fragments of an attempted writing.


Another Romanian carol from my friend Corneliu.  He says this a "very archaic type" of carol which "still survives" in the Balkans.  The content, I'm told, doesn't stress the Christian elements so overtly - perhaps an instance of those older carols where the lines between what was Christian and the old paganisms were thinner.  I don't understand Romanian and don't have the philological skills to assess as much, but from the distance of my intellectual poverty I still find such histories fascinating.

2 comments:

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrriQpTtsFs
    I find this one even more beautiful. It also better preserves the archaic character. There is a whole typology of the Romanian carol. They are usually classified according to their function: "for an unmarried lad", "for an unmarried girl", "for old people", "for the church" , "for a house where someone died" etc.
    They preserve much of a pre-Christian mythology, even where Christian elements were 'copy pasted" to them, in an effort to appease the clergy that, until, perhaps, the 19th century were quite opposed to "pagan caroling".
    Anyways, I'll try a very crude translation of this carol, which, I think, is sung "for [young/unmarried] dead" or soldiers that never returned from the front:
    "Come out, ye hosts
    And see what's coming down;
    Two flowers are coming down
    Yet these are not flowers
    But brothers.
    For they are Ion (John) and Vasile (Basil)
    And they are come back from captivity.
    Their mother upon seeing them
    Took their horses to the stable,
    And gave them them red wine."

    Corneliu I.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I loved that one too. Thanks Corneliu!

    ReplyDelete

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