Tag Archives: Romania

St. Andrew in Scotland & Romania

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Woodcut of the martyrdom of St Andrew from a Sarum Missal printed in Paris in 1534.

Every year on November 30, Scotland celebrates the feast day of its patron saint, St. Andrew. The day is celebrated and commemorated with festivities, parades, traditional Scottish music and dancing. By law, all buildings in Scotland are required to display the Scottish National Flag that bears the image of the Saltire, or St Andrew’s Cross.

But… St. Andrew was not Scottish. In fact, the saint was born in Bethsaida, Israel. Moreover, St. Andrew never stepped foot in Scotland. Although St. Andrew was strongly associated with Scotland from around AD 1000, he only became the official patron saint of Scotland in AD 1320. (St. Andrew is also the patron saint of Greece, Russia, the Amalfi region of Italy, and Barbados.)

According to folklore, St. Andrew requested to be tied to an X-shaped cross, as he believed he was ”not worthy of dying in the same shape of a cross as Jesus”. Since the year 1385, this X-shape represents the white cross displayed on the Scottish flag. A notable feature of the small town in Scotland named for St. Andrew is the University of St Andrew. Founded in 1413, this is the oldest university in Scotland, as well as being the third oldest university in the English-speaking world. The university is known worldwide for teaching and research. The University was the first Scottish university to allow women to enroll as undergraduates (1892).

Regarded as ”one of the world’s greatest small universities”, the university is heavily interlinked with the town as students of the university making up roughly 1/3 of the population (under 20,000).

In Romania, where St. Andrew is also the patron saint, a number of traditions and rituals surround the apostle. On the morning of St Andrew’s day, mothers gather up tree branches and make a bunch for each family member; the person whose bunch blooms by New Year’s Day will have good luck and health that year. It is also said girls should put a branch of sweet basil – or 41 grains of wheat – under their pillow on the night of St Andrew’s Day. If they dream someone takes them, it means they will marry soon.

St Andrew is also linked to superstition and custom surrounding matrimony in several other countries. Reports suggest that in parts of Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, names of potential husbands are written on pieces of paper and stuffed in pieces of dough. After baking, the first one to rise to the top when put in a bowl of water would reveal the name of their future husband.

You can find more legends of St. Andrew here.

“In the Forest, Deep and Dark….”

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It’s increasingly rare to find a forest that hasn’t been shaped by human use. Ohikulkija/CC BY-SA 3.0

When I was small, there was a tremendous forest across the field from my great-grandmother’s house on San Juan Island. I called it the Black Forest, after the famous fairy-tale forest in Germany. It was everything I ever imagined a fairy tale forest would be and never went more than a few feet into the trees. I was terrified of becoming lost and wandering in the woods. I was certain that either Baba Yaga or the gingerbread-house witch would find us if we ever wandered too far under the great trees.

Forests are big, dark, and mysterious. They appear in many–if not most–fairy tales. Forests hide Big Bad Wolves. Witches hide their gingerbread houses in forests. Castles that belong to mysterious strangers are surrounded by forests. Sometimes the forest is itself enchanted. Forests are always dangerous and places of adventure that mark the edges of this world and the worlds of spirit and imagination.

Facts, folklore, superstitions, myths, and anecdotes about trees and forests have always fascinated us. A wonderful book came out recently, Forests in Folklore and Mythology, that makes these tales available all in one place and examines the threads or traits they have in common. Customs, temples and sacred groves; mythical forest creatures such as witches, fairies, demons, wood spirits, and wood nymphs are all in its pages.

Certain kinds of trees are associated with wisdom, life, or death. Celtic mythology tells us that birch trees are important in both the winter and summer to purify the world. Birches were celebrated during the festival of Samhain (what is now Hallowe’en)–bundles of birch twigs were used to drive out the spirits of the old year. Later this would evolve into the ‘beating the bounds’ ceremonies in local parishes, a festival in the springtime. Gardeners still use the birch brooms to ‘purify’ their gardens.

According to Atlas Obscura, the last of the great fairy tale forests can be found in Finland, or on the Carpathian or Balkan mountain ranges that slice across Romania and Bulgaria.

St. Andrew’s Day

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Fran Francken II (Flanders, Antwerp, 1581-1642) painting of St. Andrew’s crucifixion, circa 1620, on exhibit in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

St. Andrew, the first man to join Christ as an apostle, was crucified on an X-shaped cross. He is now widely venerated as the patron of Scotland, Russia, and many other places. His X-shaped cross appears on the flags of many countries that looked to him for protection. His feast–on November 29 in some places and November 30 in other places–is both especially popular for magic that reveals a young woman’s future husband and was believed to be the start of the most popular time for vampires to come hunt the living, which would last until Saint George’s Eve (22 April).

In Romania, it is customary for young women to put 41 grains of wheat beneath their pillow before they go to sleep, and if they dream that someone is coming to steal their grains that means that they are going to get married next year. Also in some other parts of the country the young women light a candle from the Easter celebration and bring it, at midnight, to a fountain. They ask Saint Andrew to let them glimpse their future husband. Saint Andrew is invoked to ward off wolves, who are thought to be able to eat any animal they want on this night, and to speak to humans. A human hearing a wolf speak to him will die.

In Póvoa de Varzim, an ancient fishing town in Portugal there is Cape Santo André (Portuguese for “Saint Andrew”) and near the cape there are small pits in the rocks that the people believe these are footprints of Saint Andrew. Saint Andrew Chapel there was built in the Middle Ages and is the burial site of drowned fishermen found at the cape. (St. Andrew was also a fisherman in the New Testament.) Fishermen also asked St. Andrew for help while fishing.

It was common to see groups of fishermen, holding candles in their hands, making a pilgrimage to the Cape’s chapel on Saint Andrew’s Eve. Many might still believe that any Portuguese fisherman who does not visit Santo André in life will have to make the pilgrimage after they die.