of these Lasses, they that seemed to be the handsomest among them, concerning their Stock and Lineage, they told me, They were descended from the Chief Nobles of that Country; and some of them were of a Royal Progeny, though now it was their Fate, to marry Herdsmen or Shepherds: For Nobility is very little esteemed in the Turkish Dominions. For, I my self did afterwards see at Constantinople, and other Places, some Descendants from the Imperial Families of the Catacuzeni, and the Palæologi, living more contemptuously among the Turks, than ever Dionysius did of old at Corinth; nay, the Turks esteem no Men for their Birth, but only for their own perform'd Accomplishments, excepting only the Ottoman Family; for that they have a high Veneration, upon Account of its Original.
It is thought that these Bulgarians had their Original from Seythia, near the River Volga, and that they changed their Habitations and came into these Parts, when other Nations, either compelled by Force, or prompted by Choice, changed theirs; and that they were called Bulgarians, i. e. Volgarians, from the River Volga, aforesaid. Upon this Transmigration, they fix'd their Habitation upon those Parts of Mount Hæmus, that lie between Sophia and Philippopolis, which are Places naturally strong; where they, for a long Time, baffled all the Power of the Grecian Emperors, and killed Baldwin the Elder, Earl of Flanders, then Emperor of Constantinople, after they had taken him in an hot Skirmish. Yet, for all this, they were not able to resist the Power of the Turks, but were overcome and miserably enslaved by them. They use the Illyrian, or Slavonian Tongue, as the Servians and Rascians also do.
