Roumeli (7 page)

Trees are the dwelling-places of spirits. They are the haunt of the
Kalotyches
and unless countercharms are murmured while
felling and lopping, these wretches are loosed on the woods. Many bushes, all thorn trees and especially the wild pear, have powerful spirit-repelling properties. Box is a powerful apotropaic; the osier which is woven into all their huts is the strongest and most hallowed of all. Flowers are plaited into phylacteries; their sweet smell, and even the memory of it when the flowers have faded, drives evil away. They have odd and hazy notions about the past: they believe that the Hellenes, the ancient Greeks, were taller than oaks and as strong: they spanned wide rivers at a single pace and strode from peak to peak. They never fell ill; they died suddenly and often broke their necks by falling down cliffs in their bold mountain pacings, turning at once into benevolent ghosts. The nomads speak of a heroic and mythical Macedonian character called Roublouki, whose attributes sound rather like those of Alexander the Great, the hero and darling of Greek folk tales and the only one of the ancients to gatecrash the Karayiozi shadow-play.

Running, wrestling and racing each other on horseback are favourite pastimes and they vie with each other in tossing heavy stones, sometimes weighing as much as five
okas
. They also compete in stealing-matches; jokes and tales about theft abound. When a gypsy smith forged the nails for
Aï
's crucifixion, one of them is said to have been stolen by a Sarakatsán—perhaps he meant to save
Aï
's life by stealing all three. It was rammed up his behind “by the wicked Jews” in retaliation. (A good deed seldom goes unpunished.)

As of old, good and evil omens are discerned in the flight of birds. They abhor eagles and vultures and all birds of prey that hover on high: they are minions of the Devil in league with all evil spirits; when these harbingers of peril hover above a caravan they are spying out the destination. Abomination for these birds also springs from occasional raids when new-born kids are carried piteously bleating into the sky. The nomads haruspicate from entrails; like most ancient and modern Greeks, they read
the future in the markings on sheep's shoulder blades. Their sacrifices—
kourbania
[19]
as they are called—are frequent. A
pitta
—a kind of cake which is baked in a wide metal pan—is the rather gloomy fare at most of their feasts; they consider it wrong to kill and eat an animal without some ritual pretext. They only get meat when a beast is slaughtered for a sacrificial occasion, so they pine for these pretexts, even when the cause is a distressing one: their eyes kindle as the great festivals draw near. A wedding or the christening of a
tzellingas
's son, the illness of one of their community, an epidemic among the flocks, the birth of a seven-month child, the arrival of an honoured guest, or the end of shearing—all these are an excuse for meat. They lay the sacrificial beast on a flattened branch with its eyes looking into the sun, then cut its throat and roast it whole on a spit. The act is surrounded by much mystery and they peer at the insides for mantic significance; at Easter, a bloody cross from the Paschal lamb is dabbed on the shoulders of children.
[20]

Fire is sacred and the hearth especially so: “
Aï
was born close to a fire.” Extinction is a particularly bad omen if it happens in the winter sojourn or in a wayside camp. They keep up a blaze during the twelve days of Christmas to fend off the Pagan Ones; a troublesome breed of the
Kallikantzaros
is abroad then; it is known as the
lykokantzaros
, the “wolf-centaur,” or, rather oddly, the
astróvoli
, “starstroke.” A vast log burns slowly all through Advent to proof the settlement against the supernatural pests of the season; buried at the door of the fold on Christmas day, it keeps illness, Shadows and the Eye at bay. Women always give
birth next to the hearth for the same defensive reason and the powers of darkness are driven off with foul-smelling smoke for the following twelve days. Miscarried babies, also the caul when a live baby is born, are buried under a flat stone beside the hearth; not in the middle, as people entering the hut must tread across a burning log, which, were this precaution not observed, would breed vampirism in the mother's blood.
[21]
Burial by the hearth “charms the child back to life”; that is, it reincarnates it quickly in its mother's womb. They used to stow stillborn babies in a goat-skin full of salt and hang it on a branch by the hut for forty days, then burn it lest it should take its mother with it. A cross is inscribed on a new-born child with burning wood, then quenched in water. The Fates visit the suckling's cradle three nights running; the usual offerings are left for them, and people with good souls can eavesdrop and expound their prophecies.

Sarakatsáns think Christmas is a private feast of their own, a reminder that
Aï
was born in a fold, laid in a manger and watched over by shepherds and their flocks. A host of pagan customs surrounds the Christmas octave. Some of them are very ancient observances connected with the winter solstice; others, more recent, derive from Mithras and the Unconquered Sun. (Mithraism in the Levant was only stamped out by St. Basil in the fourth century.) A twig of mock-privet and another of ilex, heavy with acorns, are thrown into the fire on Christmas Eve to induce fertility among the flocks; the way they burn indicates how the lambing will go. A ewe is then sacrificed to
Aï
and the shepherds gather to eat and drink and carouse from hut to hut: rejoicings that put the swarming fairies, demons, infidels and monsters to flight and Antichrist himself. At dawn they cut and spread new grass for the new-born kids and lambs
“to sleep on fresh beds for the first three days of
Aï
,” and the children all go down to the springs and drink in dead silence. They throw butter and cheese into the water and return with twigs of ilex, mock-privet and terebinth, which they cast into the flames. The sizzling of the green wood is called “talking” and “singing,” and “many kids, happy lambing!” is its burden.

At New Year, the
tsellingas
gives every shepherd a pomegranate which he breaks and scatters about the fold. Dried maize is ritually devoured on the vigil of Epiphany and the old women sprinkle the animals from oak and olive branches dipped in holy water. At this feast, too, the girls wash the year's smoke and rust off the ikons beside a spring with hanks of red wool and then hang them on branches.

The approach to Lent is the signal for further doings, especially the Saturday night and the early hours of Cheese Sunday which immediately precede it. The season gives rise to singular conduct not found elsewhere, and now, alas, largely extinct: transvestitism, the wearing of masks, the painting of faces, the donning of whiskers and beards of goats' hair—all this, with copious drinking and horseplay and cheerful frisking about among the wigwams, is still pretty current practice, a token of rustic carnival zest; but it can take a more stylized form. A heavily painted young man in a scarlet dress and long goat-skin locks is chosen as a bride and a whiskered and skin-clad comrade as the groom; others are rigged out as the priest, the
koumbaros
and the wedding guests. Then a cod Christian marriage is irreverently solemnized, followed by dances far less inhibited than are those at a real marriage. The bridal pair retire to a hut and, to the hilarity of all, comic simulacra of considerable indecency are enacted within. The groom is found wanting and thrown out; candidate after candidate enters with visible promise and each one is ejected in disgrace. At last a fitting champion is elected and, during a final mime of triumphant bawdiness, the entire company dance round the hut singing
“the Pepper Song,” the dancers alternately banging their noses and their rumps on the ground with a see-saw motion I would give much to see.
[22]
Mock baptism follows a mock birth and mummers dressed as gypsies bang each other about with sacks full of ashes. Then a grave is dug and a shrouded nomad is buried with pseudo-pomp and covered with pebbles and twigs; candles are lit and dirges sung. But, with the approach of dawn and the first cawing of the crows, the dirges, the wails, the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments take a more lifelike turn until at last the company seizes the corpse by the feet and, amidst general clamour, he bounds from the grave; and then, as day breaks at last, the whole clan dances a universal
syrtos
round the fire. These goings on are said to drive away drought and guarantee an abundance of leaves and grass for the flocks. Another resurrection play commemorates the feast of St. Lazarus. A boy dressed as the corpse of the Saint lies in each hut in silence for half an hour. Next day, on Palm Sunday, a huge Lazarus-doll made of anemones and the other flowers, which at this season cover the mountains and the plains, is borne processionally by boys, who also carry huge baskets of flowers, to the tune of special songs and the clanging of goat bells. (These resurrection pageants might be the cue for specialists to seek analogies with the feasts of Adonis; they might be on the right track.)

The Lenten fast is observed with rigorous ferocity. In some folds, on Good Friday, the old women used to tie two sticks together to form a primitive doll with a ball of cloth for a head, on which eyes, a nose and a mouth were drawn in charcoal. Wrapping it in a shroud of rag and laying it on a table or a heap of stones, the women would sing, all day long and over and
over again, the seventy couplets of the Song of the Consoler. This was to help the Blessed Virgin to forget the death of her Son, and, in so doing, bring consolation to everyone else for any bereavement they may have suffered. As night fell, they smashed the doll and threw the bits into a wood or a gully. We have seen that Easter, the crown of the Orthodox year, is a lesser feast among these shepherds; but they light a large fire to burn a stuffed effigy of Judas.
[23]
They arm their animals with their heavy bronze bells on the feast of the Annunciation—the 25th of March—“about the time when the first cuckoo sings.” They drive the flocks along to try out the harmony of their chime, and disarm them again in the evening; then children make the round of the huts ringing the bells and singing an Annunciation song in their honour; they carry a basket of flowers which their elders fill with money and eggs. Transient as mushrooms, each little gathering of huts has a calendar as strictly appointed and as scrupulously observed as the cycle of an ancient metropolis.

The feast of St. George is most propitious for christenings. Babies born immediately afterwards often have to wait a year, but they are always named at once and, if they fall ill, they are given a lay baptism on the spot, lest, dying, they should turn into little vampires. The average family varies between five and fifteen children. Random fornication, adultery, divorce, rape and bastardy are unknown and, should a case of bastardy ever crop up, death to all concerned is the only remedy. This is not only for reasons of morality; these ill-starred children are thought to be personifications of Satan; they bring a curse on the tents and the huts, and, should they grow up and die a natural death, a ghost rises from the grave and haunts the folds
and blights the pastures.
[24]
Marriages are never love matches; apart from other disadvantages, they are thought to be unlucky, and often the couple are total strangers. Under the Ottoman Empire, girls were frequently married at twelve lest the Turks should carry them off to their harems. Between eighteen and twenty-five is now the usual age; it gives the bride plenty of time to prepare her dowry. Till recently, eight days was the regular period given over to a wedding: it involved eight days of statuesque immobility, silence and fasting for the bride and eight days of blinding carousel for the groom and his troop: an open season for every kind of prank and excess. In one famous case in the Agrapha mountains, the groom and his gang raided the bride's dowry and dressed up in her clothes. (It is interesting how often transvestitism crops up in these rustic saturnalia.) A recent and as yet unpublished source casts new light on the obscure drama of nomad marriages. A dozen pages back, I mentioned the sword in the Mani which, by sympathetic magic, is said to cleave asunder the bonds of fear and shyness between the two married strangers when they are finally alone together. In Sarakatsán embraces a blade plays a much more direct part. Alone in the hut, lying on cut branches padded with blankets—for there is never a bridal bed or a sheet and only the strictest minimum of undressing—the groom, with a sudden masterful swoop, leaps athwart the bride, seizes her by the scruff of her neck and with bared teeth and burning eyes, lays the edge of a dagger at her throat; and, most strangely, this time-honoured stratagem works: timidity boils up into hot blood on either side, confusion is ripped to shreds, the dagger is flung away, and the union is driven home and fiercely
clinched in a lightning tussle. Apparently, too, the bride's days and nights of silent and standing vigil, with nothing to eat or drink and a veto on her leaving the hut, twist her insides into appalling knots and can bring on permanent damage, and, on rare occasions, death. The nomad approach to all feminine physiological troubles is dark and primitive. They never undress, all exposure is anathema and there is some truth in the village rumour that they never wash. Oddly, they scarcely smell at all, perhaps because of the time-stiffened carapace of clothing which encases them. The source I have quoted was present at the death of an old Sarakatsánissa. There was no undoing the thick geometric livery in which she was cocooned, so it was torn open with a knife, sending the bystanders reeling back like the bystanders on ikons at the Raising of Lazarus. When she marries, a girl is no longer a member of her own family and sometimes she never sees them again; she is a slave to her husband and his womenfolk, a stranger in strangers' tents. It was the rule in the stern old days that no wife should address her husband in the first years of her marriage; he, in his turn, would never call her by name and many years and many births had to pass before they would converse in public.