Motivul sfârşitului lumii în colindele de pescar
The Motif of the End of the World in Fisherman’s Carols

Summary/Abstract: The text presents the end of the world as a motif in fi sherman’s carols. As ritual texts, carols have preserved–better than other folk texts–the archaic thinking: therefore, they are an important source for the study of Romanian spirituality. Fisherman’s carols have a fascinating narrative content. They speak of a seine fi sherman who catches a baby evil spirit called Vidra or Iudă (Otter or Judah), and asks it about the end of the world. He receives the answer from the mother Otter itself who comes to save its baby: the end of the world will be when people will cease to comply with moral norms of social life, when children will beat their parents or godparents, and siblings’ love for each other will come to an end. The Otter/Judah is a mythological creature that embodies the evil spirit of water. The Otter/Judah is believed to know fi shermen’s ways, and, on the other side, according to Romanian traditional beliefs, it is a character involved in two scenarios that might bring the end of the world: it grinds the pillars that carry the earth, and it is also frequently featured in a carol about stars theft. In the mundane imagination, these two issues directly connected to the regression into chaos can very easily overlap the idea of the end of the world. In relation to these beliefs, fi sherman’s carols shows that only man is responsible, by his actions, for the proximity of the eschatological event.

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