From the Elephant's Back (34 page)

Nor will the student of folk-lore be disappointed, for the peasantlore of Rhodes does not seem to have suffered from the exile endured by the Dodecanese. Rather one might imagine that the long seclusion has caused the legends and proverbs of the Rhodians, as it were, to ferment—for solitude and separation quicken memory. Certain it is that whoever hunts for a continuity of culture between Rhodes and Greece will find not an element missing; the nereids, for example, which haunt the springs and waterfalls of Greece, also exist here in great abundance. Everywhere in the long verdant valleys behind Monte Smith one stumbles upon the daisy-starred glades which are their dancing-floors, and every village has some tale to tell about them. Once in Aphando, for example, a shepherdess who had lately borne a child was walking up the hill to her fold when she fell in with a body of nereids. She began to run but they chased and easily overtook her. She was in mortal terror—and with good reason; for whoever gets dragged into a nereid's dance will not be allowed to stop until she falls dead from exhaustion. However, it so happened that the shepherdess was carrying on her back an embroidered mule-bag with some of the baby's swaddling clothes in it. This saved her, for when the nereids laid hands upon her they recoiled, screaming: “It burns, how it burns!”
[32]

Among the other tenacious peasant survivals which argue an ancient Greek origin is the modern Pan, who under the name of
kallikanzaros
makes life a misery for the housewife by his tricks no less in Rhodes than elsewhere in Greece. Here, however, he is often known as the Kaous, a word which seems to derive from the Modern Greek verb meaning “to burn,” and which conveys a pleasing evocation of brimstone and saltpetre. The Kaous is usually encountered at lonely crossroads, or late at night on dark footpaths. Everyone dreads such encounters, for the Kaous is as malicious as he is powerful. Usually he sneaks up behind you and asks hoarsely “Feathers or lead?” You must reply with the greatest circumspection. If you say “Feathers” you may escape, but if you say “Lead” he will leap on your back and throttle you, or ride you all over the landscape like a horse, thrashing you with a stick. In general there is nothing you can do about it; though it is recorded that once a particularly wide-awake villager from Alaerma managed to catch a Kaous by its two pointed ears. Holding it thus he took it home and burnt a hole in its hairy leg with a red-hot iron. The Kaous shrieked and fainted, while out of the wound crawled a mass of small snakes which were killed one by one. This treatment proved beneficial, for the Kaous awoke towards morning healed from its insanity, and muttered: “Deeply, deeply I slept; and lightly, lightly I've woken.”

Some idea of the continuity of myth and belief may be gathered from the story of Helen of Troy and the peasant legend which preserves it to this day. According to one version Helen survived her husband and was driven from her home by her stepsons. It was in Rhodes that she took refuge, where, the story goes on, Polyxo found and hanged her from a tree to avenge himself for the loss of Tlepolemos during the Trojan War. History records a grove of trees at Lindos which were held sacred to “Helen Dendritis” and which preserved the memory of this beautiful and ill-fated woman as a tree goddess. But today Helen Dendritis has disappeared, together with her grove of trees. Instead the modern peasant tells the story of how once a great queen called Helen hung herself because she was unhappy. She hung herself from the tall branches of a pine, using a rainbow for a cord. And to this day the rainbow in some parts of the island is called “Helen's Cord”—surely a beautiful transition from one myth to another.

I have quoted these examples of folk-lore to indicate that despite its long separation from Greece, Rhodes may still fairly claim to be within the main current of Greek peasant culture. The songs and legends of the island have never been fully harvested though several industrious workers in this field have made a start, and the average traveller who knows a little modern Greek will have no difficulty in unearthing new ones. The stronghold of Greek lore and habit is undoubtedly the mountain village of Embona which lies at the foot of Mount Atabyron. Here the girls wear a distinctive dress which recalls Crete more than anything else, for their legs are cased in soft jack-boots which guard them against the dense and prickly scrub of their native highlands. On the slopes of the mountain which was once sacred to Taurine Zeus they farm their orchards and rocky holdings. The natives of Embona are celebrated for their dancing and no local fiesta is deemed complete unless a visiting body of
Emboniatisses
, as they are called, put in an appearance and dance the native dance known as the
sousta
. This is a sight not easily forgotten; for the traditional costume, with its violent colours, and the speed of the dance produce the most delightful kaleidoscopic effects, as of a great multi-coloured fan opening and shutting. Several villages of Rhodes are celebrated for their dancers, but Embona above any other; and the cry that goes up when the mountain dancers arrive at any lowland fiesta proves conclusively enough that the Rhodians willingly concede the highest honours to them. “The Embona girls have arrived,” cry the peasants; “now we shall see some dancing.”

The only other mountain of any size apart from Mount Atabyron is the easily accessible and now rather domesticated Profeta. The modern road-system has made it so easy of access that here in spring one may wander for hours through the scented pine-glades, or lie upon a dazzling carpet of anemones and peonies. But its peculiar atmosphere has already been recorded in the beautiful poem of Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell
[33]
which the curious reader will stumble upon in
Canons of Giant Art
.
[34]
The evocation of Profeta and its goddess is far more complete and moving than it could ever be in prose:

It was her sacred mountain, in the heart of mist,

A wood of wild rocks where every echo called,

Where words bent back at you as soon as spoken

From rocks like houses or like sudden islands;

Here stags wandered,…

Indeed the stags still wander on Profeta, though their numbers have been sadly depleted by the Germans and by neglect during the war years.

These notes have hinted at the enjoyment that Rhodes offers to the scholar and to the student of folk-lore. Another kind of traveller will no doubt be as interested in the wild flowers which star the green slopes of the hills in spring—the sheets of narcissus and anemone; he will prefer to see contemporary Rhodes, with the whitewashed villages whose orchards and gardens are everywhere stabbed with the scarlet dots of the hibiscus. It is for him that we should record the existence of nearly a hundred different varieties of orchid, and of a rare black peony which may be seen occasionally on the topmost slopes of Monte Profeta. And it is for him also that we should record the existence of a spring at Salaco whose waters exercise a magnetic charm over the wayfarers who quench their thirst at it. The legend says that whoever drinks at Salaco is bound to return to Rhodes, marry a Rhodian girl and spend his life in the island.

Sea-communication with Alexandria and Beirut has already been restored; a regular air-service from Athens was opened in June of this year. Rhodes, then, is going to be easily accessible both from Egypt and from metropolitan Greece. There could be no lovelier place to spend the cool Mediterranean spring, or the parched and sunny August weather which ushers in the Day of St. Demetrius, upon which the casks of village wine are broached according to custom. The Emperor Tiberius, whose judgement in so many things was at fault, never hesitated when it came to the choice of Rhodes as a place of exile. The contemporary traveller will have no difficulty in endorsing his judgement when he visits this paragon among the islands of the Levant.

Can Dreams Live on When Dreamers Die?

1947

IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
they set great store by dreams. One ancient author
[1]
divides them into five classes of which the fifth is dreams of divination, or oracles. People practiced what is known as incubation—that is to say, sleeping within the precincts of a temple—in order to have the dreams they felt would yield useful interpretations, the dreams which might give them guidance in their lives or settle problems for them. When the great cult of Aesculapius
[2]
arose, dreams played a great part in the technique of healing the sick; there is still a good deal we do not know about ancient medicine, but what we do indicates that those who were sick travelled to one of the many temples where they entered a special building and spent the first night in incubation. There were hundreds of temples all over Greece, and today we think that those which we have unearthed at Epidaurus and Cos
[3]
must have been the most famous. On arrival the suppliant made his sacrifices and performed some sort of ritual whose details are not known to us today; then he slept in the special dormitory set aside for him, and during his sleep the god appeared and either healed him outright or prescribed a course of treatment for him to follow. So you see dreams were a form of diagnosis, just as for the psychoanalyst today the patient's dreams give a kind of symbolic picture of his subconscious preoccupations and his problems. But they were far more important in the ancient world because everybody believed they came directly from the god himself.

I was thinking along these lines one hot August day in 1939 when some friends suggested a trip to Epidaurus in southern Greece.
[4]
I had never seen the temple and very much wanted to go, so we set off. It did not take long from Corinth, where we were then staying, and as the car bumped down the shallow gradient into the valley I could quite understand how not only the temple but the whole of the territory of Epidaurus was considered sacred to the god. The plain is very green and encircled by wooded mountains, and gives one the strangest impression: as if, not only the temple, but the whole landscape had been designed deliberately by men. There was something at once intimate and healing about it all. A light wind ruffled the arbutus and holm-oak; the sea was just out of sight but one heard it, like the whispering in a sea-shell; above us in that shattering blue silence of the Greek sky, two eagles sat, almost motionless. We spent the whole day wandering about the theatre and the temple, and looking at the treasures in the little museum.

The guide was an amiable fellow, a typical Greek peasant, and while I was talking to him he told me that he had managed to get a transfer to another place—Mycaenae.
[5]
As this is rather a bleak fortress perched on a hill I asked him jokingly why he was so silly as to get transferred from this peaceful valley with its silence and greenness: and to exchange it for a place like Mycaenae. “If I told you why,” he said, “you would think me mad. It is because of the dreams. I can't bear the dreams we have in this valley.” This, in a fantastic sort of way, was interesting. “What dreams?” I said. “Everybody in this valley has dreams,” he said. “Some people don't mind, but as for me I'm off.” I was, I suppose, rather skeptical about the whole thing, because he looked at me and made a face as much as to say: “Yes, you think I'm mad like the others.”

I asked him to tell me some of the dreams but he seemed reluctant to do so. “They're a lot of rubbish,” he said: and then, as an afterthought, “But I'll tell you one thing: the old man in the fresco appears frequently in them.” The fresco in the museum showed a grave Assyrian-looking face with dense ringlets falling down to the shoulders. I cannot remember now if it represented Aesculapius or not: at any rate it is an extraordinary piece of stone-carving. The guide went on: “Now you'll perhaps imagine that it's natural enough, when I spend almost every day in the museum, that the old man makes an impression on my mind; but tell me one thing. Why should my two kids dream about him when they have never set foot in the museum?”
[6]
The two children were sitting under a tree playing and I tried to question them. The boy was too shy to talk and hung his head, but the little girl was made of sterner stuff; she was about twelve. I asked her if she dreamed about an old man and if she could describe him. I cannot say that she said anything of great interest, but one little gesture she made was curious. She spread her fingers and drew them down from her ears to her shoulders as she described the old man's hair. By this time the rest of the party wanted to move off, so I had no chance of pursuing the matter further. As I was leaving the guide said, in rather a cynical or sardonic way: “If you don't believe me, ask any of the peasants who live in this valley. They all have dreams. The valley is full of dreams.”

As we bumped back to Nauplia in the twilight, through the enchanted Greek landscape, I could not help wondering whether the dreams of those countless thousands of suppliants had stayed behind in this valley; whether they were the dreams of the ancient Greeks which had lingered on there. Naturally enough, I tried the subject out over dinner and got heartily laughed at for my pains; but sometimes these odd ideas prove to have something in them. However, we were then on the point of war with Germany and the whole thing slipped out of my mind. It was not indeed until 1945 that it all came back to me.

I was on the island of Cos at that time, and was working for the British administration that took over the Dodecanese Islands. In Cos, you will remember, there is a centre of the Aesculapian cult which was as famous in ancient times as that of Epidaurus. The archaeologists have located the place and dug out most of the temple. I decided to have a look at it. So I borrowed a three-tonner from a charitable UNRRA
[7]
official and drove out along the dusty summer roads to the shoulder of hillside where the Aesculapium stands. The site itself is enough to take your breath away; the temple is laid out on the slopes of a green hill, and standing at the top you look down across the flat and verdant plains of Cos to the blue sea.