An sentimental sketch of the Land of Oaş
by Ioan Nistor
Oaş comes in time as a river flop in the search for the horizon, among debris, roots and sunbeams, like Talna, Turul, Valea Albă or Valea Turţului, the well known waters…BR>Located in the northern part of Romania , she belongs in equal measure to the land and the sky, to the concrete and non touchable. The Lodestar reveals itself here as a good neighbor, as an fix certitude somewhere on the “meşter-grinda” or after the wind chatterbox on the top of the hayloft. It is a part of the integrity, wit all that means identity and difference, but cannot be confused with other areas under no aspect, ethnographic, linguistic, folkloric, also psychological. It is unique. And it is a margin that assessed a border.
Specialists have ascertained that Oaş, as a warm and protected nest, it was populated uninterrupted and intense from the times depth. At Boineşti, Bixad, Călineşti-Oaş, Remetea Oaşului, remains from human settlements from the Paleolithic have been discovered. Silex tools have been identified at Târşolţ, Oraşu Nou and Viile Medieşului Aurit. The Bronze Era its herself good represented, as well as the traco-daco-getic Millenium including the interference with the Celtic civilization. Subsequent, the area became a natural walled city of the free dacians, hiding place and also contact place with those from Roman Dacia. The remains of these centuries are presented in different points of the Oaş until the XIII century when a series of placements registered in documents as “possessiones valachales” including with their voivodes. We should highlight that the Oaş was not isolated, as it was known. Through the salt road, becoming the land road had an opening for Slatina and the other salt-mines from Maramureşul Mare, to Seini and Satu Mare, to Vişc, Hust, Seleuş and Muncaci.
The documents from the time that has past are not crushing but the Oaş is a reality. The hard rock, she lingered not to break. It was a visible entity, a “terra” or “romaine populara” after the definition of Nicolae Iorga, equal with his neighbors, developed on a larger territory as the approximate thirteen older or newer country layouts. It lies near the home village of Dragoş, and spiritually it was, until the constitution of the monastic place in Bixad (1614), in the irradiation area of the Peri monastery (today Gruşevo, Ukraine), the place of the first translations in Romanian. Administratively it was a “contrafort” of the walled city Medieşu Aurit and was permanently under the law “sfatul bătrânilor” and “iuşul” ( from a Latin ius “human right”) being a self-administration form that kept until our days.
The Oaş was in a triple state, as an island (with distinct unchangeable notes), as a rock (it resisted, bringing to us its old value fond) and as a beehive (it constantly charged/recharged the neighbor areas with Romanian population, the phenomenon of hiving being certified in documents and onomastically). At the same time , from an ethnic point of view, it was s sort of sponge that absorbed all that mend immigration in his space. The force of assimilation have only very old communities, belonging to its hearth.
The Oaş toponymic and the “oşan” antroponym are the result from the need of the neighbors to define the area, respectively some people that assessed a specific approach. The etymology of the two terms raised interest. The assumptions are numerous, from the Greek oasis (“oasis”), the Albanian avash (“slow”)T, to the Hungarian havas (“mountain”). Whatever the truth is, the toponym has to be very old. He was set in the relation by Aurel Berinde and SImion Lugojan with osadhi (“plant”) from Sanskrit, indo-European language that included also the Latin and the Dacian language. The term has a very large spreading, a place named Oşani exists in a northern territory of Greece, inhabited by Megleno-Romanians. Its more easier for us to start from the name “oşan”, probably previous to the toponym, in which we can identify the radical “os” and the suffix “-an”. “Os” could be explained through the Latin “os”, “osis” with the meaning of “bone” but also with the name “kernel”, this one being existent and active with the forms “os” and “oşi”. The plural may have given the name „Osiani”, „dry fruits producers”. The hypothesis seems closer regarding the orchard specific of the zone. If we have the Plum-er, why shouldn’t it exist also the „Oş”-er
But what kind of people are the people from Oaş? Easy and difficult to answer. They define themselves as: „People like any others…” Simple – it may be added – and sometimes not so simple. People who are born and die, as nature of all beings, but who leave something behind, especially heirs, as many as possible, as expresion of an idealist and constructive lifestyle.
They have been sometimes kept under observation like unusual asteroids. Around them legends were weeved. Exact things were said but also exaggerated ones, left till today in different backgrounds.
Great transormations happened in their lives after 1962, along with the socializing of the villages, when the complex life, well structured for such a long time was shattered, and the major values crashed. The villages, based on spiritual life principles and a healthy living, in which the customs, old laws, morality was like air, practically entered into agony. After 1989, there hasn’t been any returning to the traditions kept by history, instead other horizons were chosen , sometimes with dramatic effects. Extremely conservative in harsh conditions, the people from Oas became the spenders of their own achievements, borrowing without prejudice, imitating, sometimes denying their own original creations worthy of admiration. The lack of interest at the individual level wasn’t repaired at the institutional level, and so, the rediscovering of the values, which will come without doubt, might be very difficult.
They seem to have three essential features. First them all, a prolific vitality sprung from an authentic Christian conscience and from noticing the truth of the fact that only a numerous kin, a large family has strength. Than follows that state of structural exuberance, doubled by a trustful look into the „face” of life. The third thing is the full involvement into a creative stream, as revenge against a harsh past.
These people, with a hard earned existence, they know for sure how to work and to party. They did not just happen to have the heaviest of the works, and the holidays - baptizing, the wedding, „sâmbra” and everything else – are moments of tryumph.
The typologies and their faces were remarked by many writers but also by exigent ones. The children, the elders but especially the women from Oas attracted the refined painters and photographs. The poet Anamaria Pop identifies the Gioconda among the women from Oas photographed by Ionuta G. Andron, and the face of the old man Finta Văsâi from Bicsad caught on paper by the same photographer, illustrates the image of the dacians in history treaties. They are examples of grace, of body vigor and soul sturdiness. The esthetic options were clear: „where the cuter man shall dance / so the grass from stones shall rize/ when the ugly man does it / grass will die as pigs it it.” This reality is specific to compact zones, as result of a multi-century biological protection behind the walls of nature, as well as an effect of an extremely rigorous „selection”. We don’t know how many rights did the Oas girl in the past have, but the right to choose the beautiful man was indisputable. And she said no to the “tricky, the rabbit lip, the midget”.. The feminine songs stand as proof to this. The love declarations, put into verse were straightforward and clear as moral-esthetic options. Marriage was till not long ago a law grater than the Great Chinese Wall. Many magical rituals aimed at family protection, to neutralizing the ugliness. In the incantations, the fertility and the “bringing” of the handsome lad occupied the central place. The bride, at the coming out from the church, was ordered to look into the sun, to have beautiful children, and her ornamentation with the famous crown and interlacing, represent an unique achievement in the world. Perhaps it sends into eternity something from the grandeur of the princesses from the dacic kings court.
The traditional folkloric clothing. For the pieces extremely individualized, unseen in other areas, for the chromatic harmony and for the comfortable stitch work that leaves to the body the natural freedom, as well as for the way it brings foreword the feminine charm and the male sturdiness, the traditional folkloric costume from Oas is unique. It’s an expression of the love for the beautiful and it remains a mystery how a handful of people managed to create such value, manifesting in the same time influences upon the nearby inhabitants.
The embroidery, this ideogram of an exuberant vision upon life, created from countless stitches and of silk cross-overs, with aspirations towards bass relief, situate themselves perhaps on the first place as forms of artistical expression and describe the best the local spirit. The art of embroidery impresses through originality, ingeniousity and conviction, everything that has to do with consummation, produced in the household. They impress through antiquity of the terms “bracinar” (special large belt) and “brăcinăriţă”, considered by the scholar Viorel Rogoz, as being of Celtic origin, as well as for the diversity and the refinement of the ornaments (zgarda, straiţa, pogmata, cununa, struţul, pleteanul etc), worn by the people (coconi and foaice, boresari and borese)
Painted by the eyes of the woman, the soul of the people can be descifred from these writings. The one who saw a pin, a canvas weaved with threads of deep feelings, a handle of a bag, or a vest, of course, from the old ones, authentic ones, can testify for it. Harmonies of leaves and flowers, of birds torn from their flight, of young cones, they show a very special artistical and creational vision. These small “paintings” look like hills with flowers or knobs with grass after a clean summer rain.
Talking about the traditional folckloric costumes from the land of Oas we have in mind what happened until the years 1962-1970, whenthe distructive effects were intensively felt in everything that ment traditions. Above all, a distorted modernism as well as the unavoidable invasion of the commercial products led the art of “cosele” towards inesthetical options.
The Belladonna dance. The mysterious and the exciting erotical ritual, known under this name, active until the ’50 of the last century, had Saturnalia or Bacchanalia echoes. Exclusively feminine, concealed from the male eye, was no doubt designed especially to provoke and unleash the masculine interest. Born from the hatered towards the void and sterility, can be considered an experiencing, naturist dance, put on stage into the secret bedroom of the green forest, under the magic wand of the vestal – the allknower old woman. It was, as intention an emission of erotical impulses with the help of magic towards the sleeping buds of the lad, to enslave his imagination with that circling of young girls in full splendor of their nudity. The woman, just discovering her nudity and her procreative purposes, exercised a beginning of manipulating strategies – the dance. The Belladonna, or the “all mercifull” – the symbol of fertility – is summoned to watch over the nereby fulfilling of the destiny: de-flowering.
The “Sambra” (the gathering of the mates) In the early or the contemporary variant, about “sambra” the volcano scientists, earthquake scientists or the scientists specialized in solar explosions,could say a lot because this is how much “sambra” resembles with cosmical energy mix, this tumultuous interlacing of human torrents, of spiritual forces. Sambra has an economical reason but it is also a spectacle of comunitary convergence, an almost tempestuous explosion of feelings, in an impressive acustic and chromatic shower.
The dance and the cheer singing. Among shapes and colours, dancing and singing have their place of honour in Oas. The specific of the people can be descifred from their footbeat and sound of violin. The rhythm of the dance (dant) is an uncontrolled reflex. It is located in the memory of the body and in the shape of the sound, as well as the threedimensional perception of light. The dance is not a succession of body moves, but masculine footbeating. It’s a refusal of the telluric and the affirmation of the celestial. The ground is beaten in total unleashing, but with love.It’s the exorcizing of the evil and of the ugly, a negation of the sterile past, it’s the beating of the ground and its domination, escape from the strings of hell and the wish to aspire to the sky. He rizes up the soul and the body. Not its sensibility but it force that will dominate it; not the easiness, the sweetness, but the rough vital answer; not ondulation, but the vertical. The rythms abolish again the tentation to dream, wipe out the melancholy thoughts and generate the wish for action, they dry out the fears, the depression.
The hereditary landscape. The face of the earth represents the substance of the soul and of the body. The Space of The Oas Land has always been inhabited, never a “deserted place”, but a “terra mirabilis”. The landscape is full of a special light, sweetened by a greenish melting background. And the heat is tempered by the Polar Star thermostat. All villages are in a safe place, accepted by the scenary, under the shade of a hill. From here, the eye is primarely guided towards the sky they swim in. Each child, awaken to life, embraces with his glance a top of a hill. And peaks like Pietroasa, Mica, Jălejnic, Babiu, Conja, Cetăţuia and others are for the sight a balance point and of orientation, are the Northen pyramides that order and energises the soul. The hill is the track from where the thoughts take off, it offers the immensity in slices, making it accessible. From the top of the hills one travels to the stars. That’s the explination that the soul is always inhabited by the sky. The people feel connected to eachother with all the fibres with this native biotope.The space orders, attracts, subjugates the feelings. The literary folklore stands as proof. Wherever they go into the world, not the delusion of the alienation gouverns them, but the wish to return. There is a spirit of the place that lives in the soul of the people from Oas.
(After: Ştefan Iancu, Ther Land of Oaş, photographic albume, with first note by Ioan Nistor, Satu Mare, 2006)