Reflectarea obiceiurilor funerare ale românilor din Valea Timocului în variantele timocene ale baladei „Mioriţa”
Reflection of the funeral and memorial rites of the Romanians of the Timok Valley in the Timok versions of the Romanian ballad “Mioriţa”

Summary/Abstract: The fundamental set of recordings of the texts of the ballad “Mioriţa” by A. Fochi (Bucharest, 1964) reveals a noticeable variation in the descriptions of both the shepherd’s testament and of his burial. This collection also contains a text recorded by D. Caracostea in 1941 in a prisoner of war camp from a native of the village of Brza Palanka (eastern Serbia). The number of ballad texts localized in the villages of eastern Serbia and northwestern Bulgaria is quite large. The originality of these variants in comparison with the “classic” version by A. Russo, published in the editorship of V. Alecsandri, consists in the absence of the “death-wedding” motif. The “Shepherd’s Testament” is present in all versions of “Mioriţa”. In some versions, recorded in the villages of ţărani (speakers of the Olten dialect of Romanian language who live in the Timok Valley), in addition to the desire of the shepherd to be buried next to the sheep pen, there is a request to his mother to arrange a wake for him, or to distribute the money that he had hidden to poor people. It can be assumed that the references to the organization of commemoration and the distribution of commemorative gifts are associated with the peculiarities of the funeral and memorial rites of the Romanians of the Timok Valley, who attach great importance to these actions.

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