Miorița

"Miorița" (ad. mioriță, lit. 'The Little Ewe Lamb'), also transliterated as "Mioritza", is an old Romanian pastoral ballad considered to be one of the most important pieces of Romanian folklore. It has numerous versions with quite different content, but the literary version by poet Vasile Alecsandri (1850) is the best known and praised. This had erstwhile been the oldest known written text, arousing suspicion that the poet may have authored it entirely, until the discovery was made of a version from the 1790s.

For the village in Constanța County, see Ciobanu.

Etymology

The Romanian word mioriță, with diminutive suffix -ița, is the diminutive form of mioară meaning 'ewe lamb',[1] therefore, the literal meaning is "little ewe lamb". Some have translated the title as "The Lambkin".[2]

Summary

A summary adhering to the plotline of Alecsandri's poem is as follows:[3]

Three shepherds, one a Moldovan, another a Transilvanian (ungurean)[lower-alpha 1] and the third a Wallachian/Vrancean, meet while tending their flocks of sheep.[6][7]

In the Moldovan's flock, there is a black-fleeced[8] (or black-spotted[9])[lower-alpha 2] and black-muzzled animal[lower-alpha 3] (or perhaps flecked with gray[16]). It is an enchanted ewe lamb which can talk, and it informs its master that the other two are plotting to murder him so they can steal his livestock (sheep, horses, hounds).[6] The shepherd is resigned to the fate of his own death,[17][18] and instructs the lamb that in the event of his murder, the lamb is to go ask his killers to bury his body by the sheepfold (sheep's pen; Romanian: stână).[6][18] The ewe was also to tell all his other sheep that he has married a princess during a wedding attended by the elements of nature, marked by a falling star,[6] this cosmic event with nuptial elements represents the Moldovan shepherd's vision of death.[17]

The shepherd also requests that his three instruments—a little flute[19] or shepherd's pipe[20][21] (fluieraș[lower-alpha 4]) made of beech, another flute-pipe made bone, and a third flute-pipe made of elderwood—be buried beside his head, so that whenever the wind blew, the flutes would play and the sheep would gather.[6][23][24][lower-alpha 5]

The poem concludes with shepherd's instruction for the ewe to act as messenger to his aging mother: she is to be told the same story, that he has gone off to marry a princess at heaven's gate (or marry the Black Earth in some versions[23]).[lower-alpha 6][6][27] According to the shepherd's earlier instructions (to give to the other sheep), what will become of him is that The Hills will officiate as the priest, and the Sun and Moon act as his godparents—in other words, he is describing his own imminent death in veiled terms, completely allegorized as a Romanian wedding.[23][28]

Textual sources

The pastoral ballad has been passed down in a widespread area across the Romanian provinces,[27] with Moldavia at the core.[17] There have been over one thousand versions collected, the best-known and lauded is the reworking by Vasile Alecsandri published in the winter of 1850,[29][27] perhaps collected directly from street minstrels.[2] The claim that Alecu Russo was the ballad's discoverer who supplied the material to the poet[27][30] has been subject to skepticism, since nothing has been found among Russo's papers to substantiate it.[31]

A version predating Alecsandri's by several decades came to light in 1991, inscribed in the journals of Gheorghe Șincai from the first half of the 1790s. The Alecsandri version is not entirely different from this, thus establishing that there were indeed original base texts available to him at the time to be reworked, rather than him having to reconstruct the ballad out of whole cloth.[31]

It has also been asserted that the ballad originates from the Vrancea district,[32] but the role of the murderous Vrancean shepherd is replaced by a Jewish shepherd in known Vrancean variants of the ballad.[33] The ballad occurs in every Romanian province (thus also in Oltenia and Bessarabia),[lower-alpha 7], and the names (nationalities) of the shepherds and geographical details depends on the localization.[34] The Transylvanian version lacks the lamb's clairvoyance but retains the last will concerning the objects to bury and cosmic wedding.[35]

Translations

A prose translation in English, "Miora", appeared in E. C. Grenville Murray's Doĭne: Or, the National Songs and Legends of Roumania (1853).[30][36] This was followed by Lord Henry Stanley's verse translations (1856) into English as well as French.[30][37]

A translation by N. W. Newcombe was also printed in Grigore Nandriș's Colloquial Romanian (1945).[38][39] The ballad was also rendered under the title "Mioritza: The Canticle of the Sheep, the Enchanted Ewe" by Octavian Buhociu (The Pastoral Paradise: Romanian Folklore, 1966).[40] Translations by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet William D. Snodgrass appeared in Miorița (1972),[38] Cinci Balade Populare. Five Folk Ballads (c. 1993) and Selected Translations ("The Ewe Lamb", 1998).[41][42] A translation by Ernest H. Latham Jr. was published in a Doca's grammar book in 1995;[43] Latham's version (with Kiki Skagen Munshi as co-translator) appeared in his 2020 monograph on the poem.[6]

Analysis

A comprehensive study was made by Adrian Fochi (Miorița, 1964), compiling 538 examples of the ballad to illustrate, with additional fragments and variants.[40][31]

Miorița was identified as one of the four cornerstone myths used as theme in Romaniank folk poetry, according to the analysis of George Călinescu (1941).[lower-alpha 8][44][45]

Although the poem may be seen as an exemplar traditional Christianity, i.e., turning the other cheek,[46] Mircea Eliade sees "cosmic Christianity" at work, i.e., "the capacity to annul the apparently irremediable consequences of a tragic event by charging them with previously unsuspected values".[47] Man's bond with Nature is emphasized: this "mystical solidarity" is what enables the shepherd to overcome his fate.[48] This bond with Nature is also spoken in terms of the "cosmic marriage" or "mioritic marriage".[49]

Legacy

The Miorița ballad is summarized and discussed by Mircea Eliade in Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God (1972),[21] and plays a fundamental role in his novel The Forbidden Forest.

The poem was quoted extensively by Patrick Leigh Fermor in his account[50] of the second part of a journey on foot from Holland to Constantinople in 1933–34. He includes a partial translation of the poem which he refers to as "ramshackle but pretty accurate", which was completed during an extended stay in Eastern Romania before September 1939.

The Miorița is often referred to in Marcus Sedgwick's novel My Swordhand is Singing (2006).[51]

Explanatory notes
  1. Romanian ungurean is not actually "Hungarian"; rather, it means "someone from Hungary-land", i.e. a Romanian residing in the Hungarian-ruled portion of Transylvania, thus construed as "Transylvanian". The word is Ungur for 'Hungarian'.[4][5]
  2. Newcombe's translation gives "black sheep", yet the footnote glosses lău (m.), laie (f.) as 'gray'. The term lai is defined as "sheep with black or gray wool; wool (of inferior quality) sheared from such sheep" in one dictionary[10] (cf. Titkin's Romanian-German[11]) and as "black or spotted/speckled with black" in another.[12]
  3. While Nandriș (1945), p. 292 glosses "bucălău" as "with black mouth (of sheep)", this is listed as a secondary sense (with Miorița given as usage example) in Titkin's Romanian-German dictionary, where the primary sense given is "(of sheep), with black or gray fur".[13] Iordan's dictionary defines it as "one or both cheeks being lăi (=gray)".[14] It is applied to depigmentation on the scalp and tail in one agricultural science paper.[15]
  4. This term (fluier + diminutive suffix -aș) denotes 'little flute', but also 'little piper/whistler' as well.[22]
  5. So here it is indicated that the fluieraș is an instrument for gathering herds by sound in animal husbandry. It has been remarked that the hero Făt-Frumos similarly owns a bone pipe, used to summon his animal helpers.[25] But the shepherd's flute (fluieraș, tilincă) is a musical instrument as well, accompanying the performance of the doina.[26]
  6. He will marry the princess "Pe-o gură de rai (at heaven's gate)", which echoes the opening lines of the ballad Pe un picior de plai, /Pe-o gură de rai", printed on a Moldavian banknote.[17] This is translated "Near a low foothill / At Heaven's doorsill" by Snodgrass and "To the meadow's edge /To heaven's gate" by Latham. "On a low hillside /Where the heaven spreads wide" is how Newcombe rhymed the couplet, but the footnote indicates that the latter signifies "like the entry into paradise".
  7. In former Yugoslavia and Macedonia also.[34]
  8. The other three being the zburător (sburător) myth, the Trajan and Dochia myth, and Meşterul Manole.

References
Citations
  1. s.v. "mioriță, miorițe". Oprea, Ioan, ed. (2017), Noul Dictionar Universal al limbii romane, Grup Editorial Litera, p. 193, ISBN 9786063367250
  2. Jackson-Laufer, Guida Myrl (1995), "Miorița ("The Lambkin")", Traditional Epics: A Literary Companion, Oxford University Press, p. 400, ISBN 9780195102765
  3. Newcombe, N. W., tr.; Alecsandri ver. (English and Romanian side by side). "Miorița", in: Nandriș (1945), pp. 272−277
  4. Latham (2020), p. 12.
  5. Nandriș (1945), p. 272, note 1.
  6. Latham (2020).
  7. Popa, Ion (2017), The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust, Indiana University Press, p. 193, ISBN 9780253029898
  8. Newcombe tr. :"Dear little black sheep/Black-nosed, clad deep". Nandriș (1945), p. 26
  9. Latham tr. : "Miorita, speckled lamb, / Face of sooty black". Latham (2020); Doca (1995), p. 140
  10. s. v. "lai": "oaie cu lăna neagră sau cenusie; lăna (de calitate inferiorară) tunsă de pe o astfel de oaie" Oprea (2017)
  11. s.v. "lai". Tiktin, Hariton, ed. (1985), Rumänisch Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 2 (3 ed.), Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, p. 564, ISBN 9783447043847
  12. s.v. "lai". "Lai, adj . ( despre lîna oilor ) „ negru , pătat cu negru ”". Brâncuș, Grigore [in Romanian], ed. (2017), Noul Dictionar Universal al limbii romane, Grup Editorial Litera, p. 141, ISBN 9786063367250
  13. s.v. "bucălău". Tiktin, Hariton, ed. (1985), Rumänisch Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 1 (3 ed.), Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, p. 326
  14. s.v. "bucălău". Iordan, Iorgu, ed. (1983), Dicționar al numelor de familie românești, Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 82
  15. Teodoreanu, N. [in Romanian]; Pușcaru, D.; Derlogea, V.; Harșian, A. (1952), "Cercetări asupra oftalmiei mieilor de rasa ţigae, bucălae", Buletin ştiinţific: Secţia de biologie şi ştiinţe agricole, secţia de geologie şi geografie, 4 (3): 767, Mielul are pigmentație de bucălău , cu pete depigmentate pe creştet şi coadă
  16. Snodgrass tr. (1998), p. 72: "Ewe lamb dapple-gray/ Muzzled black and gray"
  17. Brezianu, Andrei; Spânu, Vlad (2007), "Miorița", Historical Dictionary of Moldova, Scarecrow Press, p. 232, ISBN 9780810864467
  18. Kligman (1988) p. 242
  19. Newcombe tr., Nandriș (1945), p. 274
  20. Nandriș (1945), p. 307
  21. Cap-Bun, Marina (2017) [2015], Blanco, Maria-José; Vidal, Ricarda (eds.), "The Romanian Carnival of Death and The Merry Cemetery of Săpânţa", The Power of Death: Contemporary Reflections on Death in Western Society, Berghahn Books, p. 179, ISBN 9781782384342
  22. s.v. "fluieraș ". Macrea, Dimitrie [in Romanian] (1958), Dicţionarul limbii romîne moderne (in Romanian), Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 309
  23. Kligman (1988) p. 243
  24. Babuts (2000), pp. 3, 7.
  25. Ursache, Petru [in Romanian] (1976), Poetică folclorică, Junimea, p. 187
  26. Slavici, Ioan (1881), Die Rümanen in Ungarn, Siebenbürgen und Bukowina (in German), Wien: Karl Prochaska, p. 189
  27. Babuts (2000), p. 3.
  28. Cf. the lines "Sun and moon came down/To hold my bridal crown, " Snodgrass tr. (1998) [1993], on which Babuts (2000), p. 11 notes: "the sun and moon holding the crown for the bride and groom, just as the godparents do at Romanian weddings" and the mountain officiating as priest substantiates that a wedding scene is being evoked.
  29. Fenechiu, Carmen; Munteanu, Dana LaCourse (2017), Torlone, Zara Martirosova; Munteanu, Dana LaCourse; Dutsch, Dorota (eds.), "Loving Vergil, Hating Rome: Cosbuc as Translator and Poet", A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe, John Wiley & Sons, p. 296, n12, ISBN 9781118832714
  30. Latham (2020), p. 6.
  31. Latham (2020), p. 7.
  32. Latham (2020), p. 14.
  33. Oisteanu, Andrei (2009), Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central-East European Cultures, U of Nebraska Press, p. 201, ISBN 9780803224612
  34. Senn (1982), p. 211.
  35. Senn (1982), pp. 211–212.
  36. Murray, E. C. Grenville (1854), "Miora", Doĭne: Or, the National Songs and Legends of Roumania, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., pp. 111–114
  37. Stanley tr. (1856), pp. 168–172.
  38. Impey, Michael H. (September–October 1975). "The Present State of Romanian Studies in the United States and Canada". The Modern Language Journal. 59 (5/6): 269, 270. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1975.tb02354.x. JSTOR 324308.
  39. Nandriș (1945), pp. 272−277.
  40. Ben-Amos, Dan, ed. (2006), Folktales of the Jews, vol. 2, Dov Noy (consuting ed.); Ellen Frankel (series ed.), Jewish Publication Society, pp. 226 and n24, n25, ISBN 9780827608306
  41. Babuts (2000), p. 14, n4.
  42. Snodgrass tr. (1998).
  43. Doca (1995), pp. 140–142.
  44. Cornis-Pope, Marcel (2004), Pope, Marcel; Neubauer, John (eds.), Otilia Hedeşan, "The Question of Folklore in Romanian Literary Culture", The Making and Remaking of Literary Institutions, History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries 3, John Benjamins Publishing, p. 318, ISBN 9789027234551
  45. Dobre, Alexandru (1999), "Mitul literar și mitul folcloric. Precizările și sugestiile lui G. Călinescu", Revista de etnografie și folclor [Journal of ethnography and folklore], 44: 217
  46. Williams, Victoria R. (2020), "Moldovan", Indigenous Peoples: An Encyclopedia of Culture, History, and Threats to Survival, vol. 3, ABC-CLIO, p. 752, ISBN 1440861188
  47. Senn (1982), p. 212 apud Eliade (1972), Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God, p. 255
  48. Senn (1982), p. 212 apud Eliade (1972), p. 254
  49. Kligman (1988), p. 244apud Eliade (1972), p. 251
  50. Fermor, Patrick Leigh (1986). Between the Woods and the Water. London: John Murray. pp. 204–207. ISBN 0-7195-4264-2.
  51. My Swordhand is Singing. London: Orion. 2006. ISBN 978-1-84255-558-3.
Bibliography
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