Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  At every one of the ceremonials which I have thus briefly recounted, a song appropriate to the occasion is chanted; they explain the motive of each particular act - of what event in human life it is to be considered the type. Even the shaving has its song, set apart. But many of the forms I have described are very poetical, and full of meaning in themselves. The character of the marriage songs is tender, yet gay and hopeful; but the character of the “myriologia,” or funeral songs, is altogether despairing and sad. When any one dies, his wife, his mother, and his sisters, all come up to the poor motionless body, and softly close the eyes and the mouth. Then they leave the house, and go to that of a friend, where they dress in white, as if for some glad nuptial occasion: with this sole difference, that their hair is allowed to flow dishevelled and uncovered. Other women are busy with the corpse while they change their dress in a neighbour’s house; the body is dressed in the best clothes the dead possessed; and it is then laid on a low bed, with the face uncovered, and turned towards the east; while the arms lie peacefully crossed on the breast. When all these preparations have been made, the relations return to the house of mourning; leaving the door open, so that all who wish once more to gaze on the face of the departed may enter in. All who come range themselves around the bed, and weep and cry aloud without restraint. As soon as they are a little calmer some one begins to chant the myriologia - a custom common to the ancient Hebrews, as well as to the more modern Irish - with their keenness and their plaintive enumeration of the goods, and blessings, and love which the deceased possessed in this world which he has left. In the mountains of Greece, the nearest and dearest among the female relations first lifts up her voice in the myriologia; she is followed by others, either sisters or friends.

  M. Fauriel gives an instance of the style of dramatic personation of events common in the myriologia. A peasant woman, about twenty-five years of age, had lost her husband, who left her with two infant children. She was extremely uneducated, and had lived the silent, self-contained life common to the Greek women. But there was something very striking in the manner in which she began her wail over the dead body. Addressing herself to him, she said, “I saw at the door of our dwelling, yea, I saw at the door of our house, a young man of tall stature and threatening aspect, having wings like the clouds for whiteness. He stood on the threshold of our home, with a naked sword in his hand. ‘Woman,’ he asked, ‘is thy husband within?’ - ‘He is within,’ replied I; he is there, combing the fair hair of our little Nicholas, and caressing him the while that he may not cry. Do not go in, O bright and terrible youth, thou wilt frighten our little child!’ But the man with shining white wings heeded not my words. He went in. I struggled to prevent him, O my husband! I struggled; but he was stronger than I. He passed into our home; he darted on thee, O my beloved! and struck thee with his sword. He struck thee, the father of our little Nicholas. And here, here is our little son, our Nicholas, that he would also have killed.” At these words she threw herself sobbing on the corpse of her husband, and it was some time before the women standing by could bring her round. But she had hardly recovered before she began afresh, and addressed her dead husband again. She asked him how she could live without him; how she could protect his children without his strong arm to help; she recalled the first days of their marriage, how dearly they had loved each other; how, together, they had watched over the infancy of their two little children; and she only ceased when her strength utterly failed once more, and she lay by the corpse in a swoon like death itself.

  Occasionally there is some one among the assemblage of mourners who has also lately lost a beloved one, and whose full hearts yet yearn for the sympathy in their griefs or joys which the dead were ever ready to give, while they were yet living. They take up the strain; and, in a form of song used from time immemorial, they conjure the dead lying before them to be the messenger of the intelligence they wish to send to him, who is gone away for ever. A similar superstition is prevalent in the Highlands, and every one remembers Mrs. Hemans’s pathetic little poem on this subject.

  It is rather too abrupt a turn from the deep pathos of the faithful love implied by this superstition, to a story of something of a similar kind, which fell under the observation of a country minister in Lancashire, well known to some friends of mine. A poor man lay a-dying, but still perfectly sensible and acute. A woman of his acquaintance came to see him, who had lately lost her husband, and who was imbued with the idea mentioned above. “Bill,” said she, “where thou art bound to thou’lt maybe see our Tummas; be sure thou tell him we have getted th’ wheel o’ the shandry mended, and it’s mostly as good as new; and mind thou say’st we’re getten on vary wed without him; he may as wed think so, poor chap!” To which Bill made answer, “Why woman! dost ‘oo think I’se have nought better to do than go clumping up and down the sky a-searching for thy Tummas?” To those who have lived in Lancashire the word “clumping” exactly suggests the kind of heavy walk of the country people who wear the thick wooden clogs common in that county.

  But let us jump (like Dr. Faustus) out of Lancashire into Greece. In that country some of the people around the corpse are not content with sending messages to their dead friends; they place flowers and other tokens of remembrance upon the body, entreating the last deceased whose remains lie before them to bear their flowers and presents to those who have gone before.

  All these messages and these adieus are expressed in song; nor do they cease until the body is laid in the grave. For a year afterwards his relations arc only allowed to sing myriologia; any other kind of song, however pious or pathetic, is prohibited by custom. The anniversary of the death is kept by a dual gathering together of the friends, who go in procession to the grave, and once more chant their farewells. If a Greek dies far away from Greece, they substitute an effigy for the real corpse, round which they assemble, to which they bid farewell, but with an aggravation of sorrow and despair; inasmuch as he has died far from his own bright land. But perhaps the most touching of the myriologia are those addressed by the mothers to the infants they have lost. When the child dies very young no one but the mother sings the myriologia. It is hers, and she belongs to it. The tie between them was too mysteriously close to allow a stranger to intermeddle with her grief. But her lost child takes the form of every pretty thing in nature in her mind. It is a broken flower, a young bird fallen out of the nest and killed, a little yearling lamb lying dead by the side of its mother. It is the exclusive right of women to sing the myriologia. The men bid farewell to their companion and friend in a few simple words of prose, kissing the mouth of the deceased ere they leave the house. But two centuries ago, among the mountains of Greece, the shepherds sang the myriologia over each other.

  The original significance of the custom is dying out even now. Women are hired to express an assumed grief in formal verses, where formerly the anguish of the nearest and dearest gave them the gift of improvisation. Before I go on to explain the character and subject of the occasional songs, I had perhaps better mention what class of men are the means of their circulation among the peasantry of Greece, as well as through the islands of the Archipelago. There are no beggars in these countries, excepting the blind; all others would think it shame to live by alms, with their blue and sunny sky above them, and their fertile soil beneath their feet. But the blind are a privileged class; they go from house to house, receiving a ready welcome at each, for they are wandering minstrels, and have been so ever since Homer’s time. Some of them have learnt by heart an immense number of songs; and all know a large collection. Their memory is their stock in trade, their means of living; they never stay long in any one place, but traverse Greece from end to end, and have a wonderful knack in adapting their choice of songs to the character of the inhabitants of the place where they chant them. They generally prefer the simple villagers as audience, to the more sophisticated townspeople; and, in the towns, they hang about the suburbs rather than enter into the busy streets in the centre. They know, half by experience
half by instinct, that the most ignorant part of a population is always the least questioning, and the most susceptible of impressions. The Turks stalk past these blind minstrels with the most supreme and unmoved indifference; but the Greek welcomes them affectionately, particularly at those village feasts which are called paneghyris, and which would fall as flat as Hamlet without the part of Hamlet, if there were not several blind singers present. They accompany themselves on the lyre, a five-stringed instrument, played with a bow.

  These minstrels are divided into two sets; those who merely remember what they have learnt from others, and those who compose ballads of their own, in addition to their stores of memory. These latter, in their long and quiet walks through country which they know to be wild and grand, although they never more may see it, “turn inward,” and recall all that they have heard that has excited their curiosity, or stirred their imagination either in the traditional history of their native land, or in the village accounts of some local hero. Some of the minstrels spread the fame of men whose deeds would have been unknown beyond the immediate mountain neighbourhood of each, from shore to shore. In fact these blind beggars are the novelists and the historians of modern Greece; but if one subject be more clear to them than another, it is always the deeds of arms of the Klephts; the Adam Bells, and Clyne o’ the Cloughs, or perhaps still more the Robin Hoods, of Greece. All these songs are chanted to particular airs. The poet must be also his own musician: if he can also improvise he is a fully-accomplished minstrel. There was one who lived at the end of the last century at Auspelatria in Thessaly, under the shadow of Mount Ossa. His name was Gavoyanius, or John the Blind. He was extremely old; and, in the exercise of his talents, he had amassed considerable wealth; so at the time when the account was given he lived at home at ease, and received the visits of those who wished to hear and were ready to pay for his songs. The Albanian soldiers of the Pasha - degenerate Greeks who served the Turk, and who could find no one to chant their exploits, voluntarily or gratuitously - used to pay John the Blind to sing their fame: the higher the praise, the greater the pay.

  I have alluded to the paneghyris. They are feasts in honour of the patron saint of some one hamlet where the meeting is held, all the surrounding villages turning out their inhabitants to come and make merry. In short they must bear a close resemblance to the wakes in England; for they are always held on the Sunday after the saint’s day to whom the parish church is dedicated. But there are some slight differences between a Greek paneghyri and English wakes; the Eastern festival is gayer and more simple in character. The evening before a paneghyri, each of the neighbouring villages comes trooping in to the place of rendezvous; the people are dressed in their Sunday’s best, and march along to merry music. When they arrive at their destination they make haste to pitch their tents; and those who are not rich enough to possess the necessary canvas pluck branches of trees, and make themselves a leafy covering to protect themselves from the dew and the moon’s beams; both of which are held in the East to be injurious to health. On the day of the feast every one goes to the service in church in honour of the patron saint. When they come back to their houses or tents there is no general feast for everybody to share. Each family prepares its separate meal; the greater number in the open air, and nothing is to be seen (or smelt) but roasting mutton and broiling lamb. After dinner the dancing begins; every village dances by itself, and makes merry by itself until supper time. After that they pay visits to each other, or listen to the blind minstrels who accompany each set of Villagers.

  The little Homers of the day find an attentive and numerous audience in the groups who sit round them in the cool of the evening; some on the soft turf, crushing below them the blue hyacinth which makes the ground purple and odorous hereabouts; some on pieces of rock, all listening with unquestioning eagerness; all, for the time, forgetting that the Turk is their neighbour. Many ballads are composed expressly for these occasions; nor can there be a surer mode of securing their popularity. One sung for the first time at a paneghyri is circulated the next day through eight or ten villages. Some of these songs are literally ballads in the old Provençal sense of the words; they are exclusively sung by the dancers as they dance. Indeed it is a characteristic of the Greek popular poetry, that it is so frequently intended to be sung while the singers are dancing. The dancing is, in fact, with them, a pretty mimicry of the emotions and movements which the song describes. Every province has its own peculiar dance and ballad, appropriate to the district from time immemorial. This custom, of singing and dancing in concert, seems almost to be the origin of the serious part of our modern pantomime. Of course the dance is not a mere mimicry of the ballad sung; but the character of the dance depends on that of the song. If the latter relates to deeds of arms, or feats of warriors, the movements are abrupt and decided; if the love song (and this description is condemned and despised by the austere mountaineers), the motions of the corresponding dance are soft and graceful.

  Of the former species of song (those relating to deeds of arms), the story almost invariably has a Klepht for a hero. (Klepht signifies “freebooter,” a more picturesque name than “thief,” which is, I believe, the literal translation). But we must not judge of everything by its name. To explain something of the true character of the Klephts: When the Turks first conquered the Greek provinces, there were always native mountaineers who refused to acknowledge the Mussulman government, and considered the Turkish possession of the lands of the Greeks, their forefathers, as nothing less than robbery. These mountain peasantry came down in armed bands upon the fertile plains and the luxurious towns, and stripped the Turks and those who had quietly submitted to their sway, whenever they could; it was from those who were thus robbed, that the mountaineers received the name of Klephts. But our Saxon ancestors did the same to the Normans; Robin Hood was an English Klepht, taking only what he thought was unjustly acquired, and unfairly held. The Turks found it rather difficult to make war against these guerillas; they fled to wild and rocky recesses of the mountains when pursued. So the wise and cautious conquerors tried to make friends, and partially succeeded. In return for certain privileges, a portion of the mountaineers organised themselves into a kind of militia, called Armatolians; but there was always a rough and stern remnant who persevered in their independent and Klephtic habits. And in course of time, many of the Armatolians, oppressed by the Turks, who no longer feared them, returned to their primitive state of hostility against their conquerors, began to pillage afresh, and resumed the name of Klepht. Affront an Armatolian captain of the militia, bound to preserve order, or let him be unjustly treated by a Turk, and he instantly turned Klepht, and robbed with more zest and enjoyment than he had ever experienced in preserving the peace. So, as may easily be imagined, the Klephts who were weak yesterday, may be strong to-day, both in numbers and in intelligence respecting the movements of the great convoys appointed to guard treasures. They lived in wild places, with their arms in their hands; sometimes on the brink of absolute starvation, but rarely forgetting that they were Greeks, and might only steal from the Turks. The flocks and herds of the Turks were carried off in the night; but seldom those of the Greeks, unless indeed they had made positive friends with those of the oppressors who lived among them. Sometimes an unlucky aga would be taken prisoner by the Klephts, and would have to pay a high ransom for his liberty. Again, they were like Robin Hood and his merry men in the hatred they bore to the caloyers of monks; and these last were not slow in avenging themselves; whenever they could, they gave information to the Turks where they might surprise a half-starved party of Klephts.

  Sometimes the Klephts, when hard pressed by starvation and an ever-watchful enemy, would send word to a village that unless a certain sum was paid in a place specified by a particular day, all the houses should be burnt. The poor villagers were between two fires. If they gave to the Klephts, the Turks took from them all their possessions; if they did not give to the Klephts after such a notice, the menace was sure to be fulfilled. So, be
fore they gave to the Klephts, the warning had usually to be repeated. If they showed no sign of acquiescence after the second notice, the third and last came on a piece of paper burnt at all the four corners; and then the poor villagers dared no longer refuse. They gave what they were asked for; the Turks took all the rest of their possessions, and they were turned empty and naked upon the world to become Klephts if they liked.