Funeral and Memorial Tradition in Neighbour Slavic and Aroumanian Villages of Macedonia

Abstract

The Romanian population of the Balkans is distributed unevenly throughout the peninsula. In particular, in Macedonia, the Aromanians mainly live dispersedly within the Slavic settlements, however some city areas and even separate settlements might be considered Aromanian enclaves. In June 2022, a ten-day ethnolinguistic expedition took place in the city of Kruševo and in the villages nearby Bitola (North Macedonia). The purpose of this field survey was to study the Aromanians living close to the Macedonian population in this area. Despite the preservation of the historical memory and their own distinct identity from those around them, the native speakers of the Aromanian very infrequently use their own idiom. In everyday communication and even in the family, the Aromanians give preference to the commonly used Macedonian language. Constant intensive contacts of the Slavic and non-Slavic populations contributed to the linguistic and cultural interference in the traditions under discussion. This article aims to acquaint the reader with the folk tradition on the example of the commemorative practices common in the Balkan region under consideration. The funeral and memorial rite was chosen as the main topic, since it is in its structure that one can find the most archaic elements of traditional folk culture, reflecting ancient mythological ideas. There are also contemporary dialect texts in the Macedonian language, recorded from often bilingual native speakers. Detailed ethnolinguistic descriptions of the funeral and memorial rites give an idea of the archaic elements of the traditional folk culture, borrowed and developed in contacts. The fragments of the Eastern Romanian tradition are reflected in the rituals borrowed and adopted by the Slavs, and vice versa ― the terminological vocabulary was borrowed into Aromanian idiom.