Following an epidemic, as well as after a war, humankind always looks to regain its level; apparently life becomes easier, lads' wealths and girls' dowries improve through inheritances and through the death of brothers and sisters with whom they would have otherwise shared the parently possessions, had the latter lived. When a great mortality occurs, people say that the bread grows cheaper -- and this belief had some grounding back then, as the country was back then lacking in exports and thus grains were only used for internal consumption. Under these circumstances, marriages had to become numerous, moreso as evil had plagued more beings. Thus, as soon as the plague ended, people started wedding.
Back then a wedding wouldn't just represent a piece of white paper, neatly typed at Socec or Weiss from Mr. X or Ms. Z, announcing the celebration of the matrimony of their son or daughter on some given day, at Sărindar1 or Domnița Bălașa2, and then... out the door! Back then a wedding was quite a big deal!
First came the suitors and colăceri with aldamaș3; then came the betrothal, with a high priest, with deacons and the lower ranks among the priests, with singers and fiddlers and a huge celebration that lasted all night up until early morning. A few days before the wedding, if the bride and the groom came from the boyar society, the cherofilima (literally, hand-kissing4) would take place at the court, where the youth and their relatives were taken with a retinue to kiss the hand of Vodă and the Lady, asking for their blessings.
As the day of the wedding approached, the hood5 would be decorated with firs all the way from the groom's house to the bride's place. On the eve of the wedding, about after noon, towards the bride's home would head a group of călțunurese6, i.e. ladies who counted among the most beautiful relatives of the groom, arriving in carriages saddled with prized stallions. The first călțunareasă entered the bride's home carrying a silver vase with gold plated flowers, scented with aromas of udagaci and curse7; she also carried a sprinkler from which she dropped rose water, as a sign of cleanliness, and she wished the bride to always be clean and perfumed8. A second călțunăreasă brought on a silver tray the flowers used to weave the crowns9. The third călțunareasă brought a tray with tinsel, as a sign of wealth. The remaining călțunărese would follow with almost a dozen trays loaded with all sorts of gifts: shawls, jewels, expensive fabrics, money, various sweets etc. Lots of girls would go round the bride, while the fiddlers would play and sing the old song:
Today with the girls
Tomorrow with the wives ...
After opening the bundles and admiring their gifts, the girls jumped straight to the trays with tinsels and the flowers; a few of them weaved the crowns: a full cross for the groom and half a cross for the bride. The others took the skein off the tinsels and weaved it into a warp of about three ells10 in length, the bride's adornment, a golden river which could hide the betrothed girl from head to toes. From time to time, the girls peeked towards the boys and threw flowers or tinsel knots in their direction; the boys took them and used them to decorate their fermenele11; while the girls, as ones who shared, also took part12, hanging pieces of tinsel to the left side of their chests, in front of their hearts13.
After the service14, everyone would start playing: the ineluș-învârteguș, the baba mija, the gaia, the rag15, and all these would end in a big horă16. Thusly the bride would bid farewell to the girls and her friends17; while the elders and their ladies, and the men and their wives would party all night on ziafet18, drink and food, in the unceasing sound of fiddlers.
But the second day was even more special! The wedding started right at dawn; the attendees would not stop wandering between the bride and the groom's house. The religious ceremony was celebrated at noon at the parochial church, from which the bride would not return to her parents' home. She, along with the groom, sat in the carriage with the folks who wore the gevre, and took the ceremonial candles, shoved in a ceremonial bread19. And if the ceremony was to be held at the groom's home, one of his closest relatives, his mother, sister or aunt, would go take the bride and bring her home to her groom, with bedding, with dowry, with everything. The carriage was surrounded by all the lads, relatives and friends to the groom, who got their horses tangled, announcing the bride's arrival.
The moment of separation from her parents was solemn to the bride, however she had to pull her leg when crossing the parental home, so that the other girls would also get married. Custom required that crying would overcome her at that moment20, while the fiddlers sang:
Shut up, bride, stop your crying,
'Cause you'll go back to your mother
When the poplar starts making apples21
And the wicker little cherries ... etc.
After the wedding ceremony, huge luncheon with sweets from becer22 Manolachi and with confectionery from the famous Pascu; with wine from Drăgășani, with pelin23 from Dealu-Mare and vanilla and kursi-scented24 vodka. Fiddlers and horă all night, and as the sun rose again, the godparents, the parents-in-law and other attendees were sent back home with fiddlers.
This feast lasted three days in the lower society, while in the boyars' society it lasted seven days and seven nights, after the princes' and emperors' laws. A wedding would end and ten others would begin, so that the Bucharests25 were all one big celebration. The mourning was changed into joy26!
To be continued.
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Old church in Bucharest, built by one Matei Basarab around 1650. In its place lies nowadays the so-called Military Circle, built during the late 1800s, around the time of Carol I. The only remaining item bearing the name Sărindar is the fountain in the same place. ↩
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Church at Unirii Square, initially built under the supervision of one of Constantin Brâncoveanu's daughters. The church bearing this name that is to be found today behind communist buildings was rebuilt in the 1880s, during the reign of the very same Carol I. ↩
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The meaning of "pețitori", i.e. suitors is obvious, I hope. As for the other two terms, I shan't bother translating them, since as far as Eastern European traditions go, they have slightly different meanings than their Western counterparts.
"Colăcer", or "colăcar", comes from the Romanian "colac", which is a round bread that is somewhat similar in shape to a bagel. Thus, a colăcer is part of a gang that organizes the whole she-bang: the folks (family and friends) who bring the bread and the wine and (especially) accompany the bride and the groom, and who hold the speeches. I suppose the nearest correspondent in Western culture would be the groomsmen and the bridesmaids.
"Aldamaș", or "aldămaș" means literally a tip, or as we say in Romanian, "cinste", i.e. the foods and drinks that are served to celebrate the transaction. ↩
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This is a word that I cannot for the love of all that is saint find in any dictionary, although its meaning is rather easy to derive from its (obviously Greek) parts. χέρι is "hand", φίλημα is "kiss", so there you have it, a hand-kissing. ↩
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Yes. Thanks to Tupac, Dre, Snoop, Marshall and whomever else you may consider a "lyrical influencer" (what in the days of old would be called a poet) of your postmodern English, "mahala" is nowadays translated to "da hood". Haters will call it a "slum", while the French, for their lack of imagination, might call it a "banlieue". Romanians used to call it a "mahala" in the 1800s and nowadays they simply call it a "cartier", i.e. a hood. ↩
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"Călțunăreasă" is the feminine of "călțunar", itself composed of the radical "călțun", joined with the suffix "ar", the latter denoting "one who produces said thing(s)", in our case, the călțun(s) in question. In the particular case of weddings, "to produce" means rather "to bring".
As for "călțun", the native speakers should not be surprised to find that it is related to the verb "a încălța", which itself is comprised of the radical "călț", joined by the prefix "în" (same meaning as the Latin/English "in") and the suffix "a" -- and as in Latin, "încălțare" is actually a valid form, except in Romanian it's a noun, not a verb. Anyway, from this intricate analysis, the keen reader may deduce that "călțun" is the object of "încălțare", some kind of shoe that the "călțunărese" would bring to precisely fit the feet of the bride, just as in that old fairy tale.
In other words, the călțunărese were ladies who brought the bride gifts, in order to prepare her both physically and mentally for what was to come. ↩
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"Udagaci" or "odagaci" or "odogaci" is the popular name for various aromatic flowers and/or shrubs.
"Cursă" eludes me, but the Romanian dictionary says it comes from the Turkish "kurs", which stands for some sort of aromatic pill from the Orient. ↩
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Being "clean and perfumed" was somewhat of a luxury back in those days. Not so different from today, come to think of it. ↩
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The original, "cununie" actually has the meaning of "cunună", i.e. the crowns placed on the bride and the groom's heads during the ceremonies. The very same "cununie" refers directly to the Holy Mystery of Matrimony, as it is still called within the Orthodox tradition. ↩
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The so-called "cot" and the "cloth-ell" are roughly equivalent, in that they both refer to the distance between the elbow and the end of the middle finger; that is, about sixty standard centimeters, although I suppose sizes varied among European countries. ↩
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Short boyarly coats, fashionable at the time. ↩
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This is an old Romanian proverb, "cine împarte, parte-și face", i.e. he who shares also takes part.
What, you thought the job of sharing comes for free? Nothing comes for free. ↩
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For the record, this whole ritual was still customary at the last weddings that I attended, about five years ago. ↩
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In the original text, "clacă", a word which means a whole deal of other things as well, depending on the context, region and so on and so forth. ↩
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All these are children's games that we used to play back in the day, before the TV, the PC and the smartphone went in fashion. They deserve their own space, I won't go into any details here. ↩
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Old dance where people held their hands in a circle and moved at unison. Example photo (archived). ↩
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Well, it's not that they'd literally break up. The bride, however, leaves her old social stature of girl to join the wives' gang -- yes indeed, "yesterday with the girls, today with the wives" -- and moreover she then leaves her parents' home, which elicits a sort of melancholic, even sad atmosphere. I've seen plenty of mothers cry after their daughters at these events, what can I say. ↩
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Also: zaiafet, from the Turkish ziyafet, i.e. celebration. ↩
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The "gevrea" is a sort of ceremonial handkerchief, while the ceremonial candles are huge. I swear that I'm not making these up. ↩
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As I called it in footnote #17. ↩
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Meaning, in plain English, that at that point there's absolutely no way back to her old life.
Perhaps it's also worth noting for the younger ones among the readers that this change in social stature, as I called it in footnote #17, was considered permanent in that day's honour society. Yes, the woman could leave her marriage had she somehow had the means to do so, but this move would nevertheless bring disgrace upon her and would cause even more ire among her relatives, who wouldn't and couldn't accept someone in their family parting with what was considered sacred tradition. Yes, regardless of how much of a drunken pig her husband was, or how much he'd beat her. Have you not read Rebreanu's Ion?
Furthermore, you're perhaps not aware of how exactly yesterday's institution of marriage got downgraded to yet another thing just like all the others in the eminently flat universe of postmodernity. If you insist, we may discuss the trade-offs incurred by this change, but I sure as hell won't entertain your "this versus that" in chatbot terms. ↩
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The word is formed through the same composition mechanism as footnote #6, from "beci", i.e. cellar, were the wines were kept and where the food was cooked at the times' courts. Thus: a becer is the one who oversees the princely kitchen. ↩
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The word "pelin" means three things: 1. Perennial plant (Artemisia absinthium) widely found in the temperate climate of Europe and Asia; 2. distilled beverage (especially in Turkish and Slavic languages) using this plant as an ingredient; 3. a type of wine condimented with this plant. The text likely refers to the third meaning. ↩
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That "cursă" from footnote #7 again, though I'm not sure what sense it makes in this context. ↩
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Did you know, by the way, that the Romanian name of "Bucharest", i.e. "bucurești" is morphologically/grammatically speaking a plural? In the same vein as footnotes #6 and #22, the word is composed of the radical "bucur" bound to the suffix "ești".
The radical comes supposedly from one peasant, Bucur, who (in the 1300s or 1400s) founded a small trading hub, or a hermitage, or in any case, something, in the place where the town lays nowadays. The suffix "ești" is the plural of "escu", supposedly coming from the verb "este"/"a fi", i.e. Romanian's "to be". The genesis goes (as far as Romanian linguists are concerned, from what I know) from the plural to the singular -- thus Pop-ești means literally "the people of Pop", while "Popescu" means "from the village of Popești". Or in any case, something of the sort.
Thus, in early modern Romanian, one would not refer to "the" (definite article) Bucharest as "Bucureștiul", but rather as "Bucureștii", i.e. "the Bucharests". ↩
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And with this paragraph and this footnote, I'm also putting an end to the third part of this journey in translation and annotation. This documentation of weddings was, believe it or not, truly a backbreaker, which I started all the way mid-February (on account of my short break) and ended only now -- well, I did say that I'll finish the text before 2030!
The excursion in the land of piles of dictionaries, both local and foreign, is to my eye a testament to the fact that the Romanian language managed to birth at most, at most a minor culture; this may not come as much of a surprise to them cultured folks. In any case, Romanian was always a language of fashions: if during Ghica's time folks were conversing mainly using Slavic, Turkish and Greek neologisms, and only in the second part of that century they were borrowing French and German words, almost two centuries later everyone and their dog speaks in English words -- awful English, but English nevertheless. The proud Romanians are, if anything, perpetrators of a culture of forgetfulness! That is, if they, by some miracle, make something which is theirs, as opposed to borrowed, they will in short order proceed to destroy it, to "unhappen" it, i.e. to behave as if the thing in question never existed. If Romanian conservatism was ever a thing, it died long ago and I'm afraid it won't come back anytime soon. ↩
Your use of horă, untranslated, made me wonder -- surely this isn't just a local tradition. And then through foggy memory came the movie Midsommar, at the end of which the ladies do a similar kind of dance. One Google later, it seems this is a called a 'maypole dance' in various parts of Yurop.
I am sufficiently acquainted with the similarities/differences as to suggest you may actually use that name. Just thought I'd share.
I'm no ethnologist myself, but I dare say that the horă and the maypole dance have about the same relationship that lies between the doină and blues music -- the former has some characteristic that is universal and that is shared with the latter (Bobby McFerrin went to great lengths to illustrate this), but otherwise the resemblance is only in form. For one, the horă lacks the phallic symbolism present in the maypole dance, but I'll admit that I'm insufficiently acquainted with the latter to comment more on this.
I will also add here that the horă is actually part of a larger family of dances from the Balkan/Slavic tradition, maybe that's rather where I'd look if I were to place it in a larger context.
> you may actually use that name
Nah, let the Westerners dive into the nitty-gritty of Romanian, why take that from them?
[...] Let's take a trip down memory lane (for some at least), tracking back in the 1990s, or even late 1980s, when some Romanian singers took whatever instruments they had on hand and started translating Romanian and Gypsy folklore into what we first called "muzică țigănească" and then we started calling "manele". First we heard Azur and Generic2, then Minune, Guță et alia started gaining traction and then... a whole fucking wave of singers, led by the Salam doing mostly the Bulgarian Tallava, simply hit the speakers of each and every bairam3 in the hood. [...]
[...] yet another quick detour through Romanian morphology: the "-eni" suffix isn't so different from "-ești", only I suspect it's more common in Transylvania than in the other historical regions. [...]
[...] This life was good for Caragea, as people from common folk to boyars, all plunged neck-deep in parties, were thusly kept unaware of the princely robberies1; moreover, the caftans2 sought by the newlyweds helped him quite a bit to enlarge his bag. The hustle for ranks was so big that the princely pitac3 register was full, and they say that in the day of Caragea's escape, the postelnic could barely read all the names of the high boyars and a few of the lesser ones4. Asked by vodă to leave, he slammed the pitac to the ground, yeling: "... and the rest of you all, pitars and serdars5!". [...]
[...] which leaves us under the imperative of tracing back the original sense... well, from its origins, by taking it apart piece by piece and then reconstructing [...]
[...] see the discussion regarding Romanian Orthodox Christian mores pertaining to the institution of marriage in nineteenth [...]