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The article discusses data gathered in two research projects and compares them to argue that folk practices continue to be transmitted and performed in urban settlements. This is due to the recent urbanization process that allows active folk beliefs to be enacted and witnessed frequently. The rites of passage are presented both in Romanian towns and in urban settlements from Western Europe, revealing a significant attachment to traditional ways. Calendar customs complete the image on cultural preservation in the midst of the city, even despite regulations. Romanian urbanites and immigrants maintain folk convictions they learned about in childhood or before leaving the country, with positive reflection results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relatively recent urbanization process in Romania allowed traditional knowledge to be transmitted, despite industrialization and technology diffusion. Childbirth is still a mysterious event, and magic thinking fills in the gaps of science in order to keep parents confident and at peace. Taboos are obeyed after birth and before christening, only to reach the phase when the future can be moulded: specific elements are chosen for the ritual bath, the child has to touch several objects that would make them smart, a good singer, etc. A year later, their future occupation will be predicted in a specific ceremony. All these active practices are found in urbanites' families, and also in Romanian immigrant communities in Western Europe. Rituals are mostly compared to neighbouring countries, but also to other distant cultures that show striking similarities. This large geographical spread indicates Indo-European synergies. The identical form of the post-liminal practice of haircutting in Eastern Europe and the Asian rite of passage have not been previously dwelt upon, and it implies the existence of traditional thinking universalia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belief in animal protectors from around the home managed to reach present times almost unchanged in Romania. In this respect, the paper publishes for the first time information gathered in The Folklore Archive of Moldavia and Bucovina, founded in 1970. The two sub-sections are based both on a bibliographic and field information perspective on swallows, storks, and on the snake of the house respectively. The close relationship with these animals is on one hand created by the conviction that birds bring good fortune to the house they nest in, and on the other hand by the belief that each house has a protecting serpent. None of these can be killed or even disturbed by people since great misfortune will follow. The swallows and the storks will set the house on fire if their nests are destroyed and the death of the snake will also end the life of the inhabitants, because they are presented as double egos. This later perspective can be supported both by personal stories and folk ballads on the lad who grew together with the serpent beneath the house. There are also many legends on swallows and storks backing up the mythological image of these migratory birds. The active beliefs also influenced architecture and crafts, since people felt the need to decorate their houses, gates and house objects mainly with the image of the snake, but also with representations of the swallow. The conviction is so strong that even animals who harm the birds are believed to suffer from their revenge. The portraits are obviously drawn in a humanizing manner in order to support the idea of special creatures coming to help the entire household. While the birds have a solar projection, since they come in Romania with the spring and leave when the day is getting shorter, the serpent keeps his sepulchral aura that has been documented ever since Roman Antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the role of traditional knowledge in the everyday life of Romanian urbanites by focusing on rural reactions and convictions displayed in urban settlements. The method is based on a comparative approach between the native places of subjects and their own actions and beliefs. Post-socialism did not eliminate superstitious reasoning, which continues to exist and even to assimilate modern devices to magic purposes. The article proposes that ethnographic evidence should be made use of in urban cultural studies of South-Eastern countries. The socio-cultural perspective contributes to a better understanding of the modernization dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the role of traditional knowledge in the everyday life of Romanian urbanites by focusing on rural reactions and convictions displayed in urban settlements. The method is based on a comparative approach between the native places of subjects and their own actions and beliefs. Post-socialism did not eliminate superstitious reasoning, which continues to exist and even to assimilate modern devices to magic purposes. The article proposes that ethnographic evidence should be made use of in urban cultural studies of South-Eastern countries. The socio-cultural perspective contributes to a better understanding of the modernization dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses ethnographic methods and sociological data to explain the particular case of the Romanian society, which proves itself to be mainly rural. When people started coming from villages to live in the communist towns, they brought along their traditional worldview, too. Childbirth beliefs are used to demonstrate this cultural retention since this segment of the passage rites is less exposed to innovation than weddings or funeral ceremonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presents some of the conclusions a post-doctoral research which gathered data on childbirth beliefs from 20 urbanites, for almost 2 years. Most of the traditional memory of superstitions and rites proved itself to be alive and active, although subjects have been living in towns for decades and decades. The author explains this fact by three characteristics of human reactions to life, and details the second one: science cannot answer to all the questions raised by events, the need to deflect harm and the aspiration to influence positively the future. All the apotropaic elements surrounding the yet unbaptized baby speak about a magical vulnerability to the world around. Moreover, death before Christianization represents an unchanged fear for the first generation of town dwellers, since it is considered a great sin for the parents. The study also investigates common elements of this belief with similar ones from different European countries. Moreover, in order to cheat death, urbanites still magically sell the sick babies on the windows from their apartments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ştefania Cristescu-Golopenţia reorganized the structure of magic intentions by subsuming all human desires under the category of household welfare. This view allows all rites and superstitions to coalesce around a coherent and unexpectedly modern cultural attitude towards life, for which women are directly responsible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article makes use of several Slav bibliographical references in order to suggest that a birth ritual may be associated to the old god Rod. The name of the custom is rodini and it is familiar mainly to Moldavian inhabitant from the northern region, as a result of the cultural contact with the Slavic peoples. Etymology and the use of various examples from Slav languages seem to suggest that the birth deity from the first centuries after Christ left us a lexical inheritance. All the gestures performed by the women visiting the newly born and its mother imply an oblation, both of a pragmatic meaning and of a spiritual one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from 1960 traditional birth attendants were forbidden to deliver in Romania and pregnant women found themselves forced to give birth in hospitals. The highly respected village figure became a cultural phenomenon that made her more of a legend character. A village from Galaţi County experienced an uncanny event that activated the cultural information on midwives, as a continuation of the stories of her qualities. In hospitals, however, rituals are maintained under the intention of purifying nurses from unclean birth, while granny-midwife became a role, a character usually played by the mother of the woman in parturition. Customs evolve against the loss of this important social persona and we face an artificial scenario. We are now able to witness the last social effects of banning homebirth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on the case of special births, such as twin pregnancy and children out of the wedlock. Both situations are uncanny for the community, since they break the natural or the social rule, and they have always been treated with awe along the humankind cultural history. Field data from Moldova seem to sustain the idea of the complementary twins that can build together a world (such as The Egyptian Osiris and Seth, the Romanian Fârtate and Nefârtate for example) or a country (Remus and Romulus). In various villages from Moldova people say one of the twins is bold, the other is shy, one is smart, the other less intelligent, and so on. All the practical ideas on twins and bastards do nothing but to cover superstitions, with the same result: pointing out what is supernatural, uncanny, that is to say, out of the ordinary and designating the sacred as opposed to the profane. Pragmatic attitudes fear twins because the amount of effort to raise them is double, and young women dread unwanted pregnancies because of the social difficulties, but if we dig deeper in the mankind's cultural history we find out that twins and bastards used to be killed in order to avoid calamities coming over the community. Cultural memory hide the archetypes, while ethnographic information can unveil them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author uses a mirror technique to highlight the few change birth customs have undertaken over centuries in Romania and more specifically in Moldova villages. She invokes ethnographic work from 19th and 20th century and compares it to customs she gathered from actual fieldwork in the past years. Each phase from this passage rite seems to have preserved ritual patterns that help the new mother and her child adapt to a different ontological situation. Although technology and society evolution have exposed traditional thinking to change, birth beliefs remain the same and secure the neophytes, both on a psychological level and on a magic one. The study also approaches the figure of the midwife, although this occupation performed without professional training faced extinction. Women still remember her and the stories they tell on the midwife are close to legend. The overall impression on birth customs emphasizes the sacred nature of the woman able to give life and to propel germination or sterility to the surrounding environment. On his turn, the baby appears highly receptive to anything his mother thinks, acts or touches, also to the persons that come into contact with him before baptism. The midwife was in charge with the magic protection of the two and some of her mystical actions are now performed by the mother herself or by her relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]