O specie folclorică neglijată: Hora mortului
A Neglected Folk Species: (The Dance of the Dead)

Summary/Abstract: Less studied by ethnologists because of their scholarly origin, the farewell songs or "the dance of the dead", composed and sung by the churches’ teachers before departing with the dead to the cemetery, belong to Bucovina, Transylvania, Partium and Banat funeral repertoire, along with "dawn song" and mourning. The origin of these farewell songs is found in funeral homiletics from the sixteenth century. During the following centuries these sermons began to be sung, similarly to the Calvin songs. From these cult lyrics, which were circulating during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on hand written sheets, during the nineteenth century they reached rural alternatives built on the structure of “star songs”, similar to those of today. The habit of playing the dance of the dead continues to be present today in many villages in western Romania and eastern Hungary, where the Romanian communities consider that without this song, the burial is not complete.

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