Scaunul sau Ridicarea de Crai în ziua de Paști, la Curechiu
The Chair or the Prince Raising on Easter Day, in Curechiu

Summary/Abstract: In Curechiu, in Bucureșci village, there is an Easter custom called: the Prince Raising in the Chair. The construction called the Chair is a square made by placing the thick beech trunks joined at the ends. The side of the square facing the church is free, and the opposite side consists of two trunks placed one on top of the other. At Christmas, the caroling boys replace each year one of the logs of the Chair, the second one on the downhill side of the square, with a new log. On the night of Easter, as is the custom in the surrounding villages as well, in Curechiu, the boys make a big fire in the cemetery and shoot with carbide pipes, which they place in the square called the Chair.The next day, after the priest finishes with the religious service commemorating the dead, he comes to the Chair and sanctifies it through a religious ceremony. After this ceremony, the boys who caroled the village at Christmas, sitting in the middle of the square, or in other words, of the Chair, Raise the Prince, that means throwing up three times a little boy of 3-5 years, shouting “Long live!”. The parents of the Raised child as a Prince, give the boys a case of wine.That custom is unique in the surrounding towns, even in the county. A similar custom is recorded by Coșbuc, in 1903, as having been practiced at that time under the name of The Election of the New Prince in Maramureș, Bistrița Năsăud, Northern Transylvania, and in the south, in Olt Country (Area). The custom supposed to be a way of honoring the most hard-working farmer, followed by the punishment of young men, and more rarely of recently married men, who were guilty of breaking the rules established by tradition.We find in the Curechiu Chair a testimony of the old benches placed as a square in the churchyard, where the wise elders of the Romanian villages used to gather for council or judgment, as being those who made decisions in all the community's problems. This way of organization and management, this regulative system of the old Romanian village was known in the past as a privilege of Romanians, called jus valachorum.In Curechiu, proofs of this old custom of the land are still preserved, according to which the Romanian villages were governed until the modern era.The Prince Raising seems to be, first of all, an evidence of the annual election of a village or county headman, like a prince. Over time, the custom also got some elements of the rituals specific to the beginning of the farming year and the spring equinox, or those related to the commemoration of the dead, as the essential fires lit on the Easter night.

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