its framework that the annual agrarian cycle and man's life cycle merged to form a century-long tradition. On the other hand, the historical events that took place in the Balkans during the past ten centuries were mirrored in a body of heroic folk legends. As one would expect, this epic narrative is kin to the epics of Serbs, Roumanians, and Greeks; it is also commensurable with such phenomena as Kalevala, the Russian Bylinas, and the corpuses of epic poetry of some Asian and Caucasian peoples.
In both cases, Bulgarian folklore is rooted in a mythology which captivates the imagination of modern-day man too. This mythology found expression in the folk beliefs in various fabulous characters: woodland fairies and water-nymphs, witches and evil fairies, sinister devils, vampires, goblins, ghouls, lamias, dragons, as well as in the mythologization of illnesses...
Traditional Mummers /Koukeri/. The bells tied around the mummers' waists are intended to drive away evil forces and sickness.
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