Lyrical Folk Song

The lyrical folk song is a non-ritual song that expresses a person's feelings, moods, and experiences apart from any connection to a specific rite. By theme, one distinguishes love songs (the most numerous group), family-domestic songs, and social-domestic ones (Cossack, chumak, burlak, recruit, and hired-hand songs). The lyric song is marked by rich symbolism (kalyna, periwinkle, sycamore, cuckoo, falcon), psychological parallelism, diminutive forms, and songfulness. Ukrainian folk lyric astonishes with its melodiousness and depth of feeling; it was highly valued by European artists. One of the first scholarly collections was compiled by Mykhailo Maksymovych (1827), and foundational studies were carried out by Filaret Kolessa and Klyment Kvitka. The lyric song was arranged by Mykola Lysenko and Kyrylo Stetsenko; it became a source of imagery for Taras Shevchenko, Marko Vovchok, and all of modern Ukrainian literature.