This paper is to be cited as: Levunlieva, M. (2017). Metaphorical undercurrents in Bulgarian ritual songs. Analele universitatii din Craiova: Seria stiinte filologice, Lingvistika, 34:1/2, 288 – 298. METAPHORICAL UNDERCURRENTS IN BULGARIAN FOLK SONGS Milena LEVUNLIEVA South-West University “Neofit Rilski” - Blagoevgrad 1. Introduction The research inquires into popular ritual and historic Bulgarian folk songs and focuses on metaphors based on terms from the semantic field of water analyzing them as elements of an ancillary, secondary system of implications related to the spiritual life of the Bulgarian people. Based on the conception of the dual nature of water – an uncontrollable element and a substance promoting life and fertility, a hypothesis is construed about the presence of a plane of suggestion which is different from the planes of form, content and the creative, aesthetic charge of Bulgarian folk songs. This metaphoric suggestion is a unique code that serves as an instrument in the construction of relations parallel to those depicted in the song. These can be allusions to the times of mythology, animism or totemism; references to the roots of consciousness, when nomination was conducted from the outer to the inner, from nature to the individual who identified him-/herself with it and whose outlook was ecological rather than ethnocentric. The study adopts Weinrich’s model for the interpretation of symbols and allegories (Weinrich qtd. by Eco 1993: 141-143) in literary works. It demonstrates that the decoding of symbols in a piece of art starts from metaphor, and more specifically from micro-metaphorics, which represents an inquiry into the similarities and differences between the tenor and the vehicle. The next level, he claims, is “the metaphorics of the context”, which enhances the object of study and includes the metaphorically established associations within the framework of the literary text. The final stage of analysis, according to Weinrich’s model, is conducted at the level of “the metaphorics of the text” – a special ideological code, which, when deciphered, reveals the historical, cultural, and social circumstances accompanying the creation of a piece of writing. This model for deciphering symbolic undercurrents in literary texts is complemented by Freidenberg’s theory on the mythological image or pre-metaphor - a stage of language and consciousness when metaphorical expressions, due to the specific phase in the development of abstract thinking, were perceived and interpreted as identifications per se between what is close and tactile and what is distant and difficult to describe (Freidenberg 1978: 181-183). At this stage, abstract thinking is by far a matter of abstracting properties of concrete objects and ascribing them to abstruse entities, which are not however perceived themselves as Milena LEVUNLIEVA 288 such. To ancient people death is rather than resembles a road to be overcome and grief is rather than reminds of an abyss (ibid.). Both authors, however, use their suggested models to interpret a particular