[30] By K. A. Rosetti.
[31] The real name of this celebrated Wallachian rebel, born in 1740, was Nykulaj Urszu. Under the reign of the Emperor Joseph II. he became the chief instigator of a revolution among the sorely oppressed Transylvanian Wallachs, who, rising to the number of thirty thousand men, proceeded to murder the Hungarian nobles, and plunder, sack, and burn their possessions. Hora’s project was to raise himself to the position of sovereign, and he had already adopted the title of King of Dacia when he was captured, and, together with his confederate Kloska, very cruelly put to death at Karlsburg in 1785.
[32] Both Greeks and Romans attached an ominous meaning to a dream of falling-out teeth.
[33] “Der Aberglaube in seiner bunten Mannigfaltigkeit bildet gewissermassen eine Religion für den ganzen neideren Hausbedarf.”
[34] Dracu, which in Roumanian does duty for the word devil, really means dragon; as for devil proper the word is wanting.
One writer, speaking of the Roumanians, observes that they swear by the dragon, which gives their oaths a painful sense of unreality.
[35] This would seem to suggest a German or Scandinavian element—the thunder-god Donar, or Thor, who with his hammer confirms unions.
[36] This spirit corresponds to the Polednice of the Bohemians and the Poludnica of Poles and Russians. Grimm, in speaking of the Russians in his “German Mythology,” quotes from Boschorn’s “Resp. Moscov.:” “Dæmonem quoque meridianum Moscovitæ et colunt.”
[37] Also practised by the Saxons.
[38] This plant, Ocimum basilicum, is much used by the Roumanians, who ascribe to it both medicinal and magic properties.