under the obligation to make many others. Thus coliva is prepared and given away as pomana (feast in honour of the dead) on the 3rd, 9th, 20th and 40th day after death. On the first anniversary of the death, there is a religious service (parastas) and a dinner. The guests at the dinner are usually in excellent spirits, the heirs have divided up the inheritance among themselves, and the widow, if young, may even have married again.
A small monument (panaghia) is erected on the grave—the erection of monuments, however, is less a habit in Roumania than in England. The most characteristic monuments are the Troiţele, crosses of wood with numbers of little crosses introduced at the sides, erected where some one has met with a violent death.
Dinners on the anniversary of the death are given for seven years in succession.
These “pomeni,” or death feasts, have so entered into the habits of the Roumanians that the term “pomana” is now used for any kind of giving, the idea being that anything given away benefits the soul of some relation. Even the little gypsy beggars in the street say, “Faceţi pomana,” “Make a death feast.”
In Moldavia and the neighbouring districts it is the custom to dig up the dead after seven years, and on this occasion the last death feast is given in their honour. The bones are washed with wine, put in a smaller coffin and reburied (S. page 296). In towns the exhumation of the dead before the full seven years has passed is not legal, but in the country they are often disinterred after three or four years. The priests in Bessarabia have been in their element for the last few years; they are overburdened with work and pay, for, not only have they an unusually large number of deaths to deal with, but they are now beginning to be occupied in digging up those who died in the earlier stages of the war.
In Wallachia it is not customary to exhume the dead, but permission to do so is given in special instances. Thus
