The Wandering Blind Mendicant Singer and the Slavic Ritual Year

Abstract

The Slavic wandering mendicant singers, who were usually blind from birth, were trained in special associations of the craft-guild type, where they were taught song repertoires and begging prayers by an older singer in exchange for pay. These informal guilds were of a religious nature, and they were formed in the vicinity of a monastery. Such associations survived until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. They had special rules of operation, common customs and norms of behavior, their own patron saint, a hierarchy, common duties of members, a common pool of money, a secret language, secret signs, and so on. A comparison is made with similar associations of blind street singers in other European countries.

***

Slovanski beraški potujoči pevci, ki so bili navadno slepi od rojstva, so se urili v posebnih združenjih cehovske vrste, kjer jih je starejši pevec v zameno za plačilo učil repertoarja pesmi in beraških molitev. Ti neformalni cehi so bili verske narave, nastajali pa so v bližini samostanov. Takšna združenja so preživela do konca devetnajstega ali začetka dvajsetega stoletja. Imela so posebna pravila delovanja, skupne navade in pravila obnašanja, lastnega svetniškega zavetnika, hierarhijo, skupne dolžnosti članov, skupen denar, tajen jezik, tajne znake itd. Avtorica jih je primerjala s podobnimi združenjih slepih pocestnih pevcev v drugih evropskih državah.