THE ROMANIA NATIONAL
MYTH-BALLAD
AND ITS COSMIC VERSE
- an article by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
first published on July/August, 2001
in Star*Line
(Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association),
U.S.A -
“Miorita” or “The Little Ewe” is the Romanian national myth-ballad
and has hundreds of variants in whole Romania.
There are opinions that the main idea of this myth-ballad
is older than the Christian Ages,
when actual Romania was the Dacian Kingdom,
before to be conquered by the Roman Empire (the second century A.C.).
But the best variant of “Miorita” is relatively recent,
was first published in 1866
and belongs to the great Romanian poet Vasile Alecsandri
(who received in 1881 the Latinity Prize in France).
In 1997 I cooperated with the British mythologist and astronomer
Alastair McBeath (vice-president of the International Meteor Organization)
for realizing a special essay, “Romanian Meteor Mythology”
(published in 1998 in Proceedings of IMC 1997, IMO),
in which a short chapter was dedicated to Miorita (Alecsandri’s variants).
Here is that fragment, adapted by me for Star*Line:
The Romanian national myth-ballad “Miorita” derives from
the ancient Dacian ritual of periodically sacrificing the best young man
as a good herald for the supreme god Zamolxe (or Zamolxis).
Miorita concerns three shepherds, one each from
the three major historical Romanian provinces, which were states
in Middle Ages: Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia.
The shepherds from the first two provinces
decide to sacrifice the Moldavian,
because he is the best of them, and the richest.
The magical little ewe of the myth’s title warns
the Moldavian shepherd of his fellows’ intention.
Nobly, he accepts his fate, and this makes sense,
as the participant in the Dacian ritual
would have been especially favoured, his death honoring his god,
but asks the little ewe to tell a special message
to his mother and his animals,
in which death is compared with a cosmic wedding.
(This message - with a sacred resonance into the Romanian soul - could be
one of the explanations for the existence of the astropoetical movement
of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy-SARM.
It was recited in 1999 at the beginning of our Cosmopoetry Festival
by the American professor of astronomy, Donald Collins).
Here is the verse:
I married a proud princess,
The world’s bride,
And a star fell
At my wedding party,
The Sun and Moon
Carried my coronet,
(…)
And the stars were my torches…