Bulgaria is technically in EU, but in case you don't have these already:
- samodiva / samovila - good wiki article in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samodiva
- karakonjul - there is a wiki article in Bulgarian only [http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Караконджул]. A quick translation would be: this is a creature from folklore, it scares and harms humans; the creature looks like a hairy human with a big head, horns, tail, one eye, and one leg; according to different beliefs, it looked like half human, half horse, and also took on the forms of a naked small man, a dog, a calf, or a kid (goat offspring); according to some tales, the karakonjul lived only during the so-called 'dirty' days, from Christmas Eve to the Day of St. Yordan, which is why January is called the month of the karakonjul; the creature lived in caves, rivers, abandoned watermills, and places where ivy grows; according to some stories, it can also inhabit the dark or not easily accessible places of the farm, similar to a talasum, e.g. in the attic or the barn; the creature lured travelers and rode on them, threw its victims from high rocks or trees into deep water, or tore them into pieces with mill stones; the karakonjul did evil deeds only at night, until the first sound from cocks in the morning, after that it disappeared; it is noted that only the prefix of the word, kara-, is Turkish and means black; in many villages of the Rhodope mountains, the word is only konjur; the 'konjur' days are linked to a series of beliefs that likely are a remainder from Thracian times.
If you haven't come across 'talasum' before, there is a rather long article on it, too, that I could work on [Таласъм].
[Please excuse anything that doesn't make sense or is not natural-sounding in English.^^;]
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Date: 25 Feb 2011 03:57 am (UTC)- samodiva / samovila - good wiki article in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samodiva
- karakonjul - there is a wiki article in Bulgarian only [http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Караконджул]. A quick translation would be: this is a creature from folklore, it scares and harms humans; the creature looks like a hairy human with a big head, horns, tail, one eye, and one leg; according to different beliefs, it looked like half human, half horse, and also took on the forms of a naked small man, a dog, a calf, or a kid (goat offspring); according to some tales, the karakonjul lived only during the so-called 'dirty' days, from Christmas Eve to the Day of St. Yordan, which is why January is called the month of the karakonjul; the creature lived in caves, rivers, abandoned watermills, and places where ivy grows; according to some stories, it can also inhabit the dark or not easily accessible places of the farm, similar to a talasum, e.g. in the attic or the barn; the creature lured travelers and rode on them, threw its victims from high rocks or trees into deep water, or tore them into pieces with mill stones; the karakonjul did evil deeds only at night, until the first sound from cocks in the morning, after that it disappeared; it is noted that only the prefix of the word, kara-, is Turkish and means black; in many villages of the Rhodope mountains, the word is only konjur; the 'konjur' days are linked to a series of beliefs that likely are a remainder from Thracian times.
If you haven't come across 'talasum' before, there is a rather long article on it, too, that I could work on [Таласъм].
[Please excuse anything that doesn't make sense or is not natural-sounding in English.^^;]