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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