This book, by words and photographs, illustrates and explains the central role that the ballad the Miorita plays in Romanian culture. By combining the insights of an American and a Romanian scholar with a vision of Romanian pastoral life developed by a leading American photographer, the reader is introduced to one of the most complicated and elusive cultural icons in European civilization. It is, however, one that continues to permeate Romanian culture and offers, to those who take the time to study it, an approach to life which will resonate closely with much modern experience and understanding. The Miorita may fairly be described as the great, defining ballad of the Romanian personality and culture. Thus, it ranks in Romanian self-consciousness with the Iliad and the Odyssey for the Greeks, Beowulf for the Anglo-Saxons, the Lay of the Host of Igor for the Russians, the Ballad of Kosovo for the Serbs, El Cid for the Spanish, or the Nibelungenlied for the Germans. All of these works provide their respective nationalities with items of national identity, common symbols that echo through the national culture, common ideals which inspire and shape the national personality, a common world view which in time infects the national approach to philosophy, religion and, not infrequently, history and politics. Only as a document of national identity, however, may the Miorita be said to be similar to these other defining documents. In practically every other aspect it is a unique national document, at least among the nationalities within European civilization.