Panaghia

Panaghia is said not to have been a rock from the very beginning, but a frail little girl, born – poor thing – in a hamlet at the foot of Mount Ceahlău, in some poverty-stricken people’s family. Still, she was endowed with many a gift as the Fatal Sisters hastily gathered around her cradle wishing her all the good things in life. The trouble is that while competing to enlighten the little girl’s future, the sisters endowed her with everything… they only forgot about good luck! So, Panaghia grew up, the apple of her parents’ eyes and souls. They passed away on a rainy ad chilly autumn day, crashed by a tree trunk just when their daughter was reaching the age to join the hora [round dance].

Well, when Panaghia remained an orphan, a well-off but childless couple from a neighbouring larger village, seeing her rare beauty, took her in their care. The new parents joy was short-lived because as soon as Panaghia went out in the street, or making hay, or taking the cattle to water, to the church or to the village dance, all the lads were sticking like a burr to her, feasting their eyes on her and wishing her for a wife. So, one day the lads started to fight even over the beautiful maiden’s smile…

People began gossiping. No one could blame her for something, for anything on the shady side, but – that’s life! – her charm would turn the lads’ heads! Could they wait any longer: no, they were willing to kill for her? The parents’ soon decided, until it was not too late, to take Panaghia up in Mount Ceahlău, where once sister Nazaria lived before climbing down the mountain and founding the Durău monastery…

Overwhelmed with grief when she saw herself in that wilderness, the poor girl climbed up the highest peak – Toaca – seeking to put an end to her misery by throwing herself into the endless abyss under the mountain. While she was saying her farewell from the world, she suddenly felt the warmth and bright Sun, just rising above the horizon, wrapping her all over…

The Sun was climbing slowly to the skies, the maiden stood there spellbound and neither of them could have enough of the sweet sip and… This lasted for the whole day and most of the night, which was still a day in the end because the Sun remained in the sky half the night, although people and stock went to sleep when the Sun was up in the middle of the skies!

The following day was the same, and the following, and the ninth day, and who knows how long it would have lasted, if even the Night – which could barely open the darkness’ eyelid and raise the Moon, the evening star, and the whole parade of stars in the sky – had not complained to God. God grew sad at the deed of the two, so reckless in their ardent love… And, so that all things be again as they used to, as He left them to all the people and to the entire universe, he wrapped Mount Ceahlău in a dark mist so that the two could no longer see each other…

One morning Panaghia saw that the Sun’s rays caresses the slopes at the foot of the mountain and she wanted to go down there to seek the warm and bright cover of her lover. Hopping merrily, she reached at the foot of Toaca. Then she realised that her steps are clumsier and clumsier, that a weary dizziness penetrated her body and before she realised she turned into stone! It is only her heart – so genuinely and ardently given to the Sun – that didn’t turn into stone. So the legend says and so do those that rest their eyes on the harmonious outline of the wonderful rock. It continues to give and receive love whenever the Sun caresses its rocky body…