Sunday, January 15, 2017

The Old Dochia

The Old Dochia
           It is said that once long ago lived in a village a very hardworking woman but also very bad at heart called Dochia.
            Dochia had a son named Dragobete, who was her pride. But one day Dragobete got married with a girl against Dochia’s will.
            Angry with her son’s decision, Dochia sent her new daughter-in-law, in a winter day at the end of February, in the forest to wash some balls of black wool in the river and told her not to return home until the wool will not become white. The girl tried to wash it, but the wool not changed it color. In despair and with her hands frozen from the cold water of the river, the girl started to cry, thinking that she would never be able to see her loved husband again. But, suddenly, an old man appeared and gave her a flower, telling her to put it into the water and to wash the wool with it. As soon as she washed the wool as the old man said, it became white, so the girl happily returned home. 
            When Dochia has heard the story of the girl, she got angry and thought that the spring had come, since the man from the forest. named by girl Martisor, was able to offer flowers.
            She hurried to bake nine furnaces of bread and left in the mountain forests with her sheeps, being dressed in nine thick coats. As the weather changed fast, from cold to warm, Dochia started to eat one bread and to throw away one coat daily, one by one till last one. But weather changed again and became colder and colder and Dochia had no one coat in the ninth day to warm her. And so she was punished for her bad heart.
            Since then, the first nine days of March are considered days of a new beginning (spring) or Baba Dochia’s Days, since in these days the weather is so unpredictable as it was and Dochia.

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