Immaginario e cornici culturali della «morte speciale»: Ancora sulla Mioriþa-colind

The article is devoted to the Transylvanian carol Mioriþa. Sentenced to death by his mates, a young shepherd gives them detailed instructions about the ritual setting of the execution and the burial of the body. Differently from the well-known ballad on the same subject, the carol presents a specific functionality, structure and thematic development that should be related to characteristics of the ritual genre. In this paper we will analyze the core-part of the carol—the shepherd’s testament—from the point of view of funeral ritual complex and imagery in Romanian popular tradition. A special focus will be made on the atypical burial requested by the shepherd to his mates-killers: the hero’s instructions lead us to think that his imminent death belongs to a particular category of deaths – unnatural, untimely deaths. This idea will be discussed with reference to semantics and spacial dimensions of death ritual.