Пространственные представления в народных верованиях. Потусторонний мир в румынском фольклоре
Representations of Space in Folk Beliefs. The Otherworld in Romanian Folklore

Summary/Abstract: The binary division of the Universe, between the visible and the unseen one, between the human world and the world of Others (spirits, dead people), between here and there dates back to ancient times, and is based on the binary oppositions. The good places one can find in the inhabited places, but also next to them, as well as on the contact places which changed once man conquers the surrounding universe. At a macrocosmic level, there is a world in which people live, this world, our world, focusing on the inhabited space, in other words, on the hearth of each house, around which one can notice the expansion, in successive circles, of the other microspaces owned by man, prepared by him through defense practices in order to be able to move freely within them. The main elements with spatial, but especially ritual values in this first circle of the humanized world are the hearth, the stove, the oven, the chimney, the beam of the house, the table, the bed (cradle), the lintel, the window, the eaves of the house. As we move away from the house, there are other items which man consecrated and used in his own interest: the yard, the stable, the fence, the gate leading to the household entrance. Magical interest has also the borderland of the village, the borders themselves which separated peoples’ plots of land, gradually reaching the most dangerous places, such as the crossroads, the bank of the river, the bridges, the forest, the mountains, etc. Beyond these transition places which could be reached by people too as they needed to gather construction materials, to travel, but also to earn their living, and, why not, dangerous entities, representing various embodiments of the sacred world which lived in another space, known as the Otherworld. This is not necessarily a world of the dead (which we are to describe below), but a place where the Others, the anti-humans, the non-humans, the super humans lead their existence. On the other side, the Otherworld has different representations. In fairy tales there are specific topoi, sometimes according to the folk beliefs about the world of dead. We still have lots of representations of this realm of dead from archaic times, but swe can also meet some old representation contaminated with Christian elements. The paper focuses on the Otherworld, as it seen in Romanian folk beliefs, pointing ou especially the archaic representations of the final road towards the Otherworld. Mainly the data are excerpted from an old funeral song, The Song of the Dawn, interpreted by professionals at the dawn, during the wake of the deceased. The song knows several hundreds of variants in the South-West Romania, in some villages being interpreted till nowadays.

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