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Miorița (English: The Little Ewe) is an old Romanian pastoral ballad and is considered to be one of
the most important pieces of Romanian folklore.[citation needed] It has several versions with quite
different content. One of these was selected by Vasile Alecsandri to form the textbook reference.

Contents
• 1 Content
• 2 Trivia
• 3 References
• 4 External links

Content
The setting is a simple one: three shepherds (a Moldavian, a Transylvanian and a Vrâncean) meet
while looking after their flocks. An apparently enchanted ewe belonging to the Moldavian tells its
master that the other two are plotting to murder him and steal his goods.

The shepherd replies that, were this to happen, the ewe is to ask his killers to bury his body by the
sheep's pen. She is to then tell the rest of his sheep that he had married a princess during a
ceremony attended by the elements of nature, and marked by the falling of a star. However, there is
no rite of passage metaphor with heavenly manifestations in the version of the story the ewe is to
tell the shepherd's mother: she is to hear only of her son having married a princess.

This poem was quoted extensively by Patrick Leigh Fermor in his account[1] of the second part of a
journey on foot from Holland to Constantinople in 1933-34. He includes a partial translation which
he refers to as "ramshackle but pretty accurate". This was actually made later during an extended
stay prior to September 1939 in eastern Romania.

The Miorița is often referred to in the novel 'My swordhand is singing' by Marcus Sedgwick.[2]

Trivia
• Miorița was the name of the state-owned milk company during the Nicolae Ceaușescu
régime.

References
1.
• Fermor, Patrick Leigh (1986). Between the Woods and the Water. London: John Murray.
pp. 204–207. ISBN 0-7195-4264-2.

2. • My Swordhand is Singing. London: Orion. 2006. ISBN 978 1 84255 558 3.

External links
Romanian Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Miorița (in Romanian, the Vasile Alecsandri version)
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Little Lamb (English translation by Sophie Jewett, 1913)

• Miorița - in English (translation by W. D. Snodgrass)

• Mioriţa - a vocal version, sung by Grigore Leşe (An asf file)
• https://web.archive.org/web/20080201104525/http://www.moldova.md/en/start/