The ritual, festive, cultural and community practices associated with June 24, known as Sânziene and Drăgaică, are spread throughout Romania, with terminological specifications for two ethnocultural areas. Thus, in Banat, Crișana, Maramureș, Oltenia, Moldova, the northwest of Muntenia, the practices associated with June 24 are known as Sânziene (having Latin etymology), and in the south: Muntenia, Olt county, Dobrogea, southern Moldova, we have the holiday called Drăgaica (from the Bulgarian dragaika).
Midsummer fairies (sânziene)
Romanian legends say they were the emperor’s daughters kidnapped by dragons (zmei) and who became fairies of the forest and the field. According to tradition, the midsummer fairies float in the air or walk on the ground on the night of June 23th to 24th, sing and dance, share the crops, help married women give birth to babies, breed animals and birds, give medicine and smell flowers and heal diseases and sufferings people.
Midsummer fairies (sânziene) are perceived as good fairies. But when their day is “violated” they can also become harmful forces, hitting the sinners with the “chain of sânziene“, they can raise storms out of nowhere, they can bring hail, leaving the field without fruit and the flowers without medicine.
In the traditional village, on the eve or on the Sânziene feast, there were practices and customs aimed at revealing details about ursita or luck. On the eve of the holiday, the girls used to go out in the field and pick woodruff flowers, put them under the pillow, believing that they will dream of their future husband. In some areas, the girls made crowns from woodruff flowers (flori de sânziene), which they left overnight in gardens or in clean places. If they found them full of dew in the morning, it was a sure sign that they would got married in the summer that was just beginning. Wreaths were woven for each member of the family from woodruff flowers, after which they were thrown onto the house. If they remained on the roof of the house, the wreaths foretold luck, health and marriage to the girls, and if some fell, it was a bad sign. The woodruff wreaths were also placed above the entrance door, to ward off evil spirits. In some areas of the country, beliefs say that “girls and young women should roll on the night of Sânziene through the dew of the forest, to be beautiful and beloved all year round.”
According to the ethnologist Maria Bocşe, the eldery said that this day “is celebrated when the cuckoo stops singing”. Also on this day, it was believed that the crickets start to sing, a “sign that the sun starts to go back in the year and midsummer is approaching”, and the peasants started mowing the hay and harvesting the summer grains, wheat, rye and barley.
Children used to put woodruff flowers in their baths to grow up healthy, with the tea from the leaves they treated colds, put in brandy, they healed the blows, and with the dew on the woodruff they cured their eye diseases. Also, there was a superstition specific to this holiday, according to which, on the Sânziene feast, people should not bathe, because they will wash away the magical forces that surround them on this festival.
Contributor: Cluj County Centre for the Conservation and Promotion of Traditional Culture
