As, however, all children originating from such unions are officially classified as illegitimate, the barren figures would give an erroneously unfavorable idea of the Roumanian state of morality to those unacquainted with these details; and it is therefore really no anomaly to say that illegitimate here is tantamount to three-quarters legitimate, while the Saxons’ legitimacy does not always quite deserve that name.
A jilted lover will revenge himself on his mistress by ostentatiously dancing with some other lass; and in order to do her some material injury as well, he goes secretly at night and cuts down with a sickle the unripe hemp and flax which were to have served for spinning her wedding-clothes. It is always an understood thing that the hemp belongs to the female members of the family, and there is a certain poetry in the idea of thus cutting off the faithless one’s thread. Thus the father, finding his hemp prematurely cut down, is at once aware that something has gone wrong about his daughter’s love-affair.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
THE ROUMANIANS: DANCING, SONGS, MUSIC, STORIES, AND PROVERBS.
The dances habitual among the Roumanians may briefly be divided into three sorts:
1. Caluseri and Batuta, ancient traditional dances performed by men only, and often executed at fairs and public festivals. For these a fixed number of dancers is required, and a leader called the vatav. Each dancer is provided with a long staff, which he occasionally strikes on the ground in time to the music.
2. Hora and Breûl, round dances executed either by both sexes or by men only.
3. Ardeleana, Lugojana, Marnteana, Pe-picior, and Hategeana, danced by both sexes together, and in which each man may have two or more female partners.
These last-named dances rather resemble a minuet or quadrille, and are chiefly made up of a sort of swaying, balancing movement, alternately advancing and retreating, with varied modes of expression and different rates of velocity. Thus the Ardeleana is slow, the Marnteana rather quicker but still dignified, and the Pe-picior is fastest of all. Also, each separate dance has two distinct measures, as in the Scotch reel or the Hungarian csardas—the slow rhythm being called domol, or reflectively, and the fast one being danced cu foc, with fire.
All these dances are found in different districts with varied appellations.