On 26 February, 1911, Vuk Vrčević was born in Risan of the Bay of Kotor, then under the rule of the Habsburg monarchy.

Vrčević learnt languages early, becoming familiar with Old Slavonic, Russian, Greek, Turkish, Latin, Italian, French, and German.

That same year, they had all moved to Budva, where Vrčević's first job was in a merchant's office as an agent of a trading company.

It was there that Vrčević first made an acquaintance with Karadžić who had already started to reform and standardize the Serbian language and became his lifelong collaborator in collecting national folk songs and tales.

[2][3] The Three Vuks (Karadžić, Popović and Vrčević), with support of Russian scholars, collected almost all remaining srbulje from Montenegro.