Podruga or podrugi with the meaning of second in order is a term used to describe "a wife in a second marriage".Serbian speech in Izbište (Banat), Dictionary of Serbian Dialects of Vojvodina, revised and supplemented edition in 4 volumes, compiled by Dejan Miloradov, MA, Katarina Sunajko, Ivana Ćelić, MA and Dragoljub Petrović, PhD, Matica srpska, Novi Sad. Until the end of the twentieth century, this word referred to a second wife whom a husband brought into the house, in the case when he had no children with his first wife. This second wife gave birth to children, and they all lived together under the same roof, but unlike the customs in the Muslim world, the first wife practically became a member of the family.Podruga, a book by Nataša Terzić
Podruga is a custom passed down from the Balkans, mostly with Albanian and Serbian people, and when it comes to the first wife, it was not about sacrifice, but about the great love she expressed for her husband. Each wife had separate rooms, chores, and concerns, but they were always together. In some areas of Kosovo and Metohija, this custom was established and was permitted by customary law, even with the tacit or explicit consent of the first infertile wife, who, for economic reasons, had nowhere to go.Source Garden of the Balkans
Below is a more detailed explanation:
Although podruga was not legalized as an official custom in the Christian world, it nevertheless existed:
The last known podruga, from Serbia, is Petkana Filipović from the village of Drena.Podruga on saknjigomnati.rs in Kosovo and Metohija, who gave her husband Vujica and his first wife Roksanda four daughters and a son.The beauties of Serbia
See more Balkan sworn virgins
References
External links Ancestral heritage A custom preserved in Kosovo