The Romanian dolf ‘sea monster’ in Connection with a Greek Lexical Family with Early Signs of Eurasian Religion

Adrian Poruciuc (Romania)

Abstract

This article discusses a fabulous sea-monster, the dolf (with the regional variants dulf and dorf), that plays an important part in a cycle of Romanian ritual songs. The name of that creature appears archaic and is no longer in general use with today’s Romanian speakers, who may tend to associate dolf with delfin (the current Romanian term for ‘dolphin’). The latter, however, is a recent loan, from Italian delfino, or even directly from Latin delphinus (which is generally considered to be a borrowing of Greek delphis, -inos). The more primitive dolf (with no suffix) remains etymologically obscure. Interestingly, dolf occurs in ritual songs specific to Romanian regions whose inhabitants have never seen any real dolphins.

The Romanian “carols” (colinde) about the “weird apparition” called dolf are now associated with Christmas and New Year well-wishing ceremonies. Those ritual songs—together with the carols about the lion, or about the sea-flood and the bull-riding maiden—represent the most archaic and conservative part of Romanian folklore. What I intend to demonstrate here is that, however strange the dolf-carols may appear to the modern mind, they have undeniable connections with Paleobalkan (pre-Greek) matters, and even with some of the earliest manifestations of Eurasian religion.