Călușari

The bells arrive first. A village lane in the plains of southern Romania, late spring, dust already warm by mid-morning, and from somewhere behind the plum trees comes a hard, bright, rhythmic jangling that is getting closer. Then the fiddles. Then the men themselves, seven or nine or eleven of them, never an even number, in white shirts and white trousers with ribbons on their hats and bells strapped below the knee. One carries a pole twice his own height with a white cloth and a bunch of garlic and wormwood bound to the top. Another wears a mask and does not say a word.

These are the Călușari, and for the days around Whitsun they are not quite ordinary men. The season is called Rusalii, and Romanian tradition holds it to be the time when the fairies are abroad. They go by names meant to flatter them, such as the Beautiful Ones or simply They, the iele, and they dance in the air at night and punish anyone who offends them. Working in the fields on the forbidden days is offence enough. The person they take falls ill in a way no ordinary remedy touches. The Călușari exist to stand between the village and that danger, and to bring back the people it has already claimed.

A band begins with an oath. The men gather in secret under their leader, the vătaf, an older dancer who knows the charms and the steps and passes them on. They raise the flag, a long pole dressed with cloth, garlic and wormwood, and swear on it. They promise to obey the vătaf in everything, to share what they earn, to keep the band’s secrets, and to stay away from women until the season ends. From that moment the flag must not fall and the oath must not break.

Then the visiting starts. In each courtyard the householder sets out a bowl of water and a dish with salt, garlic, wormwood and a few stalks of grain. The masked Mute scratches a circle in the dirt and the band steps into it. The dance starts at a walk, the line moving round in a ring with sticks planted like canes, and then the fiddles tighten and the feet go to work: heel clicks, squats, kicks, stamping that sets every bell going at once, and leaps high enough that the old descriptions say the dancers seem not to touch the ground. A mother holds out her baby and a dancer takes the child in his arms and carries it through a turn of the ring for a long life. Girls slip in beside the men for a few steps, for health. When it is over, people pull sprigs of garlic and wormwood off the dish and keep them.

It is hard work. The men do this from house to house all day, for days.

The oldest full account comes from the Moldavian prince and scholar Dimitrie Cantemir, writing around 1716. His dancers dressed in women’s clothes, wore wreaths of wormwood and flowers, spoke in women’s voices and covered their faces with white linen so nobody would know them. Each carried a drawn sword. They knew, he says, more than a hundred different measures. For the ten days between Ascension and Pentecost they never rested, and they slept only under the eaves of churches, because anywhere else the fairies would torment them. A man who joined was bound for nine years. If two bands met on the road they fought, and the losers served the winners for the same term. A Transylvanian friar, Ioan Căianu, had already written down some of their tunes in the century before.

Cantemir also describes the cure. The sick person is laid on the ground. The dancers begin their leaping, and at a fixed point in the tune they step across the body one after another from head to heels, then murmur certain words into the patient’s ears and order the sickness out. This went on for three days. The American scholar Gail Kligman, who lived among bands in the south in the 1970s, found the cure still performed and more elaborate. The musicians first play through the Căluș tunes to see whether the patient stirs to one of them, which shows that the fairies are the cause. The band then dances around the sick person, a clay pot is smashed with a stick, a chicken is killed, and at that instant one of the dancers drops to the ground as if struck. The patient gets up. The fallen man has to be danced back to his feet by his fellows.

Nobody knows how old any of this is. The name may come from cal, a horse, and older bands carried a carved horse’s head; the dancers’ kicks and stamps are often read as a gallop. It may come from the wooden bit, the căluș, that the Mute was said to hold in his mouth. Some trace it to a Latin word for a sworn society. The historian of religions Mircea Eliade pointed to something stranger. The patron of the Călușari is the Queen of the Fairies herself, called Irodiada or Arada, a name that leads back through church Latin to Herodias and Diana. The men who fight the fairies dance like them, leap like them, and answer to their mistress. He thought the Christian calendar had been laid over a rite that owed nothing to the church, and village priests agreed with him often enough to bar dancers from communion.

The strength of the band is real within its limits. It lies in the flag, the herbs, the oath, the leader’s whispered charms and the sheer exhausting force of the dance, and it cures one illness: the one the fairies send in this one season. It protects the yards it has danced in. Outside Rusalii it is nothing. A dancer who breaks the oath is said to be taken by the fairies in his turn, with the same sickness he was curing in others. And the Mute, who may not speak for the whole season, carries a wooden sword and a great deal of licence, mocking everyone and miming what cannot be said.

It ends as secretly as it began. Some days after Whitsun the band meets again at the vătaf’s house. The pole is lowered so that it falls flat, the garlic and wormwood are shared out or stripped away, and the men bury the flag in a place they will not tell. Then they scatter in different directions, and when they meet again in the lane they greet each other like men who have been away a long time.

The dance is now a national emblem, performed on stages and at a yearly festival at Caracal, and UNESCO recognised the Căluș ritual in 2005. In the villages of Olt the bells still come down the lane at Whitsun.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Călușari?

The Călușari are members of a sworn brotherhood of male dancers in Romanian tradition. They perform the Căluș rite around Whitsun, going from house to house to bring health and luck and to heal people believed to have been struck by fairies.

What does the Căluș ritual protect against?

The Căluș ritual protects against the iele, the fairies who are said to roam during the season of Rusalii. People who work on the forbidden days of Rusalii are believed to be taken by the fairies and fall ill, and the Călușari dance to cure them.

How do the Călușari heal the sick?

The Călușari lay the sick person on the ground and dance around and over the body. In Dimitrie Cantemir’s account from about 1716 they step over the patient from head to heels and whisper words in the ears. In the form Gail Kligman recorded in the 1970s, a pot is broken, a chicken is killed, and one dancer falls down as the patient rises.

Why do the Călușari carry garlic and wormwood?

Garlic and wormwood are tied to the top of the Călușari flag, a tall pole on which the dancers swear their oath. The herbs are believed to keep the fairies away, and villagers take sprigs from the dance to keep at home.

How old is the Călușari tradition?

Nobody knows how old the Călușari tradition is. Some of its tunes were written down in the 1600s by Ioan Căianu, and the first full description comes from Dimitrie Cantemir around 1716. UNESCO recognised the Căluș ritual in 2005.

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