OBICEIURI, TRADIłII SI OCUPAłII DIN COMUNA JUCU, JUDEłUL CLUJ
Customs, Traditions and Occupations in Jucu Commune, Cluj County

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the traditions, customs and a selection of folklore materials captured during a field research carried out in 2001-2002 in the villages Jucu, Gădălin and Visea, in the ethnographic area of the Transylvanian Plain. The residents of those settlements, especially those born in the first decades of the twentieth century,did not have a nostalgic vision of the past.One of them, remembering the food poverty,the extreme modesty and insecurity of houses, the muds and the impassable streets, did not hesitate to say, in a way that could not be blunter: "People were so stupid before,they had nothing and knew nothing. Now people modernized, and become smarter." In terms of the life cycle patterns, there were captured a number of games played by children from the three localities, but also information about the organizing of the dancing sessions, the group meetings of young people during winter and certain forms of premarital magic practiced during winter holidays. The traditional wedding is held rather in the memory of the people, but some traditional elements still survive until today. The article describes the elements kept to celebrate the feasts and traditions throughout the year and other customs, which the interviewees were aware that survive with difficulty in contemporary communities. The stories about buried treasures areal so fairly well represented. About different locals they say today that "take or had great possessions", suggesting that they would be the most suitable to provide relations of treasures. If those which buried treasures are usually locals, the treasure hunters are most often Gypsies. Regarding the category of fantastic creatures, in the imaginary of the community were well represented the zmei (dragons), the pricolici (werewolves)and the strigoi (ghosts). The locals, even the elder ones, regard the superstitions of the past with detachment and often with humor: "The old people talked in the old times about werewolves and ghosts. Now, nobody talk about that any more. So, if they ever existed, they would have existed until now."

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