Gorno Vŭršilo 2

Gorno vyrshilo.2.last_.mp3

Commentary on the text:

When the investigator’s words are transcribed in brackets, it means they do not appear on the audio but are rather reconstructed to recreate the sense of the original conversation. These words appear in English translation only in Glossed View, in both English and Bulgarian in Line View, and in Bulgarian only in Cyrillic Line View

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Gorno Vŭršilo 2

1 (VZh) [Tell me about work bees.]

2 (b) [0:00] What should I tell you about work bees? How we set them up

3 (b) [0:04] in the old days? We made them outdoors. We gather wood, light the fire, sit, spin, get warm

4 (c) [0:12] and [have] a bit of wine [laughter]

5 (b) [0:12] until – up to two o’clock.

6 (b) [0:13] We get together, laughter, songs, stories – Everything. There was [everything].

7 (VZh) [What work do you do in the yard?]

8 (b) [0:21] What [work] do I have? I dig [in it], plant the peppers, water them,

9 (b) [0:27] then fertilize them and then dig again, and that’s it.

10 (b) [0:30] We hoe, we spray, we tie them up. Then the grapes ripen, we gather them,

11 (b) [0:39] and that’s it. All summer long, that’s our work. We go out with the sheep,

12 (b) [0:41] we reap – we harvest reaping by hand, with a sickle.

13 (VZh) [How was the threshing done?]

14 (b) [0:45] Ah, how we threshed! In the middle of the threshing floor. We sweep out the threshing floor,

15 (b) [0:50] put a pole there, lay out the sheaves, and drive the donkeys

16 (b) [0:55] “Hey, hey, hey, hey!” All day we shout and shout until the straw is pulverized.

17 (b) [0:59] We take out the straw, sweep up the grain, we have these winnowers – we had [them]

18 (b) [1:02] – we gather it up in a pile and – and winnow it with the winnowers, and that’s it.

19 (VZh) [Do you have children?]

20 (b) [1:07] I have children. I have a girl and a boy.

21 (VZh) In Sofia, [right?]

22 (b) [1:11] The boy lives in Ixtiman, and the girl lives here in Vŭrshilo

23 (b) [1:16] She has a married – [she has] two children, one – one married daughter

24 (b) [1:19] and she has one boy, he’s about to go into the military.

25 (b) [1:22] She works in the mental home up there, she’s a cook.

26 (VZh) [How do you look after the grandchildren?]

27 (b) [1:24] How do I look after them? I fuss with them all day.

28 (b) [1:27] I look after them, we argue, we fight.

29 (VZh) [Doesn’t their mother look after them?]

30 (b) [1:31] [No!] It’s me, me, me! The mother works, I’m mostly the one who fought

31 (b) [1:36] with them. I struck them now and then. This summer they were here,

32 (b) [1:38] and we argued a bit this summer too. Now they’ve gone off.

33 (b) [1:41] And her daughter – my granddaughter – is married now.

34 (b) [1:44] She’s got a tiny child. Her boy is going

35 (b) [1:49] into the military about now, the other day we had a sending-off celebration for him.

36 (VZh) [When did you get married?]

37 (b) [1:51] When did we get married? In ‘46,

38 (b) [1:56] In January of ‘46. We got married in the month of January.

39 (b) [2:00] We got married on the twenty-seventh of January, and we lived well.

40 (b) [2:04] Now Grandpa (= husband) died. Now I’m without Grandpa, he died.

41 (b) [2:07] And then came the collective farm. We raised sheep for twenty years, we raised sheep

42 (b) [2:12] all– for 20 years we pastured them, we milked them, we looked after the lambs, fed them,

43 (b) [2:18] until we earned our pensions, and when we got our pensions then we started to live –

44 (b) [2:22] Grandpa drew [his pension] three years and then died, and I was left alone.

45 (b) [2:25] and now you can’t live alone like that.

46 (VZh) Right, and when do [the grandchildren] come?

47 (b) [2:29] In the summer, during school vacation. Now they’re not coming.

48 (b) [2:33] Who’s going to look for me – for you? Nobody any more.

49 (VZh) [What are these beans like?]

50 (b) [2:36] Ah! These beans are called “city beans”.

51 (VZh) [And how do you cultivate them?]

52 (b) [2:40] Well, we transplant them, and put them on [what] we call beanpoles in ou-

53 (b) [2:44] in our area. We put the beanpoles – we make irrigation channels for them, and water them.

54 (VZh) [And how are they eaten?]

55 (b) [2:49] [When they are] green. Green, in the pods.

56 (VZh) [Don’t you eat ripe ones also?]

57 (b) [2:53] There’s ripe [ones] too! They – those are some ripe ones.

58 (b) [2:55] Here, these are ripe ones.

59 (VZh) [Where do you sow pumpkins?]

60 (b) [2:57] [With] the potatoes. We plant the pumpkins in [with] the potatoes.

61 (VZh) [But not with the corn?]

62 (b) [3:01] Well, those who plant corn [do]. We don’t plant corn in our (= Gorno) Vŭrshilo,

63 (b) [3:05] [not] here. In past – in past years we planted [it], up until the collective farm came in

64 (b) [3:08] but not now. We don’t plan corn any more because it doesn’t want to grow [here].

65 (VZh) [What animals did you raise in the time of private ownership?]

66 (b) [3:12] Well, in the private [era] we looked after oxen, sheep, goats, pigs –

67 (b) [3:17] that’s what we had in the private [era]. Now in the [time of] the collective farm

68 (b) [3:21] we gave the oxen to the collective farm [and] we gave the sheep there [too].

69 (b) [3:24] We still looked after them in the collective farm, and we looked after oxen.

70 (b) [3:26] [And] sheep – we looked after sheep twenty years, Grandpa and I, until –

71 (b) [3:31] We looked after them there, and we had some at home. We kept a lot of sheep.

72 (b) [3:34] We had around forty sheep.