Malevo/Asg 2

MalevoAsgr2.final_.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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VZh

b

a

Malevo/Asg 2

1 (b) [0:01] I have been practicing this craft since childhood, [indeed] my whole life,

2 (b) [0:08] and I’m continuing to do this work even though I am on in years –

3 (b) [0:14] I’m seventy-six, and still put in the effort to ply my trade

4 (b) [0:21] so as to earn a lev here and there for my old age.

5 (b) [0:26] Because my pension is [quite] small,

6 (a) [0:29] [this means] I’m obliged to work.

7 (VZh) [What materials (= kinds of lumber) did you work with?]

8 (b) [0:32] The lumber I was [able to] get was – we call it fir,

9 (b) [0:38] or, as foresters say, spruce. Only that kind of lumber.

10 (b) [0:44] We went out to the woods and would seek it out in rocky places

11 (VZh) [“tŭrsime” (seek) or “trŭsime” (seek)?]

12 (b) [0:51] We’d seek it! Seek it in the kinds of places where there are rocks,

13 (b) [0:59] that tree [is best when] it grows among rocks

14 (b) [1:01] because when it grows among rocks the wood inside is fine-grained,

15 (b) [1:06] and fine-grained wood is strong and lasting, and [so] we make containers from it.

16 (b) [1:13] We’ve been working this wood many years, because at that time we worked by hand.

17 (b) [1:19] We didn’t have machines, and we worked that wood by hand

18 (b) [1:28] That wood isn’t hard the way acacia and oak [are]

19 (b) [1:37] [which is] why we worked it by hand. We had no machines at all then,

20 (b) [1:43] We worked everything by hand. Consequently when, after many years

21 (b) [1:51] machines became available, I got myself a planing machine

22 (b) [1:57] and use it to work with acacia and oak since their wood is very hard

23 (b) [2:08] and can’t be worked by hand. But now they can be worked with the machine,

24 (b) [2:15] despite the fact that I’m on in years, I still [can] continue to work.

25 (b) [2:19] When I have work of course. When I don’t I just sit around! [laughter] So there.

26 (VZh) [Did you have [enough] work earlier on?]

27 (b) [2:26] Earlier on we had a lot of work. However now – to say it with a single word –

28 (b) [2:31] there’s no work. Very little [anyway]. In our craft most of the work

29 (b) [2:37] comes in the fall when people need crocks for cabbage or barrels for wine,

30 (b) [2:46] small kegs for brandy, small flasks for water [and so on]. So mostly

31 (b) [2:55] we work in the autumn. There’s very little [work] in summer, but now in autumn

32 (b) [3:01] there’s no work because now they’ve come out with all these plastic containers,

33 (b) [3:08] and people use those for - for such things.

34 (VZh) [Did you go out into the woods to get lumber?]

35 (b) [3:14] Rarely. I would rarely go [out there]. I had a mule and a donkey, and

36 (b) [3:20] [If I go], I go, bring it back, and when I use it all up [I go] again.

37 (VZh) [How did you load them up?]

38 (b) [3:26] The donkey has a packsaddle, and the mule had a packsaddle. I tie the mule up

39 (b) [3:31] following the donkey, pile on the ax and the saw, and mount the donkey’s packsaddle,

40 (b) [3:39] and straight off into the woods. I let them loose to graze all day

41 (b) [3:43] [while] I prepare two loads, and in the evening, I drive them back.

42 (VZh) [How did you used to make churned milk?]

43 (b) [3:48] After we churn milk – we churn it in special centrifuges

44 (b) [3:53] which I myself fashioned, wooden centrifuges – we put the milk in the centrifuge

45 (b) [4:03] and we start [it] to spin. It spins and spins until the fat separates from the milk.

46 (b) [4:11] After that we take the fat away, and the remaining milk we call churned milk.

47 (b) [4:18] We drink it in place of water! [laughter]

48 (VZh) [And when did you do the reaping?]

49 (b) [4:21] When things ripen in the fields – wheat, rye, oats – when they’re ripe we go to the fields

50 (b) [4:31] with sickles in our hands and start to reap and to make sheaves.

51 (b) [4:39] After we reap the fields we make sheaves, and bring them onto the threshing-floor:

52 (b) [4:44] there’s a special field, the threshing-floor, where we thresh these sheaves with a mule

53 (b) [4:50] and donkeys. When we bring [the sheaves] in, I make them into a pile

54 (b) [4:59] so they won’t get wet. I make all of the sheaves

55 (b) [5:02] into a pile so that when it starts to rain they won’t get wet.

56 (b) [5:07] And after we’ve reaped everywhere, all the fields, the we start to thresh.

57 (b) [5:13] We thresh with mules and donkeys, on that threshing-floor where the piles are.

58 (b) [5:18] After we finish threshing, we pull out the straw, and separate it from the grain.

59 (b) [5:23] We gather up the grain into a stack and – we have these special wooden shovels,

60 (b) [5:30] we call them “shovels”, and begin to throw [the grain] up in to the air,

61 (b) [5:34] and the wind separates out the chaff, and the grain ends up clean. And after

62 (b) [5:40] we winnow everything, we gather the grain up into sacks and put the chaff with the straw

63 (b) [5:46] into net bags. We load these bags onto the mules, one on each side,

64 (b) [5:53] and straight into the barn, so that they’ll be able to eat during the winter,

65 (b) [5:58] so there will be something to feed them.

66 (VZh) [To feed whom?]

67 (b) [6:01] Cows, mules – the mule, the donkey – the livestock! Cattle, the cattle, the mule –

68 (VZh) [What time (of year) did you go out to do the mowing?]

69 (b) [6:10] When it comes time to mow the meadows, I go out with the mule and the donkey;

70 (b) [6:21] I take a scythe, a small anvil and a whetstone, I go out to the meadow, and I start to mow,

71 (b) [6:30] by hand. After I finish mowing we gather [the hay] up onto threshing fields, and dry it,

72 (b) [6:38] and after that we gather it into stacks and from there again into [these] other bags -