The sky over Bulgaria

Kumova slama: the Milky Way in Bulgarian folk tradition

Kumova slama (“the godfather’s straw”) is the best-known Bulgarian folk name for the Milky Way. The legend of the stolen straw teaches that one does not steal from a godfather. Astronomy shows us the disk of our own galaxy, seen from the inside.

A pale trail across the night sky

On a clear night, far from city lights, you can see a faint, hazy band crossing the sky. Bulgarian folk tradition calls it Kumova slama (“the godfather’s straw”). Behind the name lies a short story with a clear moral. Science today knows that this band is part of our own galaxy. The two views do not contradict each other, because they answer different questions: one tells what the sky meant to people, the other what it is made of.

The legend of Kumova slama

The legend was recorded in several variants. In the most widespread one, during a bitter winter when there was no fodder for the livestock, a godson (kumets) went by night to his godfather (kum) and filled a basket with straw. The basket had no bottom, though, and the straw spilled along the way. In the morning the godfather followed the trail to his godson’s house. In Angel Bonov’s retelling in “Mitove i legendi za sazvezdiyata” (“Myths and legends of the constellations”), the godfather wishes that the stolen straw would catch fire and never go out, so that people remember one must not steal from a godfather. The Bulgarian National Radio’s account of star traditions has the godson leaving his godfather’s home on a winter evening with a basket of straw.

Two things are worth noticing. The first is the moral frame: godparenthood is a sacred bond, so stealing from a godfather is seen as especially grave. The second is the image of the sky itself. People read the scattered straw as a trail left in the heavens for good.

Names and variants

Ivanichka Georgieva, in her book on Bulgarian mythology (“Balgarska mitologia”), lists several names for the Milky Way besides Kumova slama: popova slama (“the priest’s straw”), slamata (“the straw”) and pato. She also records a similar tale about a priest who stole straw from Grandfather God, but whose baskets had no bottoms and spilled it. In isolated cases, the Milky Way is explained as having formed from the milk of the moon and the stars. We deliberately leave out other folk names that we cannot support with a verifiable source.

Related ideas among other peoples

According to the same source, the image of the Milky Way as straw is found among Persians and Turks. For the Greeks it is the milk of the Great Mother, and among the Slavic peoples the Milky Way is the path of the dead. The Greek myth of Hera’s milk is well known and stands behind the word “galaxy” itself. So one and the same pale band has inspired different imaginations: food, a road, straw, the trace of a deed.

What the Milky Way is, astronomically

According to NASA, our home galaxy is called the Milky Way. It is a spiral galaxy with a disk of stars spanning more than 100,000 light-years. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. Earth lies along one of the spiral arms, about halfway from the center. From our viewpoint the galaxy looks like a faint, milky band arcing across the whole sky, which is how it got its name. We are seeing the central disk of the galaxy edge on.

NASA also notes that the solar system takes about 240 million years to orbit the Milky Way once. NASA’s educational “Imagine the Universe” pages give an estimate of roughly 100 billion stars. All the stars we see with the naked eye belong to it. The band looks hazy because the light of countless distant stars blends together. The dark patches within it are clouds of gas and dust that block the light behind them.

The galaxy is a barred spiral. We have no picture of the whole Milky Way, because we are inside it. Its shape is worked out from observations of the band and from other measurements.

How to look for it

You need a dark sky and a little patience. Light pollution erases the band even where bright stars are visible, so look from a village, the mountains or the seaside, away from lamps. Give your eyes a few minutes to adapt. See also our guide on how to watch the sky and the article on light pollution. A general look at the galaxy is in the Milky Way. In folk names of the stars you can see how Bulgarians named other sky objects, and in Vlashici how they named the Pleiades.

A thought to take with you

Tradition and science are not rivals. The tradition shows how our ancestors turned the sky into a lesson in fairness and conscience. Astronomy shows how vast the thing they were looking at really is. One evening, standing beneath Kumova slama, you can hold both in mind: the small human story and the giant spiral we live in. The difference between science and tradition is also explained in astronomy vs astrology.

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