Ages and ages ago, in ancient times a mighty and cruel wizard lived in Bucegi. His name was Bucur and that Bucur had a nasty habit: he used to kidnap beautiful young women and girls and take them to his cave, up in the mountains.

The tricky thing was that they followed him on because Bucur laid a spell on them so they could not recognize the magician and see Bucur as a handsome young man… or maybe he was handsome indeed, no one knows. Many lads and furious husbands went up the mountain to search for Bucur and the ladies but all of them were lost for ever, never to come back, never to be seen again.

The legend tells us about a beautiful girl who once lived in Rucar, a nice village at the bottom of Bucegi mountains and her name was Ialomita. She was very proud and bold and swore she would not go at Bucur’s calling. One Sunday afternoon the wizard showed up in the village. He was looking like a young shepherd and no one recognized him – anyway, no one in the village knew how Bucur actually looked like.

He went straight to the place where the dance area was and there he started playing his flute in such a wonderful and strange way that people were astonished and none of them thought of asking the handsome stranger who he was. It seemed that the stranger’s flute was magic. At a certain point the shepherd stopped singing and offered his flute to Coman, a handsome lad from Rucar who was also present at the dance area. This was another trick of Bucur: you see the wizard knew that Coman was very much in love with  Ialomita and he was the only person in the spot who might have spoiled Bucur’s plans.

When Coman started playing the flute he could not stop any more. The shepherd disappeared as mysteriously as he came. When night came people went back home only Coman and Ialomita could not leave the place. Coman was not able to stop singing and Ialomita was under the flute spell as well. A nightingale came and sang along with Coman. Then the bird left for the forest and the two spellbound youngsters followed the nightingale deeper and deeper in the wood.

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