Caloian

Caloian

Caloian figurine from Viziru
Grouping	Effigy
Folklore	Romanian (also Csángó, Gagauz)
Other name(s)	Calian(i), Caloiță, Scaloian, Gherman, Iene
Region	Muntenia, Northern Dobruja, Oltenia, Western Moldavia (principally) Bessarabia, Bukovina, Transylvania (locally)

Caloian (also Calian(i), Caloiță, Scaloian, Gherman, or Iene) was a rainmaking and fertility rite in Romania, similar in some ways to Dodola. Its namesake is a clay effigy, whose sculpting, funeral, exhumation, and eventual destruction are centerpieces of the display. The source of this ritual, as is the case with those of many other local popular beliefs and practices, precedes the introduction of Christianity, although it came in time to be associated with Orthodox Easter or with the Feast of the Ascension. In some variants it was performed on a precisely calculated day two to three weeks after Easter, though local communities could also revive it at other times of the year, specifically during drought. The figurine was generally made from clay and most often by girls, though sometimes also by boys or married women; the ceremony itself would draw in the whole village community as spectators, and, in isolated cases, also had active participation from the Romanian Orthodox clergy. The mimicry of Christian funerals was widespread, but absent from the more established forms of the ritual.

Before dying out in the 1990s, the Caloian tradition had possibly survived for millennia, and may have originated with Dacian strands of Paleo-Balkan mythology. It evoked memories of human sacrifice for the appeasement of rain deities, with parallel near-sacrifices of girls being still attested in rural Romania during the first half of the 20th century. The Caloian litany, which exists in various arrangements as a sample of primitive Romanian literature, usually refers to the figure being sent off to the skies to unlock rain, and buried so that it may be reborn. The figurine's mother is hinted at in such poems, and in some cases played by one of the girls attending the funeral procession.

Caloian events were largely confined to Muntenia, Oltenia and Northern Dobruja (the southern part of Romania), though they have been well attested in specific parts of Western Moldavia. Similar practices, assigning usually female characteristics and names to the clay figurine, are spread throughout other parts of the Romanian-speaking areal. They form a continuum of traditions with both Dodola and Germenchuk, which are staples of Bulgarian folklore. Intermingling with the latter is attested in Caloian's primary spread along the Danube, but also in its supposed etymology, which reveals either a Slavonic term for "dirt" or a folkloric nod to Ioannitsa (Ioniță) Kaloyan. The ritual has also been adopted and adapted by ethno-cultural minorities, including the Gagauz and the Csángós.