ursitoare – Bone and Sickle

The Fates

By boneandsickle | July 9, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:48 — 57.0MB)

The Fates of Classical Antiquity not only survived in the form of related fairy-tale figures but also as the object of superstitions and rituals associated with newborns. In South Slavic and Balkan regions particularly, these customs represent a surprisingly long-lived and genuine case of pagan survival.

We begin our episode examining the fairy godmothers of “Sleeping Beauty” as embodiments of the Fates. Mrs. Karswell reads a few key passages from the definitive version of the story included in Charles Perrault’s 1697 collection, Histoires ou contes du temps passé (“stories of times gone by.”) We learn how the fairies fulfill the historical role of godparents at the newborn’s christening. We also note the peculiar emphasis on the quality of what’s set before the fairies at the christening banquet, observing how a failure there leads the wicked fairy to curse the Sleeping Beauty.

Czech illustration — 1874 illustration by František Doucha for a Czech edition of Sleeping Beauty

We then explore antecedents to Perrault’s tale, beginning with the 14th-century French chivalric romance, Perceforest. A peripheral story in this 8-volume work is that of Troylus and Zeelandine, in which the role of Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmothers are played by Greek and Roman deities, with Venus as supporter of Princess Zeelandine (and her suitor Troylus) and Themis cursing Zeelandine to sleep in a manner similar to Perrault’s princess. A failure to correctly lay out Themis’ required items at the christening banquet is again again responsible for the curse, though the awakening of Zeelandine by Troylus awakens is surprisingly different and a notorious example of medieval bawdiness.

Preceding Perceforest, there was the late 13th-century French historical romance Huon of Bordeaux, in which we hear of the newborn fairy king Oberon being both cursed and blessed by fairies attending his birth. From around the same time, French poet and composer Adam de la Halle’s Play of the Bower describes a banquet at which fairy guests pronounce a curses and blessings on those in attendance prompted again by their pleasure or displeasure at what’s set before them at a banquet. We also hear of the Danish King King Fridlevus (Fridlef II) bringing his newborn son to a temple of “three maidens” to ascertain the destiny pf the child in Gesta Danorum (“Deeds of the Danes”).written around 1200 by Saxo Grammaticus. And lest listeners think such appeals to the Fates were strictly a literary motif, we hear Burchard of Worms, in his early-11th-century Decretum, condemning the not uncommon among the Germans of his region of setting up offering tables for the Fates. By this point, the connection between how fairy godmother types are served at a banquet and offerings made to the Fates to ensure a cild’s fortune should be clear.

We then turn back to the Greek Fates, the Moirai (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) and the Roman Parcae (Nona, Decuma, and Morta). Particularly in the case of the Parcae, we hear examples of their connection to the newborn’s destiny in the celebration nine or ten days after the birth of the dies lustricus, during which offerings were made to the Fates.

The Three Fates by Bernardo Strozzi, late 17th c

We make a brief side-trip to discuss the Norns (Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld), the Germanic equivalent of the Fates. These are more distant cousins, not strongly associated with the newborn and his destiny, though we do hear a passage from the Poetic Edda, in which the Norns are present birth of the hero Helgi. We also hear a gruesome passage from the 13th-century Njáls Saga, in which the Valkyries weave out the fate of those who will die in the Battle of Clontarf.

The Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Fates, the Wyrds, are also discussed, and we hear how the witches in Macbeth partook in this identity as the “Weird Sisters,” an association Shakespeare inherited from his source material, the 1587 history of Great Britain, known as Holinshed’s Chronicles.

We then turn our attention the Fates in Slavic and Balkan lands — the Rozhanitsy in Russia and Ukraine, the Sudičky among West Slavs, the Orisnici in Bulgaria, and the Ursitoare in Romania. As these customs survived into more recent times, there is a vast body of folklore to describe — much of it revolving around the setting up of offering tables and the communication of newborn’s destiny through dreams sent to mothers and midwives and confirmed by marks (visible or invisible) left upon the infant during their nocturnal visits on the third night after birth.

We also enjoy a couple entertaining folktales about Romania’s Ursitoare collected in the early years of the 20th century by folklorist Tudor Pamfile.

While such customs have since died out in Greece, customs related to the Moirai preserved into the early 20th century, as we hear in passages of John Lawson’s Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals, written in 1900.

We end with a brief look at christening parties in modern Romania, at which costumed Ursitoare play an increasingly major role, this paired with an introduction to the popular song “Ursitoare, Ursitoare.”

Romanian Fates attend a christening party. Ursitoare show by FormatiiNunta

Master of the Wolves: Transylvanian and Balkan Wolf Lore

By boneandsickle | September 12, 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:28 — 58.9MB)

The Master of the Wolves is a supernatural figure central to Transylvania’s (modern Romania’s) voluminous body of wolf lore, a mythology that extends more broadly into Balkan regions once occupied, like Romania, by the ancient Dacians.

We begin with a snippet from a contemporary recording of the 1857 poem “St. Andrew’s Night,” by the Romanian poet and statesman Vasile Alecsandri. The poem’s association between the undead strigoi and moroi and the Romanian St. Andrew’s Night (November 30) was explored in our Transylvanian Vampires episode last year, but there is perhaps an even deeper connection between the St. Andrew, Romania, and the wolf.

Naturally, this brings us to the topic of werewolves. There are two wolflike monsters in Romanian folklore, the vârcolac and the pricolici, the latter being a closer match to our idea of the werewolf.

We discuss pricolici superstitions, which overlap largely with beliefs about the undead, of which the pricolici is often said to be a member.

The vârcolac, as we see, is rather different. Originally, it seems to have occupied a very limited and specific mythological niche as a creature that rises into the heavens at night to eat the moon, thereby causing an eclipse, or sometimes, the lunar phases. Over time, the vârcolac seems to have merged with more widespread werewolf beliefs.

The animal form associated with both pricolici and the vârcolac, however, is not always strictly defined as wolf-like. While the pricolici is sometimes said to assume the form of any number of “unholy” (but real-world) animals, the vârcolac has sometimes been compared to a dragon.

This wolf-dragon hybridization can also be found in the draco battle standard carried into by the Romanian Dacians in their wars against Rome. In its original form, the draco, consisted of a wolf head crafted of light metal, trailing a dragon-like windsock body. When in motion, a sort of whistle within the head emitted a shrieking sound that contributed to the Dacian’s fearsome reputation as warriors.

The historian Herodotus commenting on this reputation, also offered some observations on a particularly brutal Dacian rite, that of sending a “messenger” to their god Zamoxis. Mrs. Karswell provides the gory details in her reading of this account.

More modern Romanian myth-making brings together the man-god Zamolxis and the Dacian wolf, in the legend of The Great White Wolf, also read by Mrs. Karswell. This tale of a wolf leader seems to borrow from genuinely old legends describing St. Andrew as the “Master of the Wolves.”

Cave of St. Andrew — Romanian cave said to have been the home of St. Andrew

In this role, Andrew is said to return to earth on his night to share with the wolves what prey they are to be allotted in the coming year. The gathering of wolves from all quarters and apparition of the saint on the occasion is a sight mortals witness only with dire consequences, as we hear in another legend related by Mrs. Karswell. Nor is it a good time to be abroad with wolves racing off after their pray, especially so as they’re sometimes said to be supernaturally enabled on this night.

The Master of the Wolves myth did not exclusively attach St. Andrew and his day (or night). St. Martin’s on November 11, can be the setting as in Greece and Germany. (Germany is is also home to a folk tradition discussed, Wolfauslassen (“Letting out the Wolves” or “Ringing in the Wolves” in which shepherds returning from the fields for the year parade through towns ringing bells to let the wolves know they are free to roam the pastures.

As well as on St. Martin’s day, the Wolf Master can also appear a bit later, on December 6 when St. Nicholas serves as the Master of the Wolves in Russia and Poland.

While generally associated with the late fall and winter when dwindling food sources makes wolves more aggressive, the Master of the Wolves could also appear in the spring, when the herds would return to pasture, and predators might require a different sort of magical wrangling. The saint controlling wolves in these cases is almost always St. George.

While versions of this figure are found throughout eastern Europe and Russia (and certain parts of western Europe), it is in Romania where the wolf is most prominent — celebrated with no less than 35 designated “wolf holidays,”of which St. Andrew’s is only the most well-known. This season runs from October into January and its observance is marked by an arcane body of superstitious practices designed to keep the animals at bay. These include reciting prayers, locking corrals with charmed locks, and binding scissors to keep shut the predator’s jaws, and the like. A folk figure called “St. Peter of Winter” appears at the end of his season with dire consequences for those who have neglected the requirements of the season.

Strangely, the most dreaded wolf of all during this season, is a lame wolf, who not only attacks livestock but man. Several of Romania’s wolf holidays pay homage to this figure in their name, such as “Lame Philip,” ostensibly named for the apostle Philip, but undoubtedly rooted in older pagan tradition. In Serbia, which shares Romania’s Dacian heritage, a similar figure appears during this season as Lame Daba, a demon portrayed in the company of wolves.

A possible clue to this association between lameness and a dreadful power over human life may lie in Romania’s version of the Three Fates, the ursitoare. The third member of this trinity, the one given the ultimate power to cut the thread of human life, is traditionally portrayed as lame.

We end the show with a look at a wonderfully bizarre 1976 Romanian-French-Russian co-production, Rock and Roll Wolf AKA Mama, a retelling of a Romanian tale also collected in Germany by the Grimms as “The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.” Here’s a short preview clip of the film, which you can find in its entirety with English dubbing here on YouTube.