Muma Pădurii

Also Known As: Mama Pădurii; regionally Știma Pădurii, Vidma Pădurii, Vâlva Pădurii, Vâlva Codrului, Pădureana, Păduroaica, Mama Huciului, Mușa, Surata din Pădure; “Mother of the Forest”, from the archaic mumă, mother
Region/Culture: Central and Eastern Europe
Mythos: Romanian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: She owns and defends the forest, changes shape and size at will, calls in ninety-nine borrowed voices, and steals the sleep of human children to feed her own.
Role in Mythos: She is the maternal spirit of the woods, keeper of its trees and animals and enforcer of the rules for entering them, and the named cause of a children’s illness treated by charm rather than by medicine.
Relation to Humans: She punishes trespass and disrespect with muteness, disfigurement, bewilderment and sleepless children, and households defended themselves with iron in the cradle, a broom and scissors on guard, and a large repertoire of spoken charms. She can also be paid and appeased with bread, and in parts of Banat and Ardeal she helps the weak load their wood and shows lost children the way home.

At dusk a woman carries her child out of the yard with a piece of mămăligă closed in her fist. She breaks it into three, and after each of the three recitations she throws a piece toward the treeline. The bargain in the words is exact: I give you my child’s crying, you give me your child’s rest, that he may sleep like a lamb and fatten like a piglet. The smell of incense and burnt Good Friday flowers is still in the blanket. Behind the first trunks, taking the bread, is the creditor.

Romanian dictionaries file muma-pădurii three ways under one headword, and the arrangement says most of what needs saying. It is a plant. It is an illness. It is an ugly and wicked old woman who walks the forests luring children away and killing people. The middle sense is the one that ran a household. A baby who wakes and starts and cries at the same hour every night has not simply got colic; he has muma-pădurii, the way another child has the evil eye or a fright. Mumă is the old form of mamă, the ordinary word for mother, and it lifts the name out of daily speech the way an archaic pronoun lifts an English sentence.

Nobody agrees on her face. The commonest picture is an old woman of impossible size, as big as a house or a haystack, or as tall as the tallest trees in the wood, her body dried and bent and hairy, her legs long as an ox’s, her hair down to the ground, wailing steadily as she goes. Marcel Olinescu recorded her with teeth of wool and a crutch to lean on. Her face was said to be beech bark and her back fir bark, and she slept on one ear with the other pulled over her. The charms are less restrained: hands like yarn winders, legs like poles, eyes like sieves, teeth like adzes, nails like sickles. She wears moss, or flowers and leaves, or bark, or plain white, or plain black.

She is also, in Bucovina, a very beautiful woman with the gift of taking any shape she pleases; in Oltenia a beauty of a girl; in Țara Hațegului a dangerous old spinster; in one account a nun with her hair loose. She becomes a buffalo cow, a hare, a horse, a dog, a goose, a haystack. She becomes the thickest tree in the forest, or a stump, or a knot of mistletoe in an old oak, or a black beetle, or the mist that settles over the canopy. She swells to the size of a house and shrinks small enough to sit in a hollow trunk. A man driving a lightly loaded cart past the boundary where the spirits live once let a girl climb up beside him. The oxen’s tongues came out with the pulling. Near the village the cocks crowed, the girl was gone, and the cart ran light again.

Her ownership of the wood is not decorative. She keeps every tree the way a mother keeps children, gives them names and nicknames, scolds the ones that grow crooked, and when one offends her she curses it to be felled or struck, which is why lightning so often finds the finest tree on the ridge. She travels the mountains at night in a carriage drawn by stags, or on a horse with nine hearts, and the roar that runs through the forest is the sound of her going by. She weeps when a tree comes down. She keeps absolute command of everything alive under the branches, snakes and frogs included, and she can take the milk from a village’s cows by sending a snake to drink it, having none of her own.

The forest has rules and she enforces them. She punishes women who spin on a Tuesday, men who whistle or sing under the trees and wake her children, woodcutters who ignore the customs, and anyone gathering wild fruit on Probejenie, the sixth of August, when the animals have the first claim. Her instrument is often the voice. She can call in ninety-nine voices, and the one she picks for a young man is his father’s or his mother’s; the third call comes higher and thinner and is not quite a human sound. Whoever answers loses his own voice on the spot.

The children are the heart of it. She has her own, and their rest is stolen property: she carries human sleep home to quiet them, and where that fails the exchange is cruder, a village baby taken and one of hers left in the cradle, twisted and whining. Tudor Pamfile collected the account of the night she lost patience with her own brood and cursed them into black wasps. Against all of this the defence was iron and words. A knife, a needle or a nail went into the cradle, three small metal axes were tied to the swaddling band, a broom and a pair of scissors stood guard while the women were out at work, and in Bucovina the tongs, the broom and the poker were laid across one another in a cross. A newborn stayed indoors forty days. Washed nappies did not hang out after sunset. When a child was already ill the mother went to a descântătoare, who struck an axe into the doorsill or set three coals at the door and recited on a Wednesday, a Friday or a Saturday evening and on no other.

Underneath the hag is something with a longer reach. Ivan Evseev read her epic attributes and the epithet Muma Mumelor, Mother of Mothers, as the mark of an archaic forest spirit that had taken on the qualities of an older nature divinity and become a kind of Magna Mater. Traian Herseni made her the maternal principle of the mountain itself, mother of the hind and the wild cow and the she-bear, which is part of why their shapes come to her so easily. Other researchers call her a matriarchal relict and one of the oldest woodland powers in the Romanian pantheon. Christianity did not clear her out. It sharpened her, and she finished as patroness and mother of the malefic spirits of the night.

The plant that carries her name is a leafless parasite with a scaly stem and purple flowers, Lathraea squamaria, and the brothers Arthur and Albert Schott noticed that its old Latin name was matris sylvae, of the mother of the wood. It had to be gathered on the night of Sânziene in complete silence so that it would not take fright and hide itself in the earth. Dried, it was burned to smoke the sick child, or steeped and used to wash him while the charm was spoken over him. Mihai Eminescu, retelling her in Făt-Frumos din lacrimă, made her mistress of storm and drought, and the ground dries wherever she walks.

Set against all that power, her limits are domestic and cheap. Iron stops her. A fire lit in her path stops her. A cross made with the tongue against the roof of the mouth stops her, though one hunter who tried it was cursed to have no good day again. Gird her with a belt and her strength runs out of her. Cockcrow ends the night’s work. Above all she can be paid: bread thrown toward the trees, mămăligă broken in three, a piece put into her hand when she is found standing among the trunks crying that she has nothing to eat. In Banat they said she helps the weak cut and load their wood and guards them and their oxen on the road, and gives advice and remedies to people in trouble, and Lazăr Șăineanu recorded parts of Banat and Ardeal where she is a kindly fairy who shows lost children the path home. Refuse her the bread and there is famine.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Muma Pădurii?

Muma Pădurii is the Mother of the Forest in Romanian belief, a spirit who owns and guards the woods and is usually pictured as an enormous, hideous old woman. The same name also belongs to a plant, Lathraea squamaria, and to a children’s illness, and Romanian dictionaries list all three senses under the one headword.

What is the illness called muma-pădurii?

Muma-pădurii is the traditional Romanian name for a condition in which a baby cannot sleep, starts, and cries at the same hours every night. It was blamed on the forest spirit stealing the child’s sleep to quiet her own children, and it was treated by a descântătoare with charms, an axe struck into the doorsill or three coals set at the door, rather than with medicine.

What does Muma Pădurii look like?

Muma Pădurii is most often described as an old woman of impossible size, as big as a house or as tall as the tallest trees, dried and stooped and hairy, with hair reaching the ground and a crutch to lean on. Accounts give her a face like beech bark and a back like fir bark, and the charms pile on similes: hands like yarn winders, eyes like sieves, teeth like adzes, nails like sickles. In Bucovina and Oltenia she also appears as a beautiful young woman who can take any shape she likes.

How did people protect a child from Muma Pădurii?

Households relied on iron and on spoken charms. A knife, needle or nail was put in the cradle, three small metal axes were tied to the swaddling band, a broom and scissors were left on guard, and in Bucovina the tongs, broom and poker were laid in a cross; a newborn stayed indoors for forty days and washed nappies were not left out after sunset. Bread or mămăliga thrown toward the forest served as an offering to buy her goodwill.

Is Muma Pădurii evil?

Muma Pădurii is dangerous rather than simply evil, and the accounts split. She punishes trespass, waste and disrespect in the forest with muteness, disfigurement, stolen sleep and worse, but in parts of Banat and Ardeal she helps the weak load their wood, guards travellers and their animals, prescribes remedies, and shows lost children the way home.