ABSTRACT
The study presents a series of beliefs, customs and ritual practices which would accompany one of the most important occupations of the inhabitants of historical Moldavia, more exactly breeding cattle. At the beginning, it is pointed out the statute the cow and the ox had within archaic communities, pointing out, in line with the few other researchers in the field, the inherent difficulties of such an approach.
A considerable part of the material is focused on the feasts of the folk calendar, being thus pointed out the customs and ritual practices specific to the most important feasts. Beliefs and customs related to the selling of the cattle, the forecast contained in their roar, the great importance assigned to the yoke drawn by the cattle, the activities forbidden to those who wanted the cattle in the best possible health condition, these are the main coordinates of the present study, with a consisting bibliographic feature. Finally, some remarks refer to the manner of considering the beef meat.
The author of the material is aware that most of the beliefs, customs and ritual practices concerning the breeding of the cattle can be understood only with the help of mechanism of mythical-magical nature, specific to the archaic world. The collection, also in the future, of this type of information could result in a real corpus of ethnologic documents which could be extremely useful to many categories of researchers.