Death represents man’s Great Passage to another world. From a biological point of view it is an end, but, in the traditional conception, it is only a threshold for crossing to the other realm.
In ancient times, but still in some villages, the funeral ceremony included a multitude of customs and rituals. Among them was also the offering of alms, for the soul of the deceased, having the role of providing the dead with the necessary things for the journey to the other world. The main offering was bread and its derivatives, because in this way the link between the living and the dead was best established, bread being a food with multiple meanings.
In the village world, certain dough items were prepared only on the occasion of a funeral, and alms were not given uniformly. Some things were given as alms to everyone, but others were given only to certain participants in the ceremony, who had specific roles in its conduct. Among them were the coils in the flags and the ox-horn sweet bagel.
Prepared only by the very skilled women of the village, in the days before the funeral, the sweet bagels, bagels „in prapori” were intended for those who carried the dead to the grave, during funerals. These were circular and had a hole in the middle so they could be hung on top of the flags. With the help of a utensil called “flomoştoc“, the cakes were covered with beaten egg before being put in the oven.
Ox’s horn sweet bagel was attached to the yoke of oxen that pulled the cart taking the dead to the grave. At the end, alms was given to the oxcart driver. The custom was also preserved in the village of Orman in the ethnographic Cluj Hills sub-zone.
For the “food of the soul” the “alms tree” was also made, which was believed to feed and shade the deceased in the other world. In some villages in Cluj county, the tree was made of a branch of plumtree, apple tree or pear tree and was decorated with fruits and various forms of dough. It was placed next to the coffin, during the procession, at the head of the deceased, then accompanied the coffin to the cemetery. At the end, the products from the tree were distributed to the children and other participants of the funeral.
Contributor: Cluj County Centre for the Conservation and Promotion of Traditional Culture
