Abstract
The study analyzes the repertoire of fantastic fairy tales included in the monumental regional corpus Datinile şi credinţele poporului roman (Romanian People’s Traditions and Beliefs), published by its author in 1903. The numerous texts collected from the area between Cernăuți and Botoșani, in the Northern Moldavia, cover more than 55 narrative types. On this basis, one can reconstruct a vigorous background of the archaic storytelling preserving the cultic and ritual functions, but also of a distinctively appealing style. Some texts are very rare or even unique, as they cannot be found in localities outside the boundaries of today’s Romania. Some of them have disappeared in time, while some of them changed their names or ethnic structure.
Keywords: narrative types, apotropaic functions, magic symbols, sacred valences, archaic variants.
Cuvinte-cheie: tipuri narative, funcţii apotropaice, simboluri magice, valenţe sacre, variante arhaice.