The Ursitory ("white women" also known as ''Ursitori'', ''Oursitori'', ''Ursitele'', ''Urbitele'', ''Urditele'', ''Osatorele'', ''Ursoi'', ''Ursoni'' or ''Urmen'', ''Uremi'', ''Ourmes'') are a group of three

fairies A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, o ...

or female spirits of fate in the

Balkanic The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whol ...

and

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

folklore. Two of them are good spirits, while one tries to harm people. In Romani folklore, their queen is Matuya, who makes use of gigantic birds called the Charana. The three Ursitoare in

Romanian mythology The folklore of Romania is the collection of traditions of the Romanians. A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian ...

are supposed to appear three nights after a child's birth to determine the course of its life. They are similar to the Greek Fates or

Moirai In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai (, also spelled Moirae or Mœræ; grc, Μοῖραι, "lots, destinies, apportioners"), often known in English as the Fates ( la, Fata, Fata, -orum (n)=), were the personifications of fate ...

. The Ursitoare have been a key part of the Romanian

Baptism Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...

tradition for hundreds of years. Scholarship indicates that similar beings (a trio of women that allots men's fates) also exist in South Slavic folklore, among the Serbians, Macedonians, Croatians, Bulgarians and Montenegrinians. These fairies became more widely known by the novel "The Ursitory" written by

Matéo Maximoff Matéo Maximoff (; 17 January 1917 – 24 November 1999) was a French writer and Evangelicalism, Evangelical pastor of Romani people, Romani ethnicity. His eleven books have been translated into fourteen languages. Born in Spain, he had parents who ...

in 1938 and first published in 1946. According to him, the Ursitory are three angels of fate, the good angel, the bad angel and the impartial angel of reason, who decide about the fate of the baby on the third day after its birth. On that day, the mother places three pieces of bread and three glasses of wine in a circle around the child for the ursitory. Then she whispers the child's real name, which is according to some traditions kept secret against the father and the children themselves until they become adults, because the name represents power.''After the devouring.''
The Independent, 11 May 2003. Retrieved on 3 July 2016. The Charana are phoenix-like birds. In another tradition, they once bathed the newborns in a nearby river, nowadays mostly in a tub. The Muslim Roma in Turkey, Northern Cyprus and the Balkans have a similar legend of Matuya, with her three sons Rom, Dom and Lom, who were once expelled from their homeland Hindustan (India) to Misr (Egypt). From there, the descendants of the three sons migrated around the world: the Roma to Europe, the Domlar to Mesopotamia, and the Lomlar to the Caucasus.

Literature

* Heinrich von Wlislocki
''Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Zigeuner.''
Aschendorff, Münster 1891, p. 2–11, 41–43. (German)

References

Romani legendary creatures Time and fate goddesses Destiny {{mythology-stub