VOICES AND STORIES ENGLISH VERSION
p.14
“My maiden name is Bajdeki. I’m originally from Vodena, in
Greece. Vodena was a town. My father’s name was Anton—Doni—and my mother’s Tana. My parents were also from Vodena. They were all from there. Our folk had sheep, but they didn’t take them to pasture, others did that for them. In Vodena there also lived Greeks, but we didn’t have Bulgarians. We also had an Aromanian school there. When we left Vodena, I was two, my sister was four. I remember all the villages there, all of them. I also remember the neighbours we had. The Vodena, Arabagilar region was very beautiful. Very beautiful it was. All my relatives stayed behind in Greece, because that’s what they wanted. My aunts married there. My mother came here with her husband, with me and my sister, my younger brother was born here in Romania. My father Antoni left Romania, went to America to make money.”
[Nichea Cucli | Constanța, România]
“Our folk were from Asprovalta, near Thessaloniki, Greece.
p. 16
My great-grandfather brought there a thousand extremati. He had two sons, one of whom, my grandfather, was Dinca. And the other, my grandfather’s brother, was Giogiu. Each had five hundred extremati. It wasn’t like it is here, with hectares; it was with extremati. When they went away from there, they went to Bulgaria, because the air was purer there. Our folk were in Paliu Krushuva, Kato Krusheva and Maslarea, Stefalena, Vrasta. It was the Aegean Sea there, and they’d leave in summer when it was very hot. When they went to Bulgaria in summer, the borders were open. They’d set off with horses, sheep, all the people. Grandfather had five thousand sheep, our parents had one thousand goats, and all four brothers together had one hundred horses. They went to Bulgaria because there they had sheepfolds for cheesemaking. They made hard and soft cheese, they made butter, and in autumn they came back to Asprovalta. They did that for many years. After the border closed, they stopped going. When they came, they paid rent on the mountains. Grandfather always rented the mountain and once Vlahbei went ahead of him and said: “Naciadis, I’m not coming!” And so, Grandfather went: “Let’s rent it, Vlahbei!” And he asked him: “Won’t you sell it?”“I’ll sell it?”“How much will you sell it for?”“Eight sacks of Groschen and a pouch of gold pieces.” And my grandfather bought the mountain, rented it out. They then went to Bulgaria, and came back again. In autumn they grazed the sheep
there a lot and it was very hot and the grass was green and there were small fingerlike bushes, like leaves, which the sheep ate. Then when it started to snow, the men cut them, the women made sheaves of them, and they brought them to the sheep, threw them in the stall so the snow wouldn’t get in. And so it went for many years, after which a sickness struck my parents, so many people died . . . Father’s wife died, along with the two children, Janco and Costa, four years old. And uncle’s wife died with her two daughters and a son and Uncle Jorgi, Father’s brother, and many more died . . . and if so many departed, the other people left . . . young, old, all wept. They didn’t stay in Asprovalta. They went to Olacî. There, half the village were Bulgarians, half Greeks. They found a house there, a large house, they rented it. This was in about 1915. And after that, Father married, he had no choice, Grandmother was very old and helpless. And the man they rented the house from was a Bulgarian Bolshevik and he was also a Greek citizen. In 1916, the Bulgarian came and told my uncle to become a Greek. And because he didn’t become a Greek, they burnt our house down. And our folk had all their possessions there and they all burned, they couldn’t get them out . . . After that they stayed in Greece again and thence they went to Nichișani. Nichișani was closer to Olacî. And then I was born in 1920. In autumn, we used to go to the Pangheu Mountains, in Kastri, and we stayed the whole winter there. We stayed in Kastri two years, we sold the goats and sheep, and moved to Rodolivos. In Kastri, I did two years of schooling, and in Rodolivos three. Five years of Greek schooling. There, in Rodolivos, the Aromanians occupied around twenty houses, ten of which were ours, the Naceadis family.“
[Lencea Iuruc | Constanța, Romania]
“When our folk came to Romania, they brought everything
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with them, all their chattels, their sheep, everything. Everything we had there we put in those big sacks. You didn’t have anything else. And on the ship, we put everything in those big sacks. We arrived in Constanța and there they allocated us. Some had five sacks, others five more than that, each with his sacks. Of all of us, we brought the most sheep from there in Bulgaria.
My father loved sheep; he was a good shepherd. Every Sunday you would see him at market. “Where are you going, Father?” “Never you mind! I know where I’m going!” The market was held in Casimcea. He would leave in the evening and come back the next day, with the flock of sheep. In the whole village there was none like old man Bacale, my father, God rest his soul! There was none like him in the village: handsome, even-tempered, never out of line. You never had a problem with my father. Not that I am . . . you can ask the whole village. He worked very hard, he worked with the sheep, he was also at the collective farm, he never quarrelled with anybody. The best, he was, the bravest, a real man. And my mother was decent, but she wasn’t like my father; she was more cantankerous. My grandmother, God rest her soul, I remember her. She liked to work, but not very much. Just a little! She couldn’t, because anyway she had so much to do, what with the small children, take them here, take them there, she also wove at the loom, she would come back, make the food. What, back then did they have washing machines or electricity? Everything was done by hand. What, did you wash it? The machine washed it! She worked, washed, with four children, how much work could she do? Two of them died; it wasn’t an easy task.”
[Gheorghe Bacale | Stejaru, Tulcea County, Romania]
p. 20
”I conceived this album because I kept telling myself that
we are going to forget where we came from. We went to a lot of places, we performed a lot, in a lot of towns. We went to Macedonia, Greece, Albania. And that’s why I said I should put them in order starting from the beginning. I did it for my granddaughter. I have two granddaughters. I have another album. It’s identical. It’s not ready yet. It says The History of the Aromanians in Bulgaria.” “In 1998, we Aromanians from here in Velingrad went to perform in Vidin. We looked for clothes, each whatever he had. New Aromanian clothes, not the old ones, like they were in the olden days. Then, in 2002, we created a new ensemble. Some of the people had died. The women who used to sing had died. In the first year, there were many of us, but now it’s just us and our daughters. And now our granddaughters. One has finished university and the other is a student. The other will finish next year. After that, I don’t know whether they’ll join us too. There’ll be just us, the old folk.” [Cherana Pishotova | Velingrad, Bulgaria]
p. 24
“Our folk came from Greece, from near Ianina. We came to
this village (Versakovo) in 1924. We were the first to come to the village, our family. My grandfather bought this house, the Vlachs’ house. My grandfather was Halciu al Vlahu. Our nickname is Vlahu. There were four brothers, in 1908 they separated, the father of my grandfather, great-grandfather Vasile, went to Greece, to Thessaloniki, in 1908. There, they had a cheese dairy, where they grazed the sheep. In 1918, after the end of the Balkan Wars, they came back and settled in a village, Cararma, near Stip, after which the brothers separated again and my grandfather Halciu went to Versakovo. Here he found an Aromanian house, belonging to Ioghi and Ghiftu (Țiganu). He’s now in Romania. While they were in Thessaloniki, one of Grandfather’s brothers died: Dina. The wife of another of Grandfather’s brothers also died, the wife of the eldest brother, and when they returned to Cararma, that brother, Steri, took another wife, who bore him two sons. Grandfather wanted to buy here, to have property, but he didn’t want to buy alone and he said to his brother, “Come, brother, let’s go and buy together. This property we’ll buy from the Turks.” And his brother didn’t want to. “Why,” said he, “should my grandchildren and my brothers’ grandchildren fall out?” And so in the end, they called their cousins. The houses here belong to the cousins. They’re Grandfather’s cousins. Our Grandfather Vasile was the eldest of the brothers. And that grandfather was also a godfather, because the Aromanians have a custom, that the eldest brother was godfather to all the rest. Of all of these, the eldest was my great-grandfather Vasile, his father died, and after that he raised all the siblings, there were seven, in fact: four brothers and three sisters. He raised them all. He was godfather at their weddings. He was godfather to grandmother Țața, and one of the sons, Mita, and then great-grandfather Vasile decided: “Enough, henceforth we’ll separate!” Some went to Pișț. Our folk went to Thessaloniki. When our folk returned, grandfather Stere didn’t want to come here, because he had two foreign children, that is, from a foreign house, and my grandfather had two sons, my father and my uncle, Mita and Nasi. Mita didn’t have children and took them from his brother Nasi. But we were godfathers, and those from Pișț didn’t have property there and in the end they came and bought here. And so our family arrived in Versakovo. There, from Versakovo, they went to the huts in the mountains with the sheep. They also had land, but they didn’t work it, there were Bulgarians who
ploughed and sowed the land. Only much later did our folk start to work the land. In effect, they didn’t work it until 1935 or 40, after that they started. Until the collective came and took it from them. In fifty-three the collective ended. Then they gave us our land back and since then it’s been ours. And then they started sending youngsters and children to school. “Children, go and study!” In 1991, Yugoslavia broke up.”
[Dima Vlahu | Versakovo, Republic of Macedonia]
“You see, this is the truth! Time’s done its work. If the liturgy
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isn’t in Aromanian, if school isn’t in Aromanian, it fades away, it’s lost.”
[Hristu Steryiu Ciolacu | Bitola, Republic of Macedonia]
“I personally don’t look at the people around me and
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blame them. We’ve always had to know who we are. Which is why I can’t call myself a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Romanian, or an Albanian; I’m an Aromanian, and I can’t change that.”
[Hristu Steryiu Ciolacu | Bitola, Republic of Macedonia]
“In winter, the snow here is deep, in the mountains.
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Only the road to Bitola remains open. In Bitola, we leave in November, December, depending on the weather. If the weather is bad, we leave earlier. We have vegetable patches here, tomatoes over there, peppers by the stream, everything we need. In was born in 1939, here in Muloviște, not in this house, in another one. It was an old house. I’m the eldest. I have a younger sister, then a brother, and another brother. When I was little, the village was very big. Now there are only thirty-two or three houses in all. Now there are lots of those what do you call them? the people who come here at the weekend. They have houses here and they only come for the weekend. Like my brother. Of those who live here all the time, there are just one, two, three to a house. Let me count them: down there, there are two, three counting Olga, five counting us two, seven counting another two. Then thirteen, Gonciu fourteen, Jana fifteen, another four over there makes nineteen. Another two over there makes twenty-one. Twenty-two counting Dunca. At Zoița there are five, which makes twenty-eight so far. Four or five on the other side makes thirty-three, and another three makes thirty-six. Two in Aspasi makes thirty-eight. Another one makes thirtynine. There are four in Vanghiu, which makes forty-three. In Ghiocu there are another
three, Tanasca has two, Dinci four, which makes fifty-nine, sixty, around seventy-six, seventy-seven Aromanians in all. This is us, the old folk, who stay here both winter and summer. They all cut wood. Every house has three or four horses. They haul the wood with the horses. We’re purebred Grămosteni. There are other Grămosteni, but it’s a borrowed name, that is, they’re not the originals. But we’re the original Grămosten. My father was called Costa. He had seven brothers, of which only one didn’t have a family: he went to America by himself and then came back. They all died, father’s brothers. My father was born in 1908. He died in 1988, aged eighty.“
[Cociu Gramosli |Bitola, Republic of Macedonia]
“The first wedding with gifts took place in my village, it
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was my wedding. Up to the 1970s, that kind of thing wasn’t done in Dealu. I got married in Sarighiol, and the first wedding with money was ours. My father-in-law had a cousin who said to him: “Hey, Toma, you’ll hold a wedding with gifts! It’s about time! Let’s have them with gifts henceforth, everywhere else they have them with gifts.” My parents-in-law were ashamed, but in the end, they held it with gifts. Ten, fifteen lei, a hundred lei, however much the guest wanted. And they got their money back in the end. My wedding was on 22 November 1970.”
[Maria Samara | Constanța, Romania]
“In the old days, they used table cloths when somebody
p. 35
died and put them on the tables, when the people came back from the graveyard to eat. Now you go to a restaurant and you don’t bring out the tablecloths. That’s the bad part, look, I have starched ones too, they’ll turn yellow, how long will they stay starched? Different tablecloths have appeared now, they don’t compare, but even so, they’re more convenient. Nowadays, young people are in a hurry. They don’t have time to starch, to iron, they don’t even iron their bed linen.”
[Mariana Cucli și Maria Samara | Constanța, Romania]
“For example, we Grămostenii didn’t mix with the Fîrșeroții;
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very rarely, there were very few cases. The Fîrșeroții came from Cogealac, from Poiana, from Cocoșu, they kept to themselves. In any case, we didn’t speak the same
way: they spoke one way, we spoke another. We’re the authentic ones, our nation of Grămosteni. How can I put it . . . the best of people! We get along very well with the Cipanii, but not very well with the Fîrșeroții. And the singing, too. They have only a single vocalist and the rest go “eeeeeeh” neverendingly. They keep up a drone. Where we are, it isn’t like that. If we start a song—if I do, for example—it starts and my sisterin-law and my brother-in-law and all the rest sing in chorus. That’s the difference between the Fîrșeroții and us. [Mariana Cucli and Maria Samara | Constanța, Romania]
p. 38
”I’m eighty-six, my name’s Marușa, Gherase Nicolae’s
daughter Mușa, and I’m married to Migit. Our folk came from Greece, I was nine months old when we came from Greece and we stopped in the Quadrilateral, in Ingiochi. Thence we went as far as Turtucaia. Then we worked for the boyars. We picked grapes and they didn’t let us put a single grape in our mouths, so nasty were they. We were in Manasia by then, when we were deported. And they checked our buckets, so that we wouldn’t steal so much as a single grape. I don’t know what the name of the village in Greece where I was born is called. It doesn’t say in my passport . . . I don’t know whether it says. Do you think I can see to read? When I came to Romania, I was seven. I did my first year of schooling in Belica. In Ingiochi we didn’t have a school and we went to Belica, that’s where we went to school. The village had good houses, but they were mostly Turks. The Turkish women wore their white head scarves, the way it was back then. So that the Turks wouldn’t kidnap us, we made crosses on our foreheads, so that they would know we were Macedoni. They made mine for me when I was seven. It was there in Ingiochi that they made it. They made one for all the girls in the village. We had a church in the village, but what, did I go? All I remember is that we had a house on the hill. And that we also had a spring in the valley. And I remember that there, at the spring, we maids and women used to gather, and the women washed the wool there. What occupation did the women have? None! All right, the wool: they carded it, spun it, wove it. When we came here to Romania, I wove too. We wove till we were blue in the face. What else could we do but weave? Nowadays, we throw everything away, but we had to toil.”
[Marușa Migit | Stejaru, Tulcea County, Romania]
p. 42
”We also made bucuvală. In the old days, we crumbled the
bread. We heated the lard over the fire and then added the breadcrumbs. We fried the bread in the oil. And when it was ready to take out, we tossed in a handful of sugar. We took it out and ate it... They say our grandfather, in fact our great-frandfather, once ate a lot of bucuvală, he liked it a lot, and he went to a spring and drank water, who knows how greedily he drank, and he died. He died. And that’s why it’s called bucuvală. That’s our story, our origin. [Mușa Bucuvală | Constanța, Romania]
p. 45
“My name is George Bacula, I’m from Constanța, born in
1965. I spent my whole childhood in Sinoe. And if somebody asks me, “Where are you from?” I say, “From Sinoe,” because that’s where I first felt what it is to live. When it comes to singing, I inherited it from Father, who, in his day, when they were young, sang in the Sinoe choir. It was an “agitators’ ensemble,” as the communists called it, which they finally put a stop to, because it didn’t look good, since it was in Aromanian. And at the age of thirteen or fourteen, I first picked up an accordion. I didn’t learn it in any school, but by myself, as best I could. When you’re learning, you first leanr the simplest tune. Not a hard one. I was in lycée when we first made the “Iholu” (The Song/The Ison) group, me and my cousin, Iancu Bacula, who also plays, an uncle of mine, Iancu Bacula, Mihai Sanki, who’s now in Canada, he played the flue, he was the only Aromanian who played a wind instrument, and his brother-in-law Mihai Carataș, who was on drums. We played together for three or four years, until I went to do my army service. And then Hrista Lupci moved to Constanța and he joined “Iholu.” After that, after I got out of the army, I started playing only at ring dances. That was around eighty-six or eighty-seven. It’s been thirty years since I started doing it. Every Saturday, every Sunday, when there are weddings, from spring till autumn. Mostly autumn. At a wedding, there are some songs that I play every time. Then, when there’s a ring dance, it’s whatever comes into your head, you understand? You don’t have a set repertoire. But there are some songs that you’re obliged to play. You play them with a meaning, when you have to. They’re the old songs that you remember were played in the old days. They’re played today too, they’re still just as beautiful. You remember
them when you play for the ring dance. When the tune comes to you, you play it. Even now, the old ones are very beautiful. We at least, the ones with the harmonics, play mostly the old songs. Because you can’t play something that the band plays—they’re complicated for us—because we with the accordions don’t have much schooling. We Aromanians play very simply. Our music is very simple.”
[George Bacula | Constanța, Romania]
“This cloth is used to take the wedding ring loaf to the
p. 46
bride. The ring loaf is taken along with the lamb’s back. In the old days, that’s what it was, but now they take the chicken. With the cloth you wrap the ring loaf and when you arrive at the parents of the bride, first you give it to the father, then the father gives it back and an exchange is made. They do the same at the groom’s house and at the bride’s house. And this is the exchange loaf. And these, the cloths, were put on the men who went with the raki and the flask, on horseback, to invite people to the wedding. You put one of these woollen covers on them: a mudatî, a bătănie. On the flask you put a red bow and you tied this cloth and off they went to announce the wedding. The way we hold weddings today, they go and call people. You drink wine and you’re called to the wedding. They go to all the relatives. These are the groom’s best men.” [Mariana Cucli and Maria Samara | Constanța, Romania]
p. 48
“The truth is that there are numerous branches of the
large family we call Aromanian. I shall look here at the Fărșeroți, since one of the specific elements of Aromanian folk music—polyphonic singing—is highly specific to them. One such song was collected and notated by philologist Tache Papahagi and subsequently published in an Aromanian anthology published by Casa Școalelor in 1922. It is called Voi giuname și îi voi fraț. Other scholars have studied this type of singing, too, such as musicologist Emil Riegler-Dinu and linguist Th. Capidan. I have been thinking of suggesting the imprecise polyphony of such singing using musical instruments and electronic mixing equipment. I would use the clarinet, which is one of the favourite instruments of Aromanian groups today. In Tache Papahagi’s Dictionary of Aromanian Dialect, the instrument is given as clârnetâ. Scouring Papahagi’s Anthology for other musical instruments mentioned in the poems he collected, I also
discovered a whistle, which I wasn’t surprised to find in such a renowned race of sheepbreeders. The whistle can also be added to our creative endeavour. The poem in question is reminiscent of the Romanian ballad of Miorița (The Ewe Lamb):
“Hey, Janaki, don’t go to the sheep,
I dreamt you’re going to die.”
Oh, whether or not I die,
Listen to what I have to say:
Bury me at the sheepfold;
In spring, when you return,
Let the sheep pass for me to catch them,
To catch them and milk them,
And shear them by my hand;
Let me always hear the whistle
When the sheep are gathered in;
So that even when I’m dead
I’ll not be far from either companions or sheep.”
In Vanghele T. Millio’s Macedonian Folk Songs, my eye was caught by the first song, Vine Oara. Compared with the rest, I found it more complex, given its tripartite structure. I familiarised myself with it, playing it over and over on the saxophone, until I finally penetrated its meaning. I was also helped in this by the lyrics, about love at a distance, with the final verse demanding a slow tempo: “Far from me
My life is with you
It flies away
My fate is black
A good hour, lover, a good hour.”
Moreover, in its melody I detected an obvious oriental ingredient, which can be explained in technical terms, but here is not the place. It suggested to me an area of improvisation that the song might provide. As I studied it, I tried to see how Voi
giuname și voi fraț would sound on the saxophone too. In this way, I decided that I would play the two Aromanian themes on the same instrument, especially since it can frequently be found in present-day Makidonian folk ensembles. [Călin Torsan | multumult group]
p. 50
“In nineteen eighty-something, I stuffed them. They
were my rams. I talked to a bloke called Ivănel, who did that kind of thing, he was a specialist, he’d even done it for Maurer, who was head of the hunters’ association. That Ivănel had all the necessary substances, because not just anybody could keep stuff like that. I’ve put them here in the bar. They look good, give you something to look at. Every summer I take them away and clean them at home, in the bathtub, I wash them. They’re well cared for.”
[Iani Carabaș | Bucharest, Romania]
“As our ancestors said: “What Fate writes the third night, so
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it remains.” If it says on the third night the man will live so many years, nobody will take them from him! So many years will he live! If God says that tomorrow you’ll die, you can give as much as you like, you can put honey in your mouth, but you’ll still die. The old folk said that once, in Serbia, night caught up with an Aromanian. And he came to a house and he said, “Night has caught up with me, if there’s room, can I sleep here?”“There’s room,” he said, “but I have a small child, it’s the third evening, and the Fates will be coming.” Our ancestors said that in those days folk heeded Fate. “No matter,” said the man. And he went to bed in a room. Since it was a strange house, he couldn’t get to sleep. Midnight came, the Fates arrived. The first said such and such, the second such and such, the smallest said, “No. He’ll lived twenty years. In twenty years, he’ll go wherever he’ll go, but at that well there, when the time comes, he’ll drink water and there he’ll die.” When the man heard that, he started to tremble. But since he was a decent man, he didn’t tell the parents of the child. But he kept a watch on the affair. He always kept a watch. Twenty years elapsed. Well, now he would see what was to be seen. In those days, people went around on horseback, with their capes, through the mountains, over the plains, and as they went on their way, they came to a well. And the way young people are, “I’ll drink some water,” “I’ll drink first,” he drank, and there he died.
And then the man went to tell the parents. “I didn’t want to tell you, but that evening when I slept at your house, I heard the Fate say that the lad would live twenty years and that he would die at that well when he drank water.” So it was. All the tales from the old folk are like fairy stories. They’re stories, as the young folk call them. We call them basme.”
[Tănase Mușat | Slobozia, Romania]
“The swaddling clothes were made of wool. I knitted it
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with wool of every colour. I did it in six colours and knitted it in three. It was long, two or three metres long. I bound the baby from the throat down, I wound it around him and at the end I placed a silver coin, one of those from the sheepskin cap, for him to be healthy. They also put a wedding ring in the swaddling clothes. I had one of those wedding rings made in Constanța. Nowadays they don’t swaddle them at all . . . But it was good before, they wrapped the baby up warm when he slept. On the baby’s head we put a little cap or headscarf. We made our own diapers, we wove diapers with nice patterns. When we swaddled the little one, we put a diaper on him and a cloth one so that it wouldn’t chafe, because all the other clothes were woollen. We put him there, we placed his little arms down till he reached forty days, we kept his little legs stretched out, so that they’d grow straight. We swaddled him well, nicely, and the little one slept warm. A person has three turte (cakes), one when born, one when married, one at death. On the third night after the child’s birth, you gathered the family, a number of women, and you called them to a supper. Then you put the baby’s bonnet on its head as it slept. In its bonnet, you put pennies, liras, but most of all gold liras, so it would be rich! And the little one slept with the bonnet on its head the third night. On the third night, the fates are written. That’s what we’ve always done. We all have our fates. Who guides us? Fate! The midwife came to the new-born, about a week later, and bathed it. When you gave the baby its first bath, you tossed a coin in the basin. The midwife tossed the first coin, for the child to be healthy.”
Ten and Ten We all stood in a square. One of us went in the middle, we called her the pillar. Two girls on one side, two on the other, two to the left, two to the right, and one in the middle. We spread our arms and held the hands of the two over there, the two over here, and when we clapped our hands, everybody had to catch the others. As soon as you let go of one, you had to catch the other. The other had to catch the other, and so on. And the one in the middle tried to get away, to catch another and thrust her in her place. You hadn’t to stay there, you always had to change places.”
[Mușa Bucuvală | Constanța, Romania]
Lullaby
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“Rock-a-bye in the cradle,
Let sleep come to the door
To catch the boy/girl by the chinny-chin
And toss him/her in the cradle.”
[Mușa Bucuvală | Constanța, Romania]
”One night I dreamed that I was asleep and dreaming. In the dream, I was in a green meadow. Lying next to me on the ground was my body, which something prevented me from seeing. And my body spoke to me and said: “Let’s go to sleep and dream the same dream together!” “But we can’t,” I said, regretfully. “Look, up there, where I dream a hill—” and above us a hill was traced against the sky “—you’ll dream a valley. It will always be that way. My Aromanians and your Aromanians, the ones I’m talking to you about and the ones you imagine might not be alike.” I’ve told you this dream to serve as a warning to you.” „T-unã noapti mi-anyisam cã taha nji-durnjeam shi nji-mi-anyisam. Tu yis s-fãtsea cã earam t-unã livadi veardi. Deadun cu io, tes, sh-eara truplu-nji. Ma tsiva miambudhyisea s-ul mutrescu. Truplu lo s-nji-azburascã shi-nji dzãsi: as durnjim shi s-nanyisãm dolji idhyiul yis! Ma aestã nu s-poati, lji-apãndisii io cu mirachi tu suflit. Mea, aclo iu va mi-anyisedzu io c-unã dzeanã – sh-disuprã di noi s-avea zuyrãpsitã pi tser unã dzeanã – tini va ti-anyisedz c-unã vali. Ashi va s-hibã daima. Armãnjilji a mei shiArmãnjilji a tãi, atselji ti cari azburãscu io shi-atselji tsi tini tsã lji-fãndãxeshtsã poati cã nu-au sh-u-aducã un cu-alantu. Tsã pirmithusii yislu ta s-badz oarã, mea. ” [Irina Nicolau | Haide, bre! Subjective Incursion into the World of the Aromanians]
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