What are the words and translation to the Bulgarian folk song

February 20, 2005 10:10 AM

Trgnalafilter: I'm looking for the words to and preferably a translation of the Bulgarian folk song "Trgnala e malka moma."

First heard it sung by the Mila vocal ensemble on A Prairie Home Companion. After some searching, I managed to obtain an MP3 of the World Harmony Chorus singing it (mp3). However, my efforts to find the lyrics and translation have been fruitless. Any Bulgarian ethnomusicologists out there?

posted by The White Hat to Society & Culture (5 answers total)

IANABE. But this $20 songbook appears to include the lyrics.

According to InterTran, the language is Croatian rather than Bulgarian, and the song title means "Wrench, oh little boy."

Or possibly: "Jerk, oh little celibate."
posted by naomi at 11:28 AM on February 20, 2005

I'd try posting the query on the Mudcat board-- it doesn't appear to be in their database yet, but the folks in that forum are pretty good with coming up with obscure folk lyrics.
posted by obloquy at 11:48 AM on February 20, 2005

Best answer: My girlfriend cannot understand all the words from this recording, but according to her the words are Bulgarian and the songs title loosely translates as "Young Girl Going." She is not exactly sure what the tense of the "going" part is in English. The gist of the song is that a young teenage girl is on her way to a well to fetch water when an older boy or man stops to talk to her. Someone sees them talking and starts a rumour about them. That's all she could make out. If you find a better recording or get the Bulgarian lyrics, email me and she may be able to translate them for you.
posted by Yorrick at 6:38 PM on February 20, 2005

this has slightly different words but a similar translation.
posted by judith at 11:45 PM on February 20, 2005

Definitely Bulgarian. I think InterTran was confused because "malka moma" could also be Croatian, and of course if you input text in the Latin alphabet it's not going to think of Bulgarian (which is written in Cyrillic).

Not sure if this is the same song, but for what it's worth: Malka Moma (pdf file of music).
posted by languagehat at 7:38 AM on February 21, 2005