Bugarštica ( or ), originally known as Bugaršćica, is a form of epic and ballad oral poetry, which was popular among South Slavs mainly in Dalmatia and Bay of Kotor from 15th until the 18th century, sung in long verses of mostly fifteen and sixteen syllables with a caesura after the seventh and eighth syllable, respectively.
Etymology
The term bugaršćica and bugaršćina for song and bugariti for singing were first recorded in 1550s by Petar Hektorović and published in Fishing and Fishermen's Talk (1568), in his reference to two songs he collected from fishermen from the Adriatic island of Hvar. Juraj Baraković recorded bugarskice, while Ivan Gundulić bugarkinje. In Central Croatia were sometimes named as popijevka or popevka. The form bugarštica is a 19th-century invention as the contemporary Serbo-Croatian standard language does not have "consonantal cluster šć", being more a technical term, but since 1980s bugaršćica is also being used in the scientific literature because it is more appropriate for the historical context.
The origination and etymology are still uncertain. There exist three predominant theories regarding the etymology of bugarštica:
Researchers such as Vatroslav Jagić, Tomo Maretić, and Matija Murko, posit that it was derived from the root bugar "Bulgarian", indicating the direction of spread of bugarštica from a contact area between late medieval Bulgaria and Serbia towards the Adriatic coast. Other names, such as pjesan bugarska which some scholars interpret as "Bulgarian song", or sarpskim načinom "Serbian manner", were applied to these songs. The second considered by scholars such as Ivan Slamnig, Ilya Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Nada Milošević-Đorđević, and others, the term developed from the Latin vulgaricus or lingua vulgaris "common people's language", or carmen vulgare "folk song", denoting ballads composed in the spoken Slavic vernacular in Dalmatia, as opposed to those composed in the literary Latin. The change of the initial v into b could be due to folk etymology, associating vulgare with the similarly sounding Slavic root bugar. Slamnig also points out that vulgare was alternatively spelled as bulgare, when it referred to the Slavic language of the Adriatic Coast. According to the third, which is partly related to the second, considered by Đuro Daničić, Vladan Nedić, Miroslav Pantić, Josip Kekez, and others would be from verb bugariti meaning "sad singing", possibly deriving from Middle Latin bucculare and boccalone meaning to "start singing" and "shouting, whining". It was also common in Istria and the island of Krk meaning "loud" or "monotonal" singing. As it was a common term for singing nevertheless of the number of syllables Nenad Ljubinković argued that the term is mistakenly used for long verse songs and rather proposed the term "songs of the long verse", but such a term is too general and the bugarštica makes a genre of a very specific style. Additionally, Valtazar Bogišić and Petar Skok proposed a relation to the Albanian, Aromanian, Turkish and South Slavic music instruments bulgari and bugarija, but such assumption is dismissed because there is no evidence the songs were performed with an instrument.
Origin
As historical events spread and reflect easily in both oral and written poetry it is problematic to directly relate their origin with historical figures of the different royal court, toponyms, and nationality, as well as at the early times did not exist today's national separatism.
In the scholarship exist various theories: