This article looks at four types of Balkan women’s folk art, including songs, dress, dance and ritual laments. Examples are drawn largely from Martha Forsyth’s research (1996) into women’s singing traditions in the Bulgarian village of Bistritsa. These are non-written arts, with roots in antiquity, which I suggest can be seen as ‘texts’ in the earliest definitions of the word, encompassing not only written but spoken and woven ways. Rural Balkan women throughout history have been largely denied access to literacy, yet they keep alive in their archaic customs an approach to text – text as textile, textile as text – which dates from ancient times. 

In Walking the Worlds Journal 4:1, 2018. 

Available from walkingtheworlds.com