Bulgarian Folk Songs

The Miladinovs' collection is the greatest single work in the history of Bulgarian folklore studies and has been republished many times.

He was visited by the Russian Slavist Victor Grigorovich in 1845, who advised him to begin collecting folk songs.

Most of them by the elder brother, Dimitar, who taught in several Macedonian towns (Ohrid, Struga, Prilep, Kukush and Bitola) and was able to put into writing 584 folk songs from the area.

[5] In 1860 Konstantin addressed Croatian bishop Joseph Strossmayer, who sympathized with the Bulgarian people, with an appeal to publish the collection.

He answered Konstantin's letter positively, but insisted the folk songs should be written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

[11][12][13][14][15] The collecting was well-received by its contemporaries - Lyuben Karavelov, Nesho Bonchev, Ivan Bogorov, Kuzman Shapkarev, Rayko Zhinzifov and others.

In 1862, Riggs wrote the collection presents an interesting picture of the traditions and fancies prevailing among the mass of the Bulgarian people.

[20][21] After the fall of Communism in 1999, under the auspices of Dimitar Dimitrov, a Bulgarophile and minister of culture, the collection was reissued under its original title, which caused serious protests from Macedonian historians.

[22][23] As a result, the Macedonian State Archive, funded by the Soros Foundation, displayed a photocopy of the book and the text on the cover was simply "Folk Songs", the upper part of the page showing "Bulgarian" was cut off.

In March 2021, a shipment with the original edition of the book, intended for the Cultural Center of Bulgaria in Skopje, was not allowed on the territory of North Macedonia, which caused an official protest from the Bulgarian side.