Cilu-Cilihoiul

On the forever green and abundant land Old Ceahlău guards and mother Bistrița waters, in a dim past, there lived a brave man, chieftain of the people in this part of the country. He would walk with a beautifully encrusted staff, but his pride and joy, as well as his wife’s, was their handsome lad called Cilu.

They had been having a cheerful and tranquil life for a long time until Cilu’s father was murdered by some Tatars who invaded the area to loot their homes and to take their children in slavery.

Well this was not the only misfortune that befell the orphan lad, an heir of the great chieftain. A draught – which seemed worse than the Tatars’ raid – dried out the entire Bistrița Valley until far downstream. The waters retreated so much and the land scorched that the poor people in the villages or the beasts in the woods could barely to eat or drink anything.

Cilu looked thoughtfully at the boiling sky, at the chieftain’s staff, at the disaster around him, but in vain – he couldn’t find a solution to the merciless calamity.

However, one day he set on route in want for some grass or fruits, anywhere in the mountains to feed at least the children and the old. As he was walking, leaning heavily on his staff, as his exhausted, he went down some steep valleys. Suddenly, he felt a flying flower caressing his cheek and then the flower started speaking to him! This is how he learned that he was standing in front the monk’s hood flower rarely to be seen by humans.

“Put me on your head – the flower asked him – and I will help you be useful to all people!”

At the sound of this, Cilu hastily placed the tender helmet on his head and… instantly he felt he was floating. He even dropped the staff from his hands as they turned into wings!

He was a bird, he was an eagle, and he was even flying higher than CeahIău’s heights! …

People – whom he now greeted hastily – “Cilu-Chiau, Chiau-Cilu…” – could see him now.

“Fly, fly, Cilu-Chilihoi (that is Cilu the eagle) and remember that you can bring the rain. In one year, I’ll be back to turn you again into a human,” said the flower and vanished.

Left alone in the endless sky, Cilu started to look with his eagle’s eyes for the rain clouds. He could see them far, far away, but he soon reached them and began to herd them with his beak or pushing them with his large wings. Thus, after a whole day and a whole night’s toil, here he was with the clouds over Ceahlău and its surroundings.

He picked at the clouds for several times with his beak and, with their thundering prelude, the clouds began pouring the life-giving rain.

The happy people went out in their yards in the village streets to gulp with their bodies the beneficial rain: “Look! The eagle brought the rain to us!” and they would shout to the sky: “Cilu-Cilihoi!” And Cilu, still flying over the clouds, shouted happily his name back to them: “Chiau­-Chiau … Cilu … Chiau, Cilu … “ Little by little, all that scorched and cracked started to be yield richly again, and Cilu kept rotating in the air, happy that the people did not forget him and kept greeting him, shouting his new name: “Cilu-Cilihoi!”

Sometimes, he would have wanted to go down to be closer to them, to sit in his mother’s yard, but the monk’s hood resolved that he would never set foot on earth again, only on rocks. That is why the place up there on Ceahlău the spot is called ever since the “Eagle’s Camp.”

Thus, the year passed by and the flower looked for him to turn him into a human again, but Cilu … would not want that! “If I were to be a chieftain, who would help people in times of drought?” he thought. “I’d better stay here and watch over life from up here, from Mount Ceahlău, as down there on earth, there would be other brave lads to lead all the people for better or for worse!” …