"Miorița" (ad. ''mioriță'', lit. 'The Little Ewe Lamb'), also transliterated as "Mioritza", is an old

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

pastoral The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...

considered to be one of the most important pieces of

Romanian folklore 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 Romania ...

. It has numerous versions with quite different content, but the literary version by poet

Vasile Alecsandri Vasile Alecsandri (; 21 July 182122 August 1890) was a Romanian patriot, poet, dramatist, politician and diplomat. He was one of the key figures during the 1848 revolutions in Moldavia and Wallachia. He fought for the unification of the Roma ...

(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.

Etymology

The Romanian word ''mioriță'', with diminutive suffix ''-ița'', is the

diminutive A diminutive is a word obtained by modifying a root word to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment, and sometimes to belittle s ...

form of ' meaning 'ewe lamb', therefore, the literal meaning is "little ewe lamb". Some have translated the title as "The Lambkin".

Summary

A summary adhering to the plotline of Alecsandri's poem is as follows: Three shepherds, one a Moldovan, another a Transilvanian () and the third a Wallachian/ Vrancean, meet while tending their flocks of sheep. In the Moldovan's flock, there is a black- fleeced (or black- spotted) and black- muzzled animal (or perhaps flecked with gray). 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 Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...

(sheep, horses, hounds). The shepherd is resigned to the fate of his own death,p. 242
/ref> 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 A pen is a fenced/walled open-air enclosure for holding land animals in captivity, typically for livestock but may also be used for holding other domesticated animals such as pets that are unwanted inside buildings. The term describes types o ...

(sheep's pen; ). 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, this cosmic event with nuptial elements represents the Moldovan shepherd's vision of death. The shepherd also requests that his three instruments—a little flute or shepherd's pipe () made of beech, another flute-pipe made bone, and a third flute-pipe made of —be buried beside his head, so that whenever the wind blew, the flutes would play and the sheep would gather. 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 versionsp. 243
/ref>). 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

godparent Within Christianity, a godparent or sponsor is someone who bears witness to a child's baptism (christening) and later is willing to help in their catechesis, as well as their lifelong spiritual formation. In both religious and civil views, ...

s—in other words, he is describing his own imminent death in veiled terms, completely allegorized as a Romanian wedding.

Textual sources

The pastoral ballad has been passed down in a widespread area across the Romanian provinces, with Moldavia at the core. There have been over one thousand versions collected, the best-known and lauded is the reworking by

published in the winter of 1850, perhaps collected directly from street minstrels. The claim that

Alecu Russo Alecu Russo (17 March 1819 – 5 February 1859) was a Romanian writer, literary critic and publicist. Russo is credited with having discovered one of the most elaborate forms of the Romanian national folk ballad '' Miorița''. He was also a cont ...

was the ballad's discoverer who supplied the material to the poet has been subject to skepticism, since nothing has been found among Russo's papers to substantiate it. A version predating Alecsandri's by several decades came to light in 1991, inscribed in the journals of

Gheorghe Șincai Gheorghe Șincai (; – November 2, 1816) was a Romanian historian, philologist, translator, poet, and representative of the Enlightenment-influenced Transylvanian School. As the director of Greek Catholic education in Transylvania he broug ...

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. It has also been asserted that the ballad originates from the Vrancea district, but the role of the murderous Vrancean shepherd is replaced by a Jewish shepherd in known Vrancean variants of the ballad. The ballad occurs in every Romanian province (thus also in

Oltenia Oltenia (), also called Lesser Wallachia in antiquated versions – with the alternative Latin names , , and between 1718 and 1739 – is a historical province and geographical region of Romania in western Wallachia. It is situated between the Da ...

and

Bessarabia Bessarabia () is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coa ...

),, and the names (nationalities) of the shepherds and geographical details depends on the localization. The Transylvanian version lacks the lamb's clairvoyance but retains the last will concerning the objects to bury and cosmic wedding.

Translations

A prose translation in English, "Miora", appeared in E. C. Grenville Murray's ''Doĭne: Or, the National Songs and Legends of Roumania'' (1853). This was followed by Lord Henry Stanley's verse translations (1856) into English as well as French. A translation by N. W. Newcombe was also printed in Grigore Nandriș's ''Colloquial Romanian'' (1945). 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). Translations by

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

-winning poet William D. Snodgrass appeared in ''Miorița'' (1972), ''Cinci Balade Populare. Five Folk Ballads'' (c. 1993) and ''Selected Translations'' ("The Ewe Lamb", 1998). A translation by Ernest H. Latham Jr. was published in a Doca's grammar book in 1995; Latham's version (with Kiki Skagen Munshi as co-translator) appeared in his 2020 monograph on the poem.

In other cultures

The

Csángós The Csángós (; ) are Hungarians, ethnic Hungarians of Catholic Church in Romania, Roman Catholic faith living mostly in the Romanian region of Western Moldavia, Moldavia, especially in Bacău County. The region where the Csángós live in Mold ...

and the Hungarians of Transylvania know the ballad as ''Szép Fejér Juhászka'' ( Hungarian: The Beautiful White Shepherd). The story is about a shepherd who is approached by three strangers (thieves, Tatars, Wallachian shepherds, pig herders) who want his sheep. Sensing that death awaits him, he asks them to bury his ''sültü'' (shepherd's flute) next to him (so that when the wind blows it, people could hear him) and to tell his mother that he is "married to the lard of the earth and to the sister of the sun".

Analysis

A comprehensive study was made by (''Miorița'', 1964), compiling 538 examples of the ballad to illustrate, with additional fragments and variants. Miorița was identified as one of the four cornerstone myths used as theme in Romanian folk poetry, according to the analysis of

George Călinescu George Călinescu (; 19 June 1899 – 12 March 1965) was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies. He is currently considered one of the most important Romani ...

(1941). Although the poem may be seen as an exemplar traditional Christianity, i.e., turning the other cheek,

Mircea Eliade Mircea Eliade (; – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian History of religion, historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. One of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and in ...

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". Man's bond with Nature is emphasized: this "mystical solidarity" is what enables the shepherd to overcome his fate. This bond with Nature is also spoken in terms of the "cosmic marriage" or "mioritic marriage".

Legacy

The Miorița ballad is summarized and discussed by Mircea Eliade in ''Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God'' (1972), and plays a fundamental role in his novel '' The Forbidden Forest''. The poem was quoted extensively by

Patrick Leigh Fermor Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011) was an English writer, scholar, soldier and polyglot. He played a prominent role in the Cretan resistance during the Second World War, and was widely seen as Britain's greate ...

in his account 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).

Explanatory notes

References

;Citations ;Bibliography ;(Translations) * Newcombe, N. W., tr.
Miorița
, pp. 272−277 in: * Latham, Ernest H., Jr., tr.
Miorița— the most quintessentially Romanian ballad
in: * —— tr., in: * Margul-Sperber, Alfred (1967)
Miorița ("Little Ewe-Lamb")
. ''Romanian Review'' 21, pp. 66–68 * * ;(Studies) * *
Reprint
(2021) * *

External links

(translation by W. D. Snodgrass)
Miorița - a vocal version
sung by

Grigore Leșe Grigore Leșe (born February 20, 1954) is a Romanian musician. Biography Leșe was born in 1954 in Stoiceni village, Maramureș County in northern Romania. He graduated from the Music College in Baia Mare, followed by the Music Academy in Cluj ...

(an .asf file) {{DEFAULTSORT:Miorita Romanian folk poetry Romanian mythology Fictional Romanian people Fictional sheep Fictional shepherds Rural culture in Europe Anthropomorphic sheep Poems about talking animals Short stories about talking animals