Ruminantia

“ Indian literature is full of such animal tales, approximating often to some of the Rumanian fables. The collections of Frere, Temple, Steele, Skeat, and Parker abound in such animal tales, in which the more nimble and quick-witted, though small and weak, animal regularly gets the best of the bigger and stronger, yet duller and slower rival. No moral lesson is squeezed out of the tales, and the animal is not a thinly-disguised human being. Yet there can be no greater fallacy than, guided by this similarity, to assume a direct Indian origin for the Rumanian fables. ”

“ They also believe in the constant presence of departed souls, supposing that they exercise a good or evil influence over those whom they have known in life. When a field is blighted or a crop does not promise well, a gourd is placed in the pathway; passengers set up a wailing cry, which they intend as a prayer to the spirits to give a good crop to their mourning relatives. Rumanika, in order to propitiate the spirit of his father, was in the habit of sacrificing annually a cow on his tomb, and also of placing offerings on it of corn and wine. ”

“ These Ruminants live in small droves or herds in forests, on mountains or plains, and feed on leaves, buds, grass, moss, or the bark of trees, etc. They are distributed over all the surface of the globe, both in the hottest and coldest climates. The Reindeer and Elk are peculiar to the northern regions of both continents; but numerous species are, on the contrary, found in hot and temperate countries.
The family of Ruminants which shed their horns comprehends three genera—the Reindeer, the Elk, and the Deer proper—all differing in the shape and size of their antlers. ”

“ Yet nothing is more glorious than the Rumanian autumn; Nature desires to deck herself in a last mantle of beauty before confessing herself vanquished by the advancing of the winter season.
The sky becomes intensely blue; all that stands up against it appears to acquire a new value. The trees dress themselves in wondrous colours, sometimes golden, sometimes russet, sometimes flaming red. Amongst the man-high maize-plants, giant sunflowers stand bending their heads, heavy with the weight of the seeded centres ”

“ There is not one single “creation” tale among them. Only two of the Rumanian animal fables find their parallels in that collection. Turning to the Russian tales, notably the great collection of Afanasiev, we shall find a large number of animal tales, including also a number of “creation” tales. In the former the central figures are, as in the South Slavonic, Rumanian, Saxon, etc., the fox, the bear, the wolf, the hedgehog and sometimes domestic animals, the dog, the cock, the hen, the duck, etc. ”

“ To this conclusion we are forced by the examination of these Rumanian animal tales in their manifold aspect, “creation” tales, fables, fairy tales. They are all more or less of comparatively recent origin. They owe their actual shape to the dualistic teaching of the Manichaeans and Bogomils. They have come by these intermediaries of the religious sects from Syria and the Balkans. These tales stopped first among the nations in the Near East, and then by the same agency were carried to the extreme West. ”

“ If ravens croak over a flock of sheep, the shepherds keep a double watch, for they believe the ravens foretell an inroad by wolves or other wild beasts.
If a raven, meeting a herd of cattle, croaks, the Rumanian responds, “May it be on thy head, thy feathers and thy bones,” for he believes that one of his animals will die and become food for the raven.
And, if one raven is seen flying over the head of a man and continues to do so for a while, it is a sign of the death of that man.
It is generally assumed that the ravens fly in pairs, and the appearance of one alone is therefore ominous. ”

“ In characterizing the present genus, were we to look solely at the animal such as we have it daily before our eyes, the distinction between it and all the other Ruminants is too striking to be for a moment mistaken. But the insensible gradations which connect this familiar denizen of our downs and pastures with the untamed native of the desert and the precipice, and the close affinity which subsists between the latter and the goats, render it almost impossible to isolate them by any satisfactory characters. ”

“ Rumania is not a country of violent colours. There is a curious unity in its large horizons, its dusty roads, its white-clad peasants, its rough wooden carts. Even oxen and horses seem to have toned down to grey or dun, so as to become one with a sort of dreamy haziness that lies over the whole.
It is only the sunsets that turn all these shadowy tints into a sudden marvel of colour, flooding earth and sky with wondrous gold. I have seen hay-stacks change into [13] fiery pyramids, rivers into burning ribbons, and pale, tired faces light up with a marvellous glow. ”

“ It is the season of harvest that shows Rumania in all her glory, that season when the labour of man meets its reward, when, the earth having given her utmost, man, woman, and child go forth to gather in the wealth that makes this country what it is.
Sometimes, indeed, it is an hour of disappointment, for rain, hail, or drought ofttimes undoes man's weary work. Sometimes the earth has not responded to his dearest hopes, has not been able to bring forth her fruit. ”

“ In winter man and beast seek the pastures of the Danubian steppes and prairies. Rumanians thus maintain mountain and plain residences, which they occupy alternately. [168] This mode of life is the transformation which the nomadism of the Asiatic steppe received on Rumanian soil. It is a true relic of past habitat. These seasonal migrations also account for the intimacy between highlanders and lowlanders in Rumania, besides affording adequate explanation of the peopling of the region by a single nationality. ”

“ There are some strange customs amongst the peasants, curious superstitions. Rumania being a dry country, it is lucky to arrive with rain: it means abundance, fertility, the hope of a fine harvest—wealth.
Sometimes as I went through the villages, the peasant women would put large wooden buckets full of water before their threshold; a full vessel is a sign of Good-luck. They will even sprinkle water before one's feet, always because of that strange superstition, that water is abundance, and, when the great one comes amongst them, honour must be done unto her in every way. ”

“ And yet step by step one can follow up a modification; small at the confines of the Balkans, it grows greater the further it is carried westwards.
The conclusion is obvious. In Rumanian, the language is preponderantly of a Latin origin, but other tongues come in to make up its present character. A comparatively large [18] proportion of the popular language—which alone is of importance—is Slavonic; then follow in decreasing proportions Hungarian, modern Greek, Turkish and Albanian elements, but scarcely any trace of a more ancient local language. ”

“ Was it not for the defence of his native land, for service on Italian ground that he was needed? Such considerations were urged on the young men of Romagna in vain. Native land! Their native land was Romagna,—the flank of the Apennine, the banks of the Metauro, the shore of the Adriatic, the fat soil and fertile fields which make their district the granary of Italy. To their imagination Piedmont was as much a foreign country as France, or as China! A country the ways and manners, and, above all, the language of which were utterly and distastefully different from their own. ”

“ Lambs and frisky kids are bleating in the corrals; the swallows are building their nests of mud under the eaves of the barn; the almond blossoms of a few weeks ago have fallen, and in their place are hairy little bodies that daily grow in size; on the orange-trees are clusters of golden fruit and white blossoms; the roses are in full bloom; the grasses are green. All nature is fresh and fair; the season is that in which Ramona's new life began. ”

“ This fertile glacis is one of the chief sources in Europe of oil, wheat, and maize; the twelve million Rumanians will be a rich people. At Galatz, Braila, and Constanza they have ports on the Black Sea, and it will be a prime interest of all free peoples that there should be Rumanian ships on that sea, for it is naturally a closed water of the Heartland. ”

“ Rumanian [10] is, geographically, an isolated eastern member of the group of Romance languages (q.v.) , being severed from all the rest by countries in which the predominant speech is Slavonic or Magyar. It represents the original rustic Latin of the Roman provincials in Moesia and Dacia, as modified by centuries of alien rule. Structurally, its Latin characteristics have been well preserved; but its vocabulary has undergone great changes, becoming so far Slavonized that the ratio of words of Slavonic origin to words of Latin origin is approximately as three to two ”

“ I have followed up to their lairs the ferocious wolf, the cantankerous dog, the sly fox and the wise hedgehog, have listened to the lark and to the nightingale, and paid homage to little king wren. Who knows how much longer they will disport themselves in the fields and forests of Rumania, where the hoofs of the horses, the feet of the marching men, the shout of battle and the thunder of the guns have silenced—let us hope only for a while—the voice of the dumb creatures, who still speak so eloquently to him who knows their language and understands the cunning spell of their hidden wisdom. ”

“ On Tuesday of the following week Jonitza, his mother, and the maid Maritza, after a short trip on the train, were being driven over the vast level and wonderfully fertile plains of Roumania, that stretched before them like a great green sea. There were already signs that the short spring that Roumania has would soon change into summer. Wild flowers were to be seen here and there and birds twittered and flew about. ”

“ When Rhamon rested from his paddling he liked to trail his hands in the cool water or pull up the pink and white water lilies that floated on the river. He could see their long stems through the clear water reaching down, down to the muddy bottom. ”

“ In these two tales we have peculiar variants to some of the incidents in the Rumanian version, only so far as the connection of the goat with the Evil One and the bareness of the goats’ knees are concerned, though the explanation is totally different from—nay, opposite to—that given in the Rumanian version, where the bareness is the sign of God’s punishment of the goats.
A German tale (Grimm, 148) tells us: God made all the animals, even the wolves, which were his dogs. The devil made the goats, which destroyed the vines, the young trees, etc. ”

“ For, whatever these nations have in common, there cannot be any question of survivals, for the reasons advanced above. All the nations are comparatively modern. It is impossible to assume that what might be a Latin survival among the Rumanians could be so closely connected with what might be a Turanian survival among the Bulgars or a Pelasgian survival among the Albanians. There might be found among these tales traces of more ancient beliefs, myths and customs, just as it is possible to find similar traces among the folk-lore of the nations of the West. ”

“ The Rumanian peasant, like his fellows below the Danube, is, as a rule, a good-natured, easy-going though easily excited, reasonably honest and extremely industrious fellow who labors from dawn to darkness in six days of the week and spends the seventh in harmless village carouses, chiefly characterized by dancing, music and the cheap native wine. Rumania is one of the few countries in Europe where the peasants still dress like the pictures on the postcards. ”

“ Rhamon was there too, of course, singing his heart out and shaking his head under his huge white turban. He loved this strange sweet music. He did not have an instrument to play, but he beat time on his father's knee with his hands and wrists. "Some day," he thought, "I shall be a man and then I shall play on one of the big red pots, and have silver rings on my fingers." ”

“ In these tales, which belong to the group of animal fables, we are in a different atmosphere, far removed from that of the [23] creation legend. We are approaching that phase in the evolution in which the animal stands for a disguised human being, which, in spite of its appellation, speaks and acts entirely in accordance with human ways and notions. These have not yet been found among the Rumanians and those nations whose folk-lore shows close affinity with theirs. ”

“ RUMANIA AND ITS LOST TERRITORY: THE BLACK AREA SHOWS THE SOUTHERN PART OF DOBRUDJA, WON FROM THE BULGARS IN THE LAST BALKAN WAR, WHICH RUMANIA IS FORCED TO RETURN TO BULGARIA. THE SHADED AREA—NORTHERN DOBRUDJA—WHICH INCLUDES THE MOUTHS OF THE DANUBE AND RUMANIA'S ONLY ACCESS TO THE BLACK SEA, IS CEDED TO THE CENTRAL POWERS, WHO WILL ADMINISTER IT THROUGH A MIXED COMMISSION. THE SHADING ALONG RUMANIA'S WESTERN BORDER INDICATES THE AUSTRO-GERMAN "RECTIFICATION," WHICH GIVES AUSTRIA ALL THE MOUNTAIN PASSES AND IMPORTANT MINERAL LANDS. ”

“ Marrying into the ‘mumping’ and house-dwelling families has brought this about, and soon there will be no true Romanies left. Here and there you may meet a few, such as the Grays, Lees, and Coopers, and one or two of the Pinfolds; but they, too, are going the way of the rest. Yes, as you say, it is a pity, for after all the Romanies are a strange people, and, bad as they may have been, they were not without their good points. They knew a good horse when they saw one, and they let people see how a man, if he chooses, can shift for himself, without being beholden to any one. ”