Balaur

thumb|240px|A dragon sculpture in Romania.

A balaur (pl. balauri) in Romanian folklore is a type of many-headed dragon or monstrous serpent, sometimes said to be equipped with wings. The number of heads is usually around three, but they can also have seven heads or even twelve heads according to some legends.

The balaur in folktale is typically evil, demanding or abducting young maidens or the princess, and defeated by the hero such as Saint George or the fair youth Făt-Frumos, or the infamous despicable Raz.

There is some lore in which the balaur is considered weather-making, and living in an airborne state, but these types of balaur are sometimes interchangeably called hala or ala, being confounded with the pan-Slavic air and water demon. The balaur (instead of the zmeu) is the vehicle of the weather-controlling Solomonari according to some sources.

There are also legends about the balaur in which they can produce precious stones from their saliva. Also, it is said that whoever manages to slay it will be forgiven a sin.

General description

In the Romanian language, balauri are "monstrous serpents" or dragons. Alternatively, the word balaur can be used to describe any monster like creature.

The balaur recurs in Romanian folktales as a ravenous dragon that preys upon maidens only to be defeated by the hero Făt-Frumos ("Handsome Lad"). Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade noted that the notion a precious stones are formed from a snake's spittle is widespread, from England to China. In Romanian language the word appears with variations: balaoană, bălăuraş, bălăurel, balaurel, bălăuroaică, bălăuaua, and possibly in the shorter form bală. Similar words are attested in Megleno-Romanian, e.g., bular 'a type of large snake' and bălăura 'large (about plums)', and in Aromanian bularu 'red snake'.

Slavic comparanda

According to Ranko Matasovic, the word appears along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. In this regard, Croatian linguist Peter Skok located the following variations of the lexeme:

blavor (Montenegro and Dalmatia); blavorak (diminutive, attested in a 16th century writer from Ragusa); blavūr (Ragusa); blavòruša (aumentative; Montenegro)
bläor (Imotski, Podlug in Cattaro, Benkovac, Jagodnja, Sibenik - all in Dalmatia); blőr; blőruša (Montenegro)
blaur (Dalmatia), blavorina (aumentative, Koprivno in Sinj, Dalm.), blaorina (Ervenik, Dalm.)
blahor (Nevesinje in Herzegovina)
blabor (Tribanj, Dalm.), blaborina (aumentative)

The Serbo-Croatian blavor/blaor/blavur ("European legless lizard") is cognate with balaur, and is regarded as one of the few pre-Slavic Balkan relict words in Serbo-Croatian. The word is, however, unattested in Bulgarian, per Skok and Matasovic.

Etymology

The term Balaur (Aromanian bul'ar) is of unknown etymology. It has been linked with Albanian boljë/bollë ("snake") and buljar ("water snake"). the traces of which can also be found in the name of the Greek mythological hero Bellerophon ("the beast killer"). However, Matasovic discards a Thracian source and considers the word to be ultimately of Illyrian origin, with the form *bulauras, leading to an ancient Slavic borrowing with the form *bъla(v)ur.

Legacy

Sciences

The maniraptor theropod Balaur bondoc is named after this creature.

Popular culture

Video games

In the MMORPG Aion, the Dragons that once ruled the world and are the enemy are called the Balaur.
In the MMORPG Star Trek Online the largest class of Gorn warship is the Balaur Dreadnought.
In Ace Combat: Joint Assault, there is a gigantic railgun weapon named the Balaur.
In the MMORPG Wizard101, the final boss of the Darkmoor expansion is Balaur.

Television series

In the 2020 TV series Dracula, the Count uses the alias "Mr. Balaur".

Explanatory notes

References

;Citations

Bibliography

Rusnac, George. "Balaur (etimologii)". In: Analele ştiinţifice ale Universităţii «Alexandru Ioan Cuza» din Iaşi (Serie nouă, Secţiunea III, e. Lingvistică) vol. XXXVII-XXXVIII, 1991-1992, Omul şi limbajul său. Studia linguistica in honorem Eugenio Coseriu. Iasi: Editura Universitatii Al. I Cuza, 1992. pp. 351-360.