Ucenicia pastorală din Mărginimea Sibiului. Evocări ale oierilor transhumanți

According to the native inhabitants from the herding communities in the South-Transylvanian area of Mărginimea Sibiului, pastoral apprenticeship often starts during one’s early childhood. Indeed, accounts from contemporary villagers in Jina, Poiana Sibiului, and Tilișca are plentiful in biographic information about the roles and tasks they did accomplish while taking care of their parents’ herds. This is particularly significant on the manner in which, in this case, what is usually defined in terms of the “first seven years of a child’s life” mostly refers to the sheepfold framework. As a matter of fact, training the very young shepherds appears to be integrated into a division of labor sui generis, within which activities like grazing or milking the sheep are entrusted by parents to their sons or daughters when the age of them is lived somewhat in a “work and play” way. In what follows, an introductory discussion is proposed with regard to such a “shepherd’s pedagogy”, based on a series of ethnographic data collected in the three aforementioned villages, in the course of 2016.