Obiceiuri de naștere din Țara Lăpușului
Birth Customs from Tara Lapusului

Summary/Abstract: Based on direct investigations on the field, our study focuses on the birthcustoms, in their complex forms, in Tara Lapusului - an archaic and veryconservative area - where customs have some particularising elements, whichmake them peculiar and confer the status of regional variations.The first part of our study concerns the prenatal period. We approached alarge number of traditions related to bringing offspring into the world, starting withthe rites of stimulating a woman’s fertility, performed in the nuptial ceremony. Westudied the traditions and beliefs about pregnancy, many of them meant to preventcompromising the pregnancy.The investigation part concerns birth itself and the emphasis is on themain rites of the newborn’s separation and integration: cutting the umbilical cord,the newborn child’s first bath, the first swaddling. In this part of the study we gavedue importance to the pagan baptism forms, which are original and considerablyold, thus raising a special interest on researchers. We also turned our attention tothe numerous beliefs specific to this stage of the ceremony, culminating with thoserelated to the Fates.The next stage represented in the study is the woman’s confinementperiod, also rich in traditions. We analysed the various spells that people believedwere thrown on the lying-in mother and also the prohibitions that she had toobserve during this stage. We studied the empirical cures of the newborn’spossible diseases. We treated extensively the baptism sequence, to highlight itscomplexity, investigating both pre-Christian and Christian traditions, aiming at theintegration of the newborn child.The last part of our study is destined to the post-natal period, whichculminates with a custom having a magical character that is the ritual midwife’swashing.

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