Lirnyk

The lirnyk was a Ukrainian wandering folk singer who performed religious psalms, kanty, dumas, and historical and humorous songs to the accompaniment of the lira (hurdy-gurdy). Like the kobzars, the lirnyks were mostly blind, gathered in guilds with their own statute and secret argot, and had their own master 'fathers' and apprentice guides. Unlike the kobzar repertoire with its pronounced heroic component, the lirnyk's inclined toward religious-didactic and moral works. The lirnyk tradition was studied by Porfyrii Martynovych and Klyment Kvitka. The Soviet repressions of the 1930s severed the living lirnyk tradition. The figure of the blind lirnyk became a symbol of folk wisdom and national memory in literature — notably in Taras Shevchenko's poem 'The Blind Man (The Captive)' and in the work of Panteleimon Kulish.