the mountain, she starts throwing away her coats, one by one, until she is left with no coat. But as soon as she drops her last coat, the weather changes again and Baba Dochia is frozen on the mountain. Babele myth A folk myth associates the 9 days from March 1 to March 9 with the 9 coats she's shedding. Her spirit is haunting every year around that time, bringing snowstorms and cold weather before the spring sets in. Women use to pick a day out of these 9 beforehand, and if the day turns out to be fair, they'll be fair in their old days, and if the day turns out to be cold, they'll turn bitter when older. In Romanian language 'babele' is the plural of 'baba', the hag or the old woman. Dochia is sometimes depicted as a proud woman who teases the month of March, who in return gets its revenge by taking some days from February. Legend of Dochia and Trajan In other sources, Dochia was the daughter (or sister) of Decebalus, King of the Dacians. When the Roman Emperor Trajan was conquering part of the Dacian territory, Dochia seeks refuge in the Carpathian Mountains in order to avoid marrying him. She disguises herself as a shepherd and her people as a herd. When she realizes that there is no escape she asks the supreme Dacian god Zamolxes to turn her and her herd into stone, thus becoming Babele. Bibliography Victor Lazăr: Legende istorice de pe pămîntul României, II., Cluj 1922. page 38. Romulus Vuia: Legenda lui Dragoş. In: Studii de etnografie și folclor (Bucharest), vol I/1975, page 10. Claus Stephani: Dokia – Königstochter oder Stiefmutter. Bemerkungen zu einer phantastischen Gestalt in den Volkserzählungen Nordrumäniens. In: Jahrbuch für ostdeutsche Volkskunde (Marburg), vol. 28, 1985, page 283-288. ISSN 0075-2738. Claus Stephani: Wirklichkeit und Freiraum der Phantasie. Dämonische Wesen im Alltag und in der Volkserzählung. In: Forschungen zur Volks- und Landeskunde (Bucharest), vol. 46-47, 2003-2004, page 25-36. Claus Stephani: Dokia – ein phantastisches Wesen der karpatischen Volksmythologie. Rumänische Mythen und ihre Varianten in der deutsch-jüdischen und huzulischen Volkserzählung. In: Victoria Popovici; Wolfgang Dahmen; Johannes Kramer (Ed.): Gelebte Multikulturalität. Verlag Peter Lang: Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Bern, Brüssel, New York, Oxford, Wien; 2010, page 121-128. . See also Baba Marta References External links Presumed location of Dochia stones Romanian mythology Romanian folklore