”Valley Of Roses”, this is how Chisinau citizens call the green oasis that separates the Botany district from the city center. This is a deep hollow where many bushes and trees grow, and where a rich grassy vegetation sprouts. Here we see a few small ponds covered with algae in places. And here is a spring with cold water that is bursting beyond a not too large dam from the heart of the hill. Here is the legend the city dwellers know about that.

In 1806 the Zaporozhian and Trans-Danube Cossacks formed in Bessarabia the army chain from the headwaters of the Danube and Budjak. Then one of the Cossacks renounced military service and crossed the river into Turkish-occupied Moldova. Living a life of a vagabond, he got into the palace of Pasha and pretending to be deaf-mute was hired as a gardener. The master noticed that the Cossack was diligent and hardworking, so, he was benevolent to him. The handmaids of the Turk also loved the young and beautiful gardener, but who, indeed, was always silent. One day, one of the handmaids, hiding behind the bushes, and sighing with longing for the Cossack, heard how the man uttered a few Moldovan phrases, talking to himself. This amazed the girl: she herself was Moldovan. Then they opened to each other and pledged their undying love.

Under the cover of a dark night, they fled together from bondage and walked and walked until they settled down in a valley with a spring near Chisinau. The Cossack cleaned the spring and built a hut. So they lived quietly, engaged in gardening and cattle husbandry.

But an enemy was there-the son of a householder in the neighborhood. He eventually fell in love with the Cossack woman and decided to tell about the “ghiaur”*, that is, about the unbeliever. When the Cossack’s wife learned about that, she warned her man about the threatening danger. They could be caught and sold into slavery again.

When representatives of the authorities came to that place, they found neither the Cossack, nor his wife, nor the hut. And only the water of the spring whispered something quietly, keeping the mystery of their disappearance. From that moment on, the spring in this valley began to be called “the Ghiaur’s Spring”

Years have passed and The Legend of the spring has been forgotten, but the spring continues to rustle with delight and quench the thirst of passers-by…

(After the book by D. Roșcovan “Fun Materials in the Geography of the Moldavian SSR”, 1986)

Note:

*Ghiaur – contemptuous name given in the past by the Turks to people of a religion other than the Mohammedan.