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When Death came calling today
My father has become interested in Cycladic art, so yesterday he handed me half a dozen books out of the Winchester library and asked if I would vet them for massive idiocy. The first book in the stack was J. Theodore Bent's The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks, and in fact I handed back to him. It was published originally in 1885—the edition I was looking at is the reprint from 1965, foreword by Al. N. Oikonomides—and while it's a nice read if you like late Victorian scholar-tourism, I had trouble getting past that particular aspect of late Victorian scholar-tourism which rhapsodizes about the classical Greeks and regards their present-day descendants rather less warmly:
Furthermore, the pleasure felt by the people of Mykonos in possessing the valuable remains of Delos is only that of a satiated dog with a bone; they do not want them or understand them themselves, so they try to prevent anyone else from reaping the good that would ensue from their being properly looked after and opportunity given for a more thorough study of them.
Right, because that argument works so well on the Elgin Marbles. Bent has come to Mykonos specifically to hear the μοιρολόγιαι, the ritual laments performed by mourners over the dead, and yet even in his description of the funeral he is fortunate enough to attend on his third day on the island, he cannot refrain from remarks like "that harsh and grating voice which the Greeks love, but which is so distasteful to Western ears" or the comment that two grieving relatives "reminded one forcibly of the Carian women of antiquity who were hired for the same purpose; and one's mind wandered back to a Greek chorus—that of Æschylus especially—where the virgins at the gate of Agamemnon indulge in all the most poignant manifestations of grief, beating their breasts, lacerating their cheeks, and rending their garments; and I could not but admire the prudence of Solon, who forbade the excessive lamentations of women . . . and great was my relief when the priests arrived with their acolytes bearing the cross and lanterns to convey the corpse to the grave." Also he translates all the μοιρολόγιαι he recorded into rhyming couplets, so there goes any real sense of the language involved. If I ever meet his shade by noonday, I will say really insulting things to it from Aristophanes. After which I will be gracious, and thank it for collecting pieces of folklore I hadn't heard, as from the same chapter:
The archangel Michael is the modern Hermes, the angel of death, and in the representations of him, usually to be seen over the door entering into the part of the church consecrated to the sacred mysteries, he is depicted as a warrior having in his right hand a naked sword, balances in his left, and trampling a sinner under his feet. Again the idea is prevalent that at a man's birth the Fates fix the day of his death; consequently the pious believe that on November 8, the archangel's day, he looks through the list and writes down on a tablet the names of those who during the ensuing year must fall victims to his two-edged sword.
From the lamentations (μοιρολόγιαι) which are sung in Greece to-day we can learn much about the popular beliefs concerning the condition of the lower world . . . Charon, or Charos, to-day is a synonym for death. 'Charon seized him' is a common expression, and a clever popular enigma likens the world to a reservoir full of water at which Charon, as a wild beast, drinks; but the beast is never satisfied and the reservoir never exhausted. Imagination is the soul of these modern Greek death ballads; the ideas are beautifully poetical in many cases, though the language is crude and often difficult to follow from the complexity of patois expressions. They sing to you of feasts and banquets in Hades, where the dead are eaten for food; they tell you of the gardens of Hades, where the souls of the departed are planted and come up as weird plants.
King Charon is not the Death of the middle ages, the skeleton with a scythe in his hand; he is the Homeric ferryman; he rows souls across to Hades in his caïque, and he is a hero of huge stature and flaming eyes of a color like fire (Cf. πορφύρεος, 'Il.' v. 83); he goes round to collect the dead on horseback: so in olden days a horse was the symbol of death, as we see on so many tombstones. Charon, too, can lurk in ambush to surprise his victims, and can change himself into a swallow, like Athene, who perched on Ulysses' house on the day of the murder of Penelope's suitors. Charon's palace in Hades is decorated with the dead, and the bones of the departed are used for every purpose of domestic use. The dead who haunt it are for ever planning to return to the upper air, and form schemes for so doing, which Charon always discovers; sometimes they even manage to steal his keys, but in vain.
The dead growing in gardens, the horse, the swallow and the keys to hell: I love that.
And then I will tell it to λαικαζέσθω back to Hades, because really, in the chapter with the Nereids, the crack about bagpipes was unnecessary.
Furthermore, the pleasure felt by the people of Mykonos in possessing the valuable remains of Delos is only that of a satiated dog with a bone; they do not want them or understand them themselves, so they try to prevent anyone else from reaping the good that would ensue from their being properly looked after and opportunity given for a more thorough study of them.
Right, because that argument works so well on the Elgin Marbles. Bent has come to Mykonos specifically to hear the μοιρολόγιαι, the ritual laments performed by mourners over the dead, and yet even in his description of the funeral he is fortunate enough to attend on his third day on the island, he cannot refrain from remarks like "that harsh and grating voice which the Greeks love, but which is so distasteful to Western ears" or the comment that two grieving relatives "reminded one forcibly of the Carian women of antiquity who were hired for the same purpose; and one's mind wandered back to a Greek chorus—that of Æschylus especially—where the virgins at the gate of Agamemnon indulge in all the most poignant manifestations of grief, beating their breasts, lacerating their cheeks, and rending their garments; and I could not but admire the prudence of Solon, who forbade the excessive lamentations of women . . . and great was my relief when the priests arrived with their acolytes bearing the cross and lanterns to convey the corpse to the grave." Also he translates all the μοιρολόγιαι he recorded into rhyming couplets, so there goes any real sense of the language involved. If I ever meet his shade by noonday, I will say really insulting things to it from Aristophanes. After which I will be gracious, and thank it for collecting pieces of folklore I hadn't heard, as from the same chapter:
The archangel Michael is the modern Hermes, the angel of death, and in the representations of him, usually to be seen over the door entering into the part of the church consecrated to the sacred mysteries, he is depicted as a warrior having in his right hand a naked sword, balances in his left, and trampling a sinner under his feet. Again the idea is prevalent that at a man's birth the Fates fix the day of his death; consequently the pious believe that on November 8, the archangel's day, he looks through the list and writes down on a tablet the names of those who during the ensuing year must fall victims to his two-edged sword.
From the lamentations (μοιρολόγιαι) which are sung in Greece to-day we can learn much about the popular beliefs concerning the condition of the lower world . . . Charon, or Charos, to-day is a synonym for death. 'Charon seized him' is a common expression, and a clever popular enigma likens the world to a reservoir full of water at which Charon, as a wild beast, drinks; but the beast is never satisfied and the reservoir never exhausted. Imagination is the soul of these modern Greek death ballads; the ideas are beautifully poetical in many cases, though the language is crude and often difficult to follow from the complexity of patois expressions. They sing to you of feasts and banquets in Hades, where the dead are eaten for food; they tell you of the gardens of Hades, where the souls of the departed are planted and come up as weird plants.
King Charon is not the Death of the middle ages, the skeleton with a scythe in his hand; he is the Homeric ferryman; he rows souls across to Hades in his caïque, and he is a hero of huge stature and flaming eyes of a color like fire (Cf. πορφύρεος, 'Il.' v. 83); he goes round to collect the dead on horseback: so in olden days a horse was the symbol of death, as we see on so many tombstones. Charon, too, can lurk in ambush to surprise his victims, and can change himself into a swallow, like Athene, who perched on Ulysses' house on the day of the murder of Penelope's suitors. Charon's palace in Hades is decorated with the dead, and the bones of the departed are used for every purpose of domestic use. The dead who haunt it are for ever planning to return to the upper air, and form schemes for so doing, which Charon always discovers; sometimes they even manage to steal his keys, but in vain.
The dead growing in gardens, the horse, the swallow and the keys to hell: I love that.
And then I will tell it to λαικαζέσθω back to Hades, because really, in the chapter with the Nereids, the crack about bagpipes was unnecessary.
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He better not be insulting bagpipes.
they tell you of the gardens of Hades, where the souls of the departed are planted and come up as weird plants.
I may need to steal this, sometime.
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I found myself uncharitably hoping that no one wept at his funeral, if it was going to bother him that much.
He better not be insulting bagpipes.
He has gone to hear a shepherd who is reckoned the best singer on Anafi: "[A]nd a boy played the goatskin sabouna—that wretched Grecian substitute for the bagpipe—by way of accompaniment." Okay, then.
I may need to steal this, sometime.
Please, please do. Grow something beautiful and strange of it.
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The dead growing in gardens, the horse, the swallow and the keys to hell: I love that.
All these, and also Archangel Michael sitting down, adjusting his half-moon specs, and carefully writing the names of the forthcoming dead onto a tablet. I charish visions of heavenly bureaucracy.
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Μοιρολόγιαι were still being performed as of 1979; I learned this from a book I proofed last year. I hadn't known of their existence before then. Glancing through JSTOR also tells me that a book on the tradition was published as recently as 1999. I can hope.
All these, and also Archangel Michael sitting down, adjusting his half-moon specs, and carefully writing the names of the forthcoming dead onto a tablet. I charish visions of heavenly bureaucracy.
Poem?
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Also I bet there are stories about people trying to get a glance at that list. I remember earlier this year,
I love how elements of mythology live on into current legends and stories. (Now I'm back to talking about the Greek stuff). The notion of Charon as too thirsty....
But yeah, the guy was a plonker for his crass insensitivity. Jerk.
Edited to protect the innocent and also because I wasn't at my most articulate when I left the comment originally.
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That reminds me of the Breton Ankou: the last person to die in the old year becomes the Ankou—collecting the souls of the dead, carting them on—for the next.
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I had a friend on Mykonos who was a goldsmith whose family came from Alexandria. He spoke good but weird English that he'd learned from reading. We were talking one day about some of this, Charon and not sleeping on Delos, and he said in English "What you have to understand it's extra-textual." And I blinked, and he said it again in Greek and what he said was "It's not in the book, local people believe it but it's nowhere in the bible." Right. Extra-textual.
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He's an idiot about Delos more than he realises.
I have no trouble believing that at all.
Modern (1980s) beliefs about people not sleeping on Mykonos have got to be related to this. Boats set off for Delos at dawn and leave at sunset. Nobody is allowed to be there in the dark and they are really strict about this.
In the old and original sense: that is awesome.
Thank you for telling me.
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He's an idiot about Delos more than he realises.
I'm not surprised.
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Nine
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Noises Really, Really, Really Off?
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I trust there are some poems in the offing.
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No, the book was published originally in 1885, reprinted 1965; I was tired and typed the same date twice. I'm so sorry.
I trust there are some poems in the offing.
I'm hoping. Please feel free to contribute your own, too.
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For Sovay
He is not a lord like Milord Byron;
None of us is beneath his notice.
He sits in bushes and spies on us.
When the moment is right we go into his sack.
He empties that sack in a dreary garden
Where souls are planted in long, straight rows,
Sending up leaves as thick as your hand
And a stalk with clusters of shiny, black fruit.
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And a stalk with clusters of shiny, black fruit.
Beautiful. Now I want a painting....
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There must be painters reading this.....
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And a stalk with clusters of shiny, black fruit.
That is beautiful.
Thank you so much!
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I agree with you on the subject of Mr. Bent.
I'm very much reminded of some of the stuff I had to read whilst I was writing about George Petrie in the spring--not least Petrie himself, who had the charming tendency to write of the songs whose airs he'd transcribed (I was working from the 1967 reprint of his 1855 The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland):
Of the Anglo-Irish ballad sung to it, I only preserved, as a name for the air, the few words above given, (Petrie 1967, 181)
[after providing two verses of "An Buachall Caol Dubh", (The Dark Slender Boy) which is a profound song--Sean Doyle sang an English translation of it very nicely, the which I'll sendspace you an you've not heard it] This is enough, and perhaps too much... Cassidech Bán, or 'White Cassidy,'which is sung to [the same air] is still less appropriate to the sentiment of the melody, and is, moreover, of such a nature as will not allow even a specimen of it to be translated. (Petrie 1967, 21)
PS
From John Doyle's Evening Comes Early, sung by Sean Doyle (John's da, a brilliant singer himself--Sean's CD The Light and the Half-Light is one I very much recommend.).
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And if that didn't guarantee that I wish those verses had survived . . .
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I'll take a look round on your behalf.
There's a good chance that they have survived, although it's not unlikely that the version Petrie didn't keep* would have been an interesting one to have. I'm fairly well sure that "An Buachall Caol Dubh" is still extant in Irish, and, while I don't have a clear picture of the other one (and am also not sure what the proper modern spelling of it is), I'd expect there's at least a chance that I could find it somewhere.
Petrie was a piece of work, in case you've not guessed--he was entranced with the concept of Irish song, but almost completely unable to face the reality of it.
*Then again, there might be a chance that whatever materials Petrie worked from have survived somewhere, as IIRC there's said to be a lot of his notes and manuscripts which remain uncatalogued. Petrie had little Irish, although precisely how little seems to be uncertain--this was actually a minor thread in the paper whence I pulled the quotes (easier than digging out the photocopied bits of his book which I have in a box somewhere); P.W. Joyce, who handled some of the lyrics for him, was, if anything, even worse of a prude than himself, but I suppose it's possible that someone like Eugene O'Curry (a fine scholar in the old Irish tradition) might have contributed material which Petrie might have kept about, somewhere. Maybe.
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Don't worry, it might not be in there anyway: λαικάζω, "perform fellatio." A noble verb with a pedigree from the sixth century CE through late antiquity, it's attested in the middle voice in the sense of "fuck off" in Menander and Strato (οὐχὶ λαικάσει, hilariously glossed by Liddell and Scott as "a vulgar form of execration") and crops up in inscriptions all over the place. I put it here in the third person singular present imperative.
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I find myself very pleased that I know someone who's able to say things like that in Ancient Greek, and who would say them to deserving 19th Century Englishmen. Thank you.