Songs to the dead (; ) are Romanian ceremonial funeral songs performed at strictly defined moments of the rite, from death to burial. They are found chiefly in Oltenia, the Banat, southern Transylvania, and western Moldavia (the historical region). Unlike improvised individual funeral laments known as bocets, songs for the dead have a formal ritual function and are sung by a group of women specially invited to lead this part of the ceremony and, as a rule, not closely related to the deceased.
The core of the repertory consists of the "Dawns" or "Song of the Dawns" (, ) and the "Song of the Fir Tree" (, ). In the "Song of the Dawns", the singers address the dawns as sisters and ask them to delay sunrise while the deceased prepares for the "great journey". The "Song of the Fir Tree" accompanies all stages of the rite involving the ritual tree, from its selection in the forest to its installation on the grave. It is especially characteristic of the funerals of unmarried young people, functioning as a "posthumous wedding" and as a ritual compensation for a life cut short too early. Alongside these, the corpus also includes "journey songs", which instruct the deceased in the passage to the other world, and songs tied to individual moments of the ceremony: leave-taking, procession, and burial.
The term "songs to the dead" and the scholarly distinction between these songs and bocets became established in Romanian ethnomusicology after Constantin Brăiloiu's 1936 study, which first identified them as an independent ritual repertory. Subsequently, songs to the dead became the subject of typological and comparative research and received wide resonance in European culture through translations, musical compositions, and film. Today, the tradition survives only in a few rural communities and is endangered.
Context
The Romanian funeral rite comprises a complex of ritual actions in which musical accompaniment plays an important role. In mountain areas – Bukovina, Maramureș, and the Vrancea region – instrumental music is heard: signals on the bucium or playing on the fluier, imitating weeping and expressing sorrow (). In Moldavia, lăutari sometimes perform "farewell songs" (). Vocal laments are widespread throughout; in Bukovina they may be accompanied by the large Moldavian fluier.
At the beginning of the 20th century, all vocal forms of the Romanian funeral rite were described as laments, under the influence of European folklore studies, which distinguished only that type. The Romanian ethnomusicologist Constantin Brăiloiu proposed a distinction: alongside emotional, improvisational lamentations – known as bocets, typically performed by relatives of the deceased or professional mourners without strict connection to specific stages of the ritual – he identified ceremonial songs, known as ("[songs] to the dead").
Songs to the dead fulfill a ritual function: they are performed at strictly defined moments of the ceremony – from death to burial – by groups of women specially invited to lead this part of the rite and, as a rule, not closely related to the deceased. They are often performed antiphonally, with two groups of two or three singers (typically four or six in total) alternating responsorially, although the composition of the groups is not strictly fixed. Their principal area of distribution is Oltenia, the Banat, southern Transylvania, and western Moldavia.
Main types Based on materials from an ethnographic expedition in 1930 in (Gorj County, Oltenia), Constantin Brăiloiu distinguished three types of ceremonial funeral songs: the song of the fir tree, the songs of the dawn, and a group of songs associated with specific moments or actions of the ritual – "at the burial" (), "from the room" (), and "at the grave" (). Within the latter type, he singled out as the most significant the "journey songs" (), which describe the final journey of the deceased.
and Lucilia Georgescu-Stǎnculeanu, on the basis of a corpus of 514 pieces studied in 1988, identified a more ramified structure consisting of five groups. A central place is occupied by the "Dawns" (), with numerous subtypes – performed outside the house, inside, and along the road – some of which can be performed independently. Another group is the "Song of the Fir Tree" (), with all its ritual episodes, followed without interruption by the "Song of the Earth" (, ), performed at the moment when the tree is set on the grave. Farewell songs () accompany the carrying out of the deceased from the house and the procession to the cemetery. Finally, in several villages of the area (Hunedoara County), a rare late type has been recorded – ("Song of the Bell"), which replaces ceremonial songs in the case of death away from the home village.
The complete cycle of songs was not performed everywhere: in some villages of Oltenia certain parts were absent, while in others ceremonial songs might not be performed at all. In a number of other regions, particularly in the Banat and western Transylvania, the system of imagery could change. Thus, figures from the songs such as the "Old Fairy" (), , and came to be associated with the Virgin Mary.
Song of the Dawns
The "Song of the Dawns" or "Dawns" (, ; in the Banat – , from , "to shout") opens the ritual cycle. The first dawn song, known as , , , or , is sung before sunrise by a group of women – usually in odd numbers – near the house of the deceased (at the porch or veranda), facing east or toward the window, holding a candle and a sprig of basil. In the Banat, the women divide into two groups that sing alternately: one poses questions to the dawns, the other conveys their replies; the groups are positioned at two different corners of the house or even farther away, on higher ground, so that they can be heard throughout the village. Other dawn songs or their equivalents (, , , , , , ) are performed either before sunrise or at midnight, inside or outside the house, facing the window, or after midday in front of the house or along the road.
The performers address the dawns ( – a feminine noun used only in the plural), calling them "sisters" and asking them to delay sunrise until everything necessary for the deceased's "great journey" has been prepared. In the text of the song, the dawns appear as anthropomorphic figures who "watch over and guide" the passage into the other world; this brings them close to the Ursitoare, figures of Romanian mythology who "allot fate". The motif of addressing the dawns is also found in Romanian Christmas colinde: singers perform them throughout the night and at daybreak ask the dawns not to hasten.
The song does not merely describe the journey of the deceased, but also enumerates everything prepared for it during the ceremony. The list of preparations – bread, meat, wine, rakia, a covering for the coffin, a cart with two oxen, and letters to notify relatives – corresponds to specific elements of the funeral rite. The motif of the wax "cake to give light on the road" is associated with the ritual candle rolled into a spiral. The deceased is described as a "white traveler" or "white wanderer" – images pointing to the dangerous journey which, according to folk belief, the dead undertake from the moment of death until their final entry into the other world.
Song of the Fir Tree
The "Song of the Fir Tree" (, , ) accompanies all stages of the rite involving the ritual tree – from its search in the forest to its installation on the grave. Several young relatives select and fell the tree in advance; on the day of burial, it is carried to the house of the deceased and thence to the cemetery. Each of the five ceremonial moments – from bringing the tree from the forest to the edge of the village, to the traditional decoration of the fir, the funeral procession, the approach to the burial place, and the final fixing of the tree in the ground – has its own song episode. The final episode passes without interruption into the "Song of the Earth".
The rite is especially characteristic of the funerals of unmarried young people: in such cases the fir becomes the center of a more complex ritual, known in folk tradition as the "posthumous wedding" (). The funeral takes the form of a wedding ceremony, and the tree acts as the bridegroom or bride of the deceased. In its function, this is a compensatory ritual: the young man or woman is "given back" what premature death deprived them of.
The texts of the "Song of the Fir Tree" are structured as a monologue of the fir tree itself: the tree recounts in the first person the stages of the rite – the search for and choice of the sacrificial fir, the ritual bowing before it, its felling, its transfer from the mountains to the village, and its installation on the grave. The end of the song describes the moment when the tree is set up: in some versions the fir is adorned with incense, bunches of basil, and flowers. In Transylvania, a painted kerchief () is woven into the fir.
The songs of the fir combine Christian symbolism (incense, a bunch of basil, etc.) with archaic pre-Christian beliefs rooted in rural communities: the tree may be called ("fairy at the well"), linking it with the "old fairy" (), a figure who in funeral songs "sanctions" the deceased's final passage by inscribing his or her name in the "list of the dead".
Ceremonial songs
Besides the "Dawns" and the "Song of the Fir Tree", the corpus includes a series of other songs for the dead tied to specific moments of the ceremony. Brăiloiu grouped them together as a third category – "various songs connected with certain moments or certain acts of the funeral ceremonial" – and within it singled out the "journey songs" as the most important. Kahane's classification distinguishes this material more finely, treating farewell songs, earth songs, and burial songs as separate categories; the "journey songs" (), however, are included by her within as an extended subtype.
The most elaborate part of this repertory consists of songs known as ("the great song") or ("[song] of the road" or "journey [song]"). These songs instruct the deceased step by step how to travel the "great road": they indicate the correct path, warn of dangers and encounters, teach how to recognize helpers and animal guides, and finally how to enter the community of the other world. The chorus teaches the deceased to choose the "right", "clean" road and reject the "left", "crooked" one – an image system of archaic pre-Christian character, unrelated to ideas of salvation and damnation. One of the key motifs is the passage through the aerial toll houses (): an image from the Greco-Byzantine hagiographic tradition deriving from the Life of Basil the Younger (10th century, Constantinople). On its way to the other world, the soul undergoes a series of tests in which fallen angels judge its deeds; the song prescribes the "payment" to the guardians at each stage and lists symbolic gifts taken from funeral practice – a black covering, a shroud, and flowers. The animal guides who help the deceased overcome obstacles are the otter and the wolf, both recurring figures in Romanian folklore.
Farewell songs () accompany the carrying out of the coffin from the house and the procession to the cemetery. The texts are usually short and lyrical – Kahane notes among them variants of high poetic value. The cycle concludes with the "Song of the Earth" (, ) and burial songs. The "Song of the Earth" is sung at the moment of the fir tree's final installation in the grave, continuing the "Song of the Fir Tree" without interruption: the text addresses the earth, personifying it, asks it to receive the deceased, and appeals to feelings of kinship. The "Song at the grave" () is sung at the moment of burial itself: the deceased is represented as separated from the world of the living by a wall with seven little windows through which the gifts of relatives and the light of the sun will come to him or her.
Musical characteristics