THE TRINKET IN TRANSYLVANIA
THE TRINKET IN TRANSYLVANIA

Summary/Abstract: This paper intends to highlight the impact that the trinket/the March Amulet/ [mărțișor] from Transylvania has on people coming from the urban and the rural environments. The synchronic analysis emphasizes, on the one hand, the unity in diversity, and on the other hand, the uniqueness of the Transylvanian trinket. In the past, the trinket had the power of an amulet, but in the present, it is subjected to desacralization. The monochromatic, bicolor, three-color, and polychromatic trinket reveals its evolution in Transylvania Ŕ the ancestral trinket, the traditional trinket, and the contemporary trinket. Throughout time, the trinket was subjected to certain functional mutations, but it has succeeded in surviving. The braided string confers value. Throughout time, in Transylvania, a wide range of trinkets has been encountered: the trinket with a twinned string ending with elongated or rounded tassels (a white one and a red one); the trinket to which a silver, a golden or a copper coin, (according to the bearer’s status) or a cross is attached; the three-color trinket having the colours of the national flag (red, yellow, blue); the trinket with tinder flowers; the trinket to which different things are hung Ŕ the symbol which anticipates the coming of the spring (spring flowers, migrating birds); the luck (the chimney sweeper, the horseshoe, the trefoil with four leaves); love; health etc. The Transylvanian trinket fascinates everyone due to its shape and chromatism and seems to belong to a universe being under the control of the miraculous. Being transmitted from generation to generation, starting with our ancestors, we have the moral obligation of cherishing it; of revitalizing it; of confronting the present against the past, in order to take it to the future.

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