Traditional Acts Performanced within the Funerary Ceremony. The Laments

Among the rites of passage, the funerary ones, or those related to the remembering and honouring the dead seem to be the oldest and the best preserved ones. The burying ceremony still preserves in its structure involve a mixture of myth and rite elements, meant to initiate and prepare the individual for the new situation, but also rites that seek to restore vital, material ties to those who have gone into the “beyond” world with this world. Among the mediated forms of communication, in the present material we are to consider the laments, as ancient modalities to express sadness and soul grieving, trying to display their role for the people who mourn, on the long way of sufferance. The laments are situated among the mandatory traditional acts, in our traditional village not-existing a funeral without improvised lamentations. While the ritual funerary songs are strictly related to certain moments from the ritual, and in perfect harmony with certain rules, including specialised performers, the laments are spontaneous manifestations of the pain, sustained by complex verbal structures and specific gestures having an unstable form, and a personal character, their content being adapted to the concrete situation of the deceased.