THE WEDDING FLAG IN OAȘ COUNTY – MYTH AND REALITIES
THE WEDDING FLAG IN OAȘ COUNTY – MYTH AND REALITIES

Summary/Abstract: An important part of the wedding customs, the manufacturing of the wedding flag is a collective work done only in the groom’s house, for six hours on the eve of the wedding and for other six hours in the morning of the first wedding day. The wedding flag carriers, the stegași, must be the groom's dulci cousins (first cousins). They must involve through jokes and ceremonial actions the help of the young girls with a special part in the wedding ceremony, the druște. Therefore, the wedding flag is prepared in an atmosphere of hilarity and general jubilation, with dances and țâpurituri. The wedding flag has a powerful symbolic charge. On a thick bat, branches are tightened in successive stages with ropes braided by girls, with furgalaua, with embroidered chișchineuțe, with perti and flowers with a symbolic meaning. The flag is shaken by lads with all the power to check the resistance of the decorating items. The last shake is done on the beat of ceterași music, in an attempt to harmonise the tickle of thirty bell-shaped or globular ciungaua made of bronze with the beat of the folk music. The paper is documented from informers and direct participation into the nowadays wedding customs in Comlăușa village, Satu Mare county. In the past, the custom of stealing the bride was not popular, but there used to be many ventures to steal the wedding flag.

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