Greek feasts

THE GIFT OF GOD

By Edwin Arlington Robinson

Blessed with a joy that only she

Of all alive shall ever know,

She wears a proud humility

For what it was that willed it so,-^

That her degree should be so great

Among the favored of the Lord

That she may scarcely bear the weight

Of her bewildering reward.

As one apart, immune, alone.
Or featured for the shining ones,
And like to none that she has known
Of other women's other sons, —
The iirm fruition of her need,
He shines anointed; and he blurs
Her vision, till it seems indeed
- A sacrilege to call him hers.

" She fears a little for so much
Of what is best, and hardly dares
To think of him as one to touch
With aches, indignities, and cares;
She sees him rather at the goal.
Still shining; and her dream foretells
The proper shining of a soul
Where nothing ordinary dwells.

Perchance a canvass of the town
Would find him far from flags and shouts,
And leave him only the renown
Of many smiles and many doubts;
Perchance the crude and common tongue
Would havoc strangely with his worth;
But she, with innocence unstung.
Would read his name around the earth.

And others, knowing how this youth
Would shine, if love could make him great,
When caught and tortured for the truth
Would only writhe and hesitate;
While she, arranging for his days
What centuries could not fulfil,
Transmutes him with her faith and praise,
And has him shining where she will.

She crowns him with her gratefulness,

And says again that life is good;

And should the gift of God be less

In him than in her motherhood.

His fame, though vague, will not be small.

As upward through her dream he fares,

Half clouded with a crimson fall

Of roses thrown on marble stairs.

485

GREEK FEASTS

By H. G. Dwight

Illustrations from piioTOGRArHS nv the Author

3NE of the most character-
istic things about Constan-
tinople is that while it has
become Turkish it has not
ceased to be Greek. The
same is true of Thrace,
Macedonia, and Asia Minor, which con-
tain a large Turkish population, but which
still form a part of the Greek world to
which they always belonged. The two
races have indisputably influenced each
other, as their languages and certain of
their customs prove. A good deal of
Greek blood now flows, too, in Turkish
veins. Nevertheless there has been re-
markably little assimilation, after five hun-
dred years, of one element by the other.
They coexist, each perfectly distinct and
each claiming with perfect reason the land
as his own.

This is perhaps one cause why religious
festivals are so common among the Greeks
of Turkey. It is as a religious community
that they have remained separate since
the conquest. Through their rehgious ob-
servances they live what is left them of a
national life and assert their claim to the
great tradition of their race. The fact
doubtless has something to do with the
persistence of observances that elsewhere
tend to disappear. At all events those
observances are extremely interesting.
They have a local color, for one thing, of
a kind that has become rare in Europe
and that scarcely ever existed in America.
Then they are reckoned by the Julian
calendar, now thirteen days behind our
own, and that puts them into a certain
perspective. Their true perspective, how-
ever, reaches much farther back. Nor is
it merely that they compose a body of
tradition from which we of the West have
diverged or separated. Our religious cus-
toms and beliefs did not spring out of our
own soil. We transplanted them in full
flower from Rome, and she in turn had
already borrowed largely from Greece and

the East. But in the Levant such beliefs
and customs represent a native growth,
whose roots run far deeper than Chris-
tianity.

In the Eastern as in the Western Church
the essence of the religious year is that
cycle of observances that begins with Ad-
vent and culminates at Easter. It is rather
curious that Protestantism should have
disturbed the symbolism of this drama
by transposing its climax. Christmas
with the Greeks is not the greater feast.
One of their names for it, in fact, is Lit-
tle Easter. It is preceded, however, by a
fast of forty days nearly as strict as Lent.
The day itself is purely a religious festi-
val. A midnight mass, or rather an early
mass, is celebrated at one or two o'clock
on Christmas morning, after which the
fast is broken and people make each other
good wishes. They do not exchange pres-
ents or follow the usage of the Christmas
tree, that invention of Northern barbar-
ism, except in places that have been
largely influenced by the West.

The real holiday of the season is New
Year's Day. This is called Ai VassUi, or
Saint Basil, whose name-day it is. There
is an old ballad relating to this venerable
bishop of Cappadocia — too long, I regret,
to translate here — which men and boys go
about singing on Saint Basil's eve. The
musicians are rewarded with money,
theoretically for the poor of the commu-
nity. If it happens to stick in the pock-
ets of the performers, they doubtless re-
gard themselves as representative of the
brotherhood for whose benefit they sing.
This custom is imitated by small boys,
who go among the coffee-houses after dark
begging. They make themselves known
by lanterns that are oftenest wicker bird-
cages lined with colored paper. I have
also seen ships and castles of quite elabo-
rate design. These curious lanterns are
used as well on Christmas and Epiphany
eves — which, like New Year's, are cele-

Greek Feasts

487

brated in cosmopolitan Constantinople tering a church is not followed. On the
twice over. Christmas, indeed, is cele- first of every month except January a
brated three times, since the Armenians ceremony called the Little Blessing takes
keep it at Epiphany, while the Turks, the place in the churches, when water is
Persians, and the Hebrews each have a blessed; and this ceremony may be re-
New Year of their own. The principal peated by request in private houses. In
feature of Saint Basil's eve is the vassi- January the Little Blessing takes place on

The blessing of the waters at Arnaoutkyoi.

lopita, a kind of flat round cake or sweet
bread something like the Tuscan schiac-
ciata. At midnight the head of the house
cuts the pita into as many pieces as there
are members of the family. A true pita
should contain a coin, and whoever gets
it is sure to have luck during the new year.
The next day people pay visits, exchange
presents, tip servants, and make merry as
they will. They also go, at a more con-
venient hour than on Christmas morning,
to church, where the ancient liturgy of
Saint Basil is read.

Epiphany, or the old English Twelfth
Night, has retained in the East a signifi-
cance that it has lost in the West. The
day is supposed to commemorate the bap-
tism of Christ in the Jordan. Hence it is
the day of the blessing of waters, whether
of springs, wells, reservoirs, rivers, or the
sea. Holy water plays a particular role in
the Greek Church — although the Roman
custom of moistening the fingers with it
before making the sign of the cross on en-
VoL. LV.— 51

. Epiphany eve, the fifth. But on Epiph-
any itself, as early in the morning as
local custom may dictate, takes place the
Great Blessing. It is performed in the
middle of the church, on a dais decorated
with garlands of bay, and the important
feature of the long ceremony is the dip-
ping of a cross into a silver basin of water.
The water is carefully kept in bottles
throughout the next year and used as oc-
casion may require. It is sometimes ad-
ministered, for instance, to those who are
not thought fit to take the full commun-
ion. The outdoor ceremony which follows
this one is extremely picturesque. In Con-
stantinople it may be seen in any of the
numerous Greek waterside communities
— by those who care to get up early
enough of a January morning. One of the
best places is Arnaoutkyoi, a large Greek
village on the European shore of the Bos-
phorus, where the ceremony is obligingly
postponed till ten or eleven o'clock. At
the conclusion of the service in the church

488

Greek Feasts

a procession, headed by clergy in gala them paddled back to shore and hurried

vestments and accompanied by candles, off to get warm. The finder of the cross is

incense, banners, and lanterns on staves a lucky man in this world and the world

of the sort one sees in Italy, marches to to come. He goes from house to house

the waterside. There it is added to with the holy emblem he has rescued from

by shivering mortals in bathing trunks, the deep, and people give him tips. In

They behave in a highly unecclesiastical this way he collects enough to restore his

They are not so much the order of the day as the progress of a tradi-
tional camel. — Page 490.

circulation and to pass a convivial Epiph-
any. The cross is his to keep, but he must
provide a new one for the coming year.

The blessing of the waters is firmly be-
lieved by many good people to have one
effect not claimed by mother church. It
is supposed, that is, to exorcise for an-
other year certain redoubtable beings
known as kallikdntzari. The name, ac-
cording to one of the latest authorities on
the subject,* means the " good centaurs."
Goodness, however, is not their distinguish-
ing trait. They are quarrelsome, mis-
chievous, and destructive monsters, half
man, half beast, who haunt the twelve
nights of the Christmas season. One of
the most eflicacious means of scaring them

*J. C. Lawsoni " Modcra Greek Folklore and Ancient
Greek Religion."

manner in their anxiety to get the most
advantageous post on the quay. The ban-
ners and lanterns make a screen of color
on either side of the priests, incense rises,
choristers chant, a bishop in brocade and
cloth-of-gold with a domed gilt mitre
holds up a small cross; he makes the holy
sign with it, and tosses it into the Bos-
phorus. There is a terrific splash as the
rivals for its recovery dive after it. In
days gone by there used to be fights no
less terrific in the water over the precious
object. The last time I saw the ceremony,
however, there was nothing of the kind.
The cross was even made of wood, so that
there was no trouble in finding it. The
first man who reached it piously put it to
his lips and allowed the fellow nearest him
to do the same. Then the half-dozen of

Another picturesque feature .

is the dancing by Macedonians. — Page 490.

off is by firebrands, and I have wondered
if the colored lanterns to which I have al-
luded might owe their origin to the same
idea. Many pious sailors will not ven-
ture to sea during the twelve days, for
fear of these creatures. The unfurling of
the sails is one of the ceremonies of Epiph-
any in some seaside communities. Sim-
ilarly, no one — of a certain class — would
dream of marrying during the twelve days,
while a child so unfortunate as to be born
then is regarded as likely to become a kal-
likdntzaros himself. Here a teaching of
the church perhaps mingles with the pop-
ular belief. But that belief is far older
than the church, going back to Dionysus
and the fauns, satyrs, and sileni who ac-
companied him. In many parts of the
Greek world it is still the custom for
men and boys to masquerade in furs dur-
ing the twelve days. If no trace of the
custom seems to survive in Constanti-
nople it may be because the early fathers
of the church thundered there against this
continuance of the antique Dionysiac rev-
els, which became the Brumalia and Satur-
nalia of the Romans.

I should not say that no trace survives,

because carnival is of course a lineal de-
scendant of those ancient winter celebra-
tions. As it exists in Constantinople, how-
ever, carnival is for the most part but a
pale copy of an Italian original, imported
perhaps by the Venetians and Genoese.
It affords none the less pleasure to those
who participate in it and curiosity of
various colors to the members of the rul-
ing race. I remember one night in Pera
overhearing two venerable fezes with re-
gard to a troop of maskers that ran noisily
by. "What is this play?" inquired one
old gentleman, who evidently had never
seen it before and who as evidently looked
upon it with disapproval. "Eh," replied
the other, the initiated and the more in-
dulgent old gentleman; "they pass the
time! " The time they pass is divided dit
ferently than with us of the West. The
second Sunday before Lent is called Apo-
kred, and is the day of farewell to meat.
Which, for the religious, it actually is, al-
though the gayeties of carnival are then
at their height. The ensuing Sunday is
called Cheese Sunday, because that amount
of indulgence is permitted during the week
that precedes it. After Cheese Sunday,

489

490

Greek Feasts

however, no man should touch cheese, milk,
butter, oil, eggs, or even fish — though an
exception is made in favor of caviare, out of
which a delicious Lenten savory is made.
Lent begins not on the Wednesday but on

Ash Wednesday to promenade on the or-
dinarily deserted quay of the Zattere. But
no masks are seen on the Zattere on Ash
Wednesday, whereas masks are the order
of the day at Tatavla on Clean Mon-

The procession at the Phanar.

the Monday, which is called Clean Mon-
day. In fact the first week of Lent is
called Clean week. Houses are then swept
and garnished and the fast is stricter than
at any time save Holy week. The very
pious eat nothing at all during the first
three days of Lent.

Clean Monday, nevertheless, is a great
holiday. In Constantinople it is also
called Tatavla Day, because every one goes
out to Tatavla, a quarter bordering on
open country between Shishli and Has-
skyoi. A somewhat similar custom pre-
vails in Venice, where every one goes on

day. They are not so much the order
of the day, however, as the progress of
a traditional camel, each of whose legs
is a man. It carries a load of charcoal
and garlic, which are powerful talismans
against evil, and it is led about by a
picturesquely dressed camel-driver whose
face is daubed with blue. This simple
form of masquerading, a common one at
Tatavla, descends directly from the pagan
Dionysia. Another picturesque feature of
the day is the dancing by Macedonians — ■
Greeks or Christian Albanians. Masquer-
ading with these exiles consists in tying

Greek Feasts

491

a handkerchief about their heads in guise
of a fillet and in putting on the black
or white fustanella — with its accompany-
ing accoutrements — of their native hills.
They form rings in the middle of the
crowd, which is kept back by one of their
number called the Shepherd. Like the
Christmas mummers of the Greek islands,
he wears skins and has a big bronze sheep
or camel bell fastened to some part of him.
He also carries a staff to which is attached
a bunch of garlic for good luck. He oft-
en wears a mask as well, or is otherwise
disguised, and his clowneries give great
amusement. In the meantime his com-
panions join hands and dance around the
ring to the tune of a pipe or a violin. The
first two hold the ends of a handkerchief
instead of joining hands, which enables
the leader to go through more compli-
cated evolutions. Sometimes he is pre-
ceded by one or two sword dancers, who
know how to make the most of their hang-
ing sleeves and plaited skirts. Some of
these romantic young gentlemen are sin-
gularly handsome, which does not prepare
one to learn that they are butchers' boys.

The Greeks keep no mi-careme, as the
Latins do. Their longer and severer fast
continues unbroken till Easter morning — ■
unless Annunciation Day happens to fall
in Lent. Then they are allowed the in-
dulgence of fish. Holy week is with them
the Great Week. Services take place in the
churches every night except Wednesday,
and commemorate the events of Jerusa-
lem in a more dramatic way than even the
Roman Church. The symbohc washing of
the disciples' feet, however, which takes
place in Jerusalem on Holy Thursday, is
not performed in Constantinople except
by the Armenians. On Good, or Great,
Friday a cenotaph is erected in the nave
of each church, on which is laid an em-
broidery or some other representation of
the crucifixion. Sculpture is not per-
mitted in the Greek Church, although on
this one occasion a statue has sometimes
been seen. The faithful flock during the
day to the cenotaph, where they kiss the
embroidery and make some small dona-
tion. Each one receives from the acolyte
in charge a jonquil or a hyacinth. This
charming custom is perhaps a relic of the
Eleusinian Mysteries, which Easter super-
seded and with whose symbolism, cele-
VoL. LV.— 52

brating as they did the myth of Demeter
and Persephone, it has so much in com-
mon. Spring flowers, at all events, play a
part at Easter quite different from our
merely decorative use of them. Flower-
stands are almost as common at church
doors as candle-stands. For people also
make the round of the icons in the
churches, lighting votive tapers here and
there. The true use of the tapers, how-
ever, is after dark. Then a procession
figuring the entombment of Christ issues
from the church with the image of the
cenotaph and. makes the circuit of the
court or, in purely Greek communities, of
the surrounding streets, accompanied by a
crowd of lighted candles. The. image is
finally taken to the holy table, where it
remains for forty days.

An even more striking ceremony takes
place on Saturday night. About mid-
night people begin to gather in the
churches, which are aromatic with the
flowering bay strewn on the floor. Every
one carries a candle but none are lighted
— not even before the icons. The service
begins with antiphonal chanting. The
ancient Byzantine music sounds stranger
than ever in the dim light, sung by the
black-robed priests with black veils over
their tall blackhats. Finally thecelebrant,
in a purple cope of mourning, withdraws
behind the icgnostdsion, the screen that
in a Greek church divides the holy table
from the chancel. As the chant proceeds
candles are lighted in certain chandeliers.
Then the door of the sanctuary is thrown
open, revealing a blaze of light and color
within. The celebrant comes out in mag-
nificent vestments, holding a lighted can-
dle and saying, "Come to the light."
Those nearest him reach out their own
tapers to take the sacred fire, and from
them it is propagated in an incredibly
short time through the entire church. In
the meantime the priests march in pro-
cession out of doors, headed by a banner
emblematic of the resurrection. And
there, surrounded by the flickering lights
of the congregation, the celebrant chants
the triumphant resurrection hymn. At
this point tradition demands that the
populace should express their own senti-
ments by a volley of pistol shots. But
since the reactionary uprising of 1909,
when soldiers took advantage of the Greek

492

Greek Feasts

Easter to make such tragic use of their
own arms, an attempt has been made in
Constantinople to suppress this detail.
I have been told that each shot is aimed
at Judas. The unfaithful apostle, at all
events, used to be burned in efi&gy on
Good Friday at Therapia, a village of the
upper Bosphorus. And I have heard of
other customs of a similar bearing.

The most interesting place to see the
ceremonies of Easter is the patriarchal
church at Phanar — or Fener, as the Turks
call it — on the Golden Horn. This is the
Vatican of Constantinople. It has en-
joyed that honor a comparatively short
time, as years are counted in this part of
the world. Saint Sophia was, of course,
the original cathedral of the city. After
its appropriation by the Turks the pa-
triarchate moved five times, finally being
established here in 1601. It naturally can
no longer rank in splendor with its Roman
rival. In historic interest, however, the
Phanar yields nothing to the Vatican.
The more democratic organization of the
Eastern Church never claimed for the
Bishop of Constantinople the supremacy
of the Bishop of Rome. But the former
acquired and has always kept an obvious
precedence among the prelates of the East
by his residence in a city which has not
ceased during sixteen hundred years to
be the capital of an empire. Throughout
that entire time an unbroken succession
of Patriarchs have followed each other
upon the episcopal throne of Saint John
Chrysostom. Joachim III, the present
incumbent of the patriarchate, is the two
hundred and fifty-fourth of his line. The
coming of the Turks did not disturb this
succession. When Mohammed II took the
city in 1453 one of his earliest acts was to
confirm the rights of the patriarchate.
The Patriarch even took on a new dignity
as the recognized head of a people that
no longer had any temporal leader. The
schism of the churches definitively sepa-
rated the sees of Rome and Constanti-
nople, while later schisms, not doctrinal
but political, have made the churches of
Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Roumania,
Russia, and Servia independent of the
Phanar in various degrees. But the Patri-
arch is still primate of a great Greek world,
and there attaches to his person all the in-
terest of a long and important history.

The ceremonies of Easter morning at
the Phanar are not for every one to see, by
reason of the smallness of the church. One
must have a friend at court in order to ob-
tain a ticket of admission. Even then one
may miss, as I once did through ignorance
and perhaps through a lack of that persist-
ence which should be the portion of the
true tourist, certain characteristic scenes
of the day. Thus I failed to witness the
robing of the Patriarch by the prelates of
his court. Neither did I get a photograph
of them all marching in procession to the
church, though I had moved heaven and
earth — i. e., a bishop and an ambassador
• — for permission to do so. Nevertheless I
had an excellent view of the ceremony of
the second resurrection, as the Easter
morning vespers are called. The proces-
sion entered the church led by small boys
in white-and-gold who carried a tall cross,
two gilt exepterigha on staves, symbolic of
the six-winged cherubim, and lighted can-
dles. After them came choristers singing.
The men wore a species of fez entirely
covered by its spread-out tassel. One car-
ried an immense yellow candle in front of
the officiating clergy, who marched two
and two in rich brocaded chasubles. Their
long beards gave them a dignity which is
sometimes lacking to their Western broth-
ers, while the tall black kalymdfhion,
brimmed slightly at the top with a true
Greek sense of outline, is certainly a more
imposing head-dress than the biretta. The
Patriarch came next, preceded and fol-
lowed by a pair of acolytes carrying two
and three lighted candles tied together
with white rosettes. These candles sym-
bolize the two natures of Christ and the
Trinity; with them his Holiness is sup-
posed to dispense his blessing. He wore
magnificent vestments of white satin em-
broidered with blue and green and gold.
A large diamond cross and other glitter-
ing objects hung about his neck. In his
hand he carried a crosier of silver and gold,
and on his head he wore a domed crown-
like mitre. It was surmounted by a cross
of gold, around it were ornaments of en-
amel and seed pearls, and in the gold
circlet of its base were set immense sap-
phires and other precious stones. The
Patriarch was followed by members of the
Russian embassy, of the Greek, Montene-
grin, Roumanian, and Servian legations,

Greek Feasts

493

and by the lay dignitaries of his own en-
tourage, whose uniforms and decorations
added what they could to the splendor of
the occasion. These personages took their
places in the body of the nave — standing,
as is always the custom in the Greek
Church — while the clergy went behind the
screen of the sanctuary. The Patriarch,
after swinging a silver censer through
the church, took his place at the right of
the chancel on a high canopied throne of
carved wood inlaid with ivory. He made
a wonderful picture there with his fine
profile and long white beard and gorgeous
vestments. On a lower and smaller throne
at his right sat the Grand Logothete. The
Grand Logothete happens at present to
be a preternaturally small man, and time
has greatly diminished his dignities. The
glitter of his decorations, however, and
the antiquity of his office make him what
compensation they can. His office is an in-
heritance of Byzantine times, when he
was a minister of state. Now he is the
official representative of the Patriarch at
the Sublime Porte and accompanies him
to the palace when his Holiness has audi-
ence of the Sultan.

No rite, I suppose, surpasses that of the
Greek Church in splendor. The carved
and gilded iconostasis, the icons set about
with gold, the multitude of candles, pre-
cious lamps, and chandeliers, the rich vest-
ments, the clouds of incense, make an
overpowering appeal to the senses. To the
Western eye, however, there is too much
gilt and blaze for perfect taste, there are
too many objects in proportion to the
space they fill. And certainly to the West-
ern ear the Byzantine chant, however in-
teresting on acount of its descent from
the antique Greek modes, lacks the charm
of the Gregorian or of the beautiful Rus-
sian choral. At a point of the service the
Gospels were read by different voices in
a number of different languages. I recog-
nized Latin and Slavic among them.
Finally the Patriarch withdrew in the
same state as he entered. On his way to
his own apartments he paused on an open
gallery and made an address to the crowd
in the court that had been unable to get
into the church. Then he held in the great
saloon of his palace a levee of those who
had been in the church, and each of them
was presented with gayly decorated Easter

eggs and with a cake called a Isurek. These
dainties are the universal evidence of the
Greek Easter — these and the salutation
" Christ is risen," to which answer is made
by lips the least sanctimonious, " In truth,
he is risen." Holy Thursday is the tra-
ditional day for dyeing eggs. On Holy Sat-
urday the Patriarch sends an ornamental
basket' of eggs and tsurek to the Sultan.
Tsurek, or chorek as it is more legitimately
called in Turkish, is like the Easter cake
of northern Italy. It is a sort of big
brioche made in three strands braided to-
gether.

Easter Monday is in some ways a great-
er feast than Easter itself. In Constanti-
nople the Christian population is so large
that when the Greeks and Armenians stop
work their fellow citizens find it easy to
follow suit. The Phanar is a favorite place
of resort throughout the Easter holidays,
an open space between the patriarchate
and the Golden Horn being turned into a
large and lively fair. The traditional place
for the celebration of the day, however, is
in the open spaces of the Taxim, on the
heights of Pera. The old travellers all
have a chapter about the festivities which
used to take place there, and remnants of
them may still be seen. The Armenians
gather chiefly in a disused cemetery of
their cult, where the tomb of a certain
Saint Kevork is honored at this season
and where peasants from Asia Minor may
sometimes be seen dancing among the
graves. A larger and noisier congregation
assembles at the upper edge of the parade-
ground across the street. Not a little
color is given to it by Greeks from the
region of Trebizond, who sometimes are
not Greeks at all, but Laz, and who often
wear the hood of that mysterious people
knotted around their heads. They have a
strange dance which they continue hour
after hour to the tune of a little violin
hanging from the player's hand. They
hold each other's fingers in the air, and as
they dance they keep up a quivering in
their thighs, which they vary by crouch-
ing to their heels and throwing out first
one leg and then the other with a shout.
An even more positive touch of color is
given to the scene by the Kourds — or
Kiirts, as they pronounce their own name.
They set up a tent, in front of which a
space is partially enclosed by screens of

494

Greek Feasts

the same material. I remember seeing
one such canvas that was lined with a
vivid yellow pattern on a red ground.
There swarthy Kourds in gayly embroid-
ered jackets or waistcoats gather to smoke,
to drink tea, and to dance in their own
more sedate way, while gypsies pipe unto
them and pound a big drum. I once asked
one of the dancers how it was that he, be-
ing no Christian, made merry at Easter
time. "Eh," he answered, "there is no
work. Also, since the constitution we are
all one, and if one nation rejoices, the
others rejoice with it. Now all that re-
mains," he went on, "is that there should
be no rich and no poor, and that we should
all have money together." Interesting as
I found this socialistic opinion in the
mouth of a Kourdish hamal, I could not
help remembering how it had been put.
into execution in 1896, when the Kourds
massacred the Armenian hamals and
wrested from the survivors the profitable
guild of the street porters. It was then
that the Easter glory departed from the
Taxim. But the place had already been
overtaken by the growing city, while in-
creasing facilities of communication now
daily enlarge the radius of the holiday-
maker.

One assembly of Easter week which still
is to be seen in something of its pristine
glory is the fair of Baloukli. This takes
place on the Friday and lasts through
Sunday. The scene of it is the monastery
of Baloukli, outside the land walls of
Stamboul. It is rather curious that the
Turkish name of so ancient a place should
have superseded even among the Greeks
its original appellation. The Byzantine
emperors had a villa there and several of
them built churches in the vicinity. The
name Baloukli, however, which might be
translated as the Fishy Place, comes from
the legend every one knows of the Greek
monk who was frying fish when news
was brought him that the Turks had
taken the city. He refused to believe it,
saying he would do so if his fish jumped
out of the frying-pan — not into the fire,
but into the spring beside him. Which
they promptly did. Since when the life-
giving spring, as it is called, has been pop-
ulated by fish that look as if they were
half-fried. The thing on Baloukli Day is
to make a pilgrimage to the pool of these

miraculous fish, to drink of the water in
which they swirn, to wash one's hands and
face and hair in it, and to take some of it
away in a bottle. The spring is at one end
of a dark chapel half underground, into
which the crowd squeezes in batches.
After receiving the benefits of the holy
water you kiss the icons in the chapel. A
priest in an embroidered stole, who holds
a small cross in his hand, will then make
the holy sign with it upon your person
and offer you the cross and his hand as-
well to kiss, in return for which you drop
a coin into the slot of a big box beside
him. Candles are also to be had for burn-
ing at the various icons. The greater
number of these, however, are in the mon-
astery church hard by. And so many can-
dles burn before them that attendants go
about every few minutes, blow out the
candles, and throw them into a box, to
make room for new candles. There are
also priests to whom you tell your name,
which they add to a long list, and in re-
turn for the coin you leave behind you
they pray for blessing upon the name.
All this is interesting to watch, by reason
of the great variety of the pilgrims and
the unconscious lingering of paganism in
their faith; and while there is a hard com-
mercial side to it all, you must remember
that a hospital and other charitable in-
stitutions largely profit thereby.

There are also interesting things to
watch outside the monastery gate. Tem-
porary coffee-houses and eating-places are
established there in abundance, and the
hum of festivity that arises from them
may be heard afar among the cypresses
of the surrounding Turkish cemetery. I
must add that spirituous liquors are dis-
pensed with some freedom ; for the Greek
does not share the hesitation of his Turk-
ish brother in such matters, and he con-
siders it well-nigh a Christian duty to im-
bibe at Easter. To imbibe too much at
that season, as at New Year's and one or
two other great feasts, is by no means
held to impair a man's reputation for
sobriety. It is surprising, however, how
soberly the pleasures of the day are in
general taken. As you sit at a table ab-
sorbing your own modest refreshment
you are even struck by a certain stolidity
in those about you. Perhaps it is partly
due to the fact that the crowd is not

Greek Feasts

495

purely Greek. Armenians are there, Bul-
garians, Albanians, Turks too. Then
many of the pilgrims are peasants come in
ox-carts from outlying villages and daz-
zled a little by this urban press. They lis-
ten in pure delight to the music that pours
from a hundred instruments. The crown-
ing glory of such an occasion is to have a
musician sit at the table with you, pref-
erably a hand-organ man or a gypsy with
his pipe. GjqDsy women
go about telling fortunes.
"You are going to have
great calamities," utters
one darkly when you re-
fuse to hear your fate.
" Is that the way to get
a piaster out of me?"
you ask. "But after-
ward you will become
very rich," she conde-
scends to add. Other
gypsies carry miniature
marionette shows on
their backs in glass cases.
Wandering musicians
tempt you to employ
their arts. Venders of
unimaginable sweets
pick their way among
the tables. B eggars ex-
hibit horrible deformi-
ties and make artful
speeches. " May you enjoy your youth!"
is one. "May you know no bitternesses ! ' '
exclaims another with meaning emphasis.
"May God forgive your dead," utters a
third. "The world I hear but the world
I do not see," cries a blind man melodra-
matically. "Little eyes I have none."
Diminutives are much in favor among this
gentry. And every two minutes some one
comes with a platter or with a brass casket
sealed with a big red seal and says, " Your
assistance," adding "for the church," or
"for the school," or "for the hospital," if
you seem to fail to take in what is expected
of you. Your assistance need not be very
heavy, however, and you feel that you owe
something in return for the pleasures of
the occasion.

Beyond the circle of eating-places
stretches an open field which is the scene
of the more active enjoyment of the day.
There the boat-swings beloved of Constan-
tinople children are installed, together with
Vol. LV.— S3

Joachim III, ecumenical Patriarch
of Constantinople.

merry-go-rounds, weights which one sends
to the top of a pole by means of a ham-
mer blow, and many another world-wide
device for parting the holiday-maker and
his money. One novel variant is an in-
clined wire, down which boys slide hang-
ing from a pulley. Dancing is the favor-
ite recreation of the men. When they
happen to be Bulgars of Macedonia they
join hands and circle about one of their
number who plays the
bagpipe. Every few
steps the leader stops
and, steadied by the man
who holds the other end
of his handkerchief, in-
dulges in posturings ex-
pressive of supreme
enjoyment. The pas-
chaliatico of the Greeks is
less curious but more
graceful. After watch-
ing the other dances,
picturesque as they are,
one seems to come back
with it to the old Greek
sense of measure. And
it is danced with a light-
someness which is less
evident with other races.
The men put their hands
on each other's shoulders
and circle in a sort of
barn-dance step to the strains of a lan-
terna. Of which more anon.

The feast of Our Lady of the Fishes is
one of the greatest popular festivals in
Constantinople. By no means, however,
is it the only one of its kind. The cult of
holy wells forms a chapter by itself in the
observances of the Greek Church. This
cult has an exceptional interest for those
who have been touched by the classic in-
fluence, as offering one of the most visible
points at which Christianity turned to its
own use the customs of paganism. A holy
well, an aydsma as the Greeks call it, is
nothing more or less than the sacred
fount of antiquity. Did not Horace cel-
ebrate such a one in his ode to the Fons
BandusicR ? As a matter of fact a belief in
naiads still persists among Greek peas-
ants. And you can pay a lady no greater
compliment than to tell her that she looks,
or even that she cooks, like a nereid.
For under that comprehensive name the

496

Greek Feasts

nymphs are now known. But as guardians
of sacred founts they, Hke some of the
greater divinities, have been baptized with
Christian names. There is an infinity of
such springs in and about Constantinople.
Comparatively few of them are so well
housed as the aydsma of Baloukli. Some
of them are scarcely to be recognized
from any profane rill in the open country,
while others are in Turkish hands and
accessible only on the day of the saint to
which they are dedicated. On that day,
and in the case of an aydsma of some re-
pute on the days before and after — unless
the nearest Sunday determine otherwise —
is celebrated the paniywi of the patron of
the spring. Paniytri, or panaylr, has the
same origin as our word panegyric. For
the reading of the saint's panegyric is
one of the religious exercises of the day.
Which, like the early Christian agape
and the contemporary Italian festa, is an-
other survival of an older faith. But re-
ligious exercises are not the essential part
of a paniytri to most of those who take
part in one. Nor need a paniytri neces-
sarily take place at a holy well. The num-
ber of them that do take place is quite
fabulous. Still, as the joy of life was dis-
covered in Greece, who shall blame the
Greeks of to-day for finding so many oc-
casions to manifest it? And it is natural
that these occasions should oftenest arise
during the clement half of the year, when
the greater feasts of the church are done.

One of the earliest "panegyrics" of the
season is that of Ai Sardnda, which is
held on the gth/zad of March. At Sa-
rdnda means Saint Forty to many good
people, although others designate thereby
the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste — now the
Turkish city of Sivas. There is a spring
dedicated to these worthies on the out-
skirts of Pera, between the place called
The Stones and the palace of Dolma Bagh-
cheh. I find it difficult to share the popu-
lar belief that the forty martyrs of Sivas
ever had anything to do with this site. It
is true that the pious Empress Pulcheria
dug them up in the fifth century and
transported them with great pomp to the
church she built for them on the farther
side of the Golden Horn. It is also true
that their church was demolished shortly
before the Turkish conquest, and its mar-
bles used in fortifying the Golden Gate.

But why should a Turkish tomb on the
hillside above the aydsma be venerated
by the Greeks as the last resting-place of
"Saint Forty"? Has it anything to do
with the fact that the forty martyrs are
commemorated at the vernal equinox,
which happens to be the New Year of the
Persians and which the Turks also ob-
serve?

Being ignorant of all these matters, my
attention was drawn quite by accident
to the tomb in question, by some women
who were tying rags to the grille of a win-
dow. The act is common enough in the
Levant, among Christians and Moham-
medans alike. It signifies a wish on the
part of the person who ties the rag, which
should be torn from his own clothing.
More specifically it is sometimes supposed
to bind to the bar any malady with which
he may happen to be afflicted. Near this
grille was a doorway through which I saw
people coming and going. I therefore
decided to investigate. Having paid ten
paras for that privilege to a little old
Turk with a long white beard, I found
myself in a typical Turkish tUrbek. In the
centre stood a ridged and turbaned cata-
falque, while Arabic inscriptions adorned
the walls. I asked the hoja in attendance
who might be buried there. He told me
that the Greeks consider the tomb to be
that of Saint Forty, while the Turks honor
there the memory of a certain holy Ah-
met. I would willingly have known more
about this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of a
saint; but others pressed behind me and
the hoja asked if I were not going to cir-
culate. He also indicated the left side of
the catafalque as the place for me to
begin. I accordingly walked somewhat
leisurely around the room. When I came
back to the hoja he surprised me not a lit-
tle by throwing a huge string of wooden
beads over my head, obliging me to step
clear of them. He then directed me to cir-
culate twice more. Which I did with more
intelligence, he muttering some manner of
invocation the while. The third time I
was considerably delayed by a Greek lady
with two little boys who carried toy bal-
loons. The little boys and their balloon
strings got tangled in the string of the big
wooden beads, and one of the balloons
broke away to the ceiling, occasioning
fearful sounds of lamentation in the holy

I'he Phanar is a favorite place of resort throughout the Easter holidays. — Page 493.

place. The hoja kept his temper admira-
ably, however. He was not too put out to
inform me that I owed him a piaster for
the service he had rendered me. I begged
his pardon for troubHng to remind me,
saying that I was a stranger. He politely
answered that one must always learn a
first time, adding that a piaster would not
make me poor nor him rich. I reserved
my opinion on the latter point when I saw
how many of them he took in. At the
foot of the catafalque a Turkish boy was
selling tapers. I bought one, as it were an
Athenian sacrificing to the unknown god,
lighted it, and stuck it into the basin of
sand set for the purpose. That done I
considered myself free to admire the more
profane part of the panayir.

Part of it covered the adjoining slopes,
where peaceably incHned spectators, in-
eluding Turkish women not a few, might
also contemplate the blossoming peach-
trees that added their color to the oc-
casion and the farther panorama of Bos-
phorus and Marmora. But the crux of the
proceedings was in a small hollow below
the tomb. I must confess that I shrank

from joining the press of the faithful about
the grotto of the sacred fount. I con-
tented myself with hovering on their out-
skirts. A black group of priestly cylin-
ders marked the densest part of the crowd,
and near them a sheaf of candles burned
strangely in the clear spring sunlight. A
big refreshment tent was pitched not too
far away to receive the overflow of devo-
tion, reaching out canvas arms to make
further space for tables and chairs. The
faded green common to Turkish tents was
lined with dark red, appliqued to which
were panels of white flower-pots and
flowers. I wondered if the tent man wit-
tingly repeated this note of the day. For
flowers were everywhere in evidence. Li-
lacs, tulips, hyacinths, jonquils, violets,
and narcissi were on sale under big green
canvas umbrellas at the edge of the hol-
low, while every other pilgrim who came
away from the aydsma carried a bottle
of the holy water in one hand and a spring
flower in the other.

Interesting as is the panayfr of the
forty martyrs, it does not rank with the
later and greater spring festival of Saint

497

The Kourds

t up a tent, in front of which a space is partially enclosed. —Page 493.

George. This also has Turkish affiliations,
at least in Constantinople and Macedonia.
Both races count Saint George's Day,
April 23 /May 6, the official beginning
of summer — of the good time, as modern
Greek pleasantly puts it. The Turks,
however, dedicate the day to one Hidr
Elyess. But it is not too difficult to relate
this somewhat vague personage to our
more familiar friend Elijah, who in his
character of Saint Elias shares with Saint
George the mantle of Apollo. Nor is the
heavenly charioteer the only one of the
Olympians whose cult survives to-day
among their faithful people. The Hebrew
prophet would doubtless have been much
astonished to learn that he was to be the
heir of a Greek god. He owes it partly to
the similarity of his name to the Greek
word for sun and partly to the chariot of
fire that carried him out of the world. As
for " the infamous George of Cappadocia,"
as Gibbon denominates the patron saint
of our ancestral island, his part in the
heritage of Apollo is due to his drag-
on, cousin-german to the python of the
Far Darter. The sanctuaries of these two
498

Christian legatees of Olympus have re-
placed those of Apollo on all hilltops,
while their name-days are those when men
feasted of old the return and the midsum-
mer splendor of the sun.

The place among places to celebrate
Saint George's Day is Prinkipo. That de-
licious island deserves a book to itself.
Indeed, I believe several have been writ-
ten about it. One of them is by a polit-
ical luminary of our own firmament who
flamed for a moment across the Byzantine
horizon and whose counterfeit present-
ment, in a bronze happily less enduring
than might be, hails the motormen of
Astor Place, New York. Sunset Cox's
work bears the ingratiating title of "The
Pleasures of Prinkipo; or, The Diversions
of a Diplomat" — if that is the order of
the alternatives. The pleasures of Prin-
kipo are many as its red and white sage
roses; but none of them are more char-
acteristic than to climb the Sacred Way
through olive and cypress and pine to
the little monastery crowning the higher
hill of the island and to take part in the
ceremonies of rejoicing over the return

Greek Feasts

499

of the sun. This is a paniytri much fre-
quented by the people of the Marmora,
who come in their iishing-boats from dis-
tant villages of the marble sea. Their
costumes become annually more corrupt,
I am pained to state;
but there are still visi-
ble among them ladies
in print, sometimes
even in rich velvet,
trousers of a fulness,
wearing no hat but a
painted muslin hand-
kerchief over the hair
and adorned with dow-
ries in the form of strung
gold coins. They do not
all come to make merry.
Among them are not a
few ill or deformed, who
hope a miracle from
good Saint George.
You may see them lying
pale and full of faith on
the strewn bay of the
little church. They are
allowed to pass the
night there, in order to
absorb the virtue of the
holy place. Ihaveeven
known of a sick child's
clothes being left in the
church a year in hope
of saving its life.

But these are only in-
cidents in the general
tide of merrymaking.
Eating and drinking,
music and dance, go on
without interruption for
three days and three
nights. The music is
made in many ways, of which the least pop-
ular is certainly not the way of the lan-
terna. The lanterna is a kind of hand-
organ, a hand-piano rather, of Italian
origin but with an accent and an inter-
spersing of bells peculiar to Constanti-
nople. It should attract the eye as well
as the ear, usually by means of the por-
trait of some beauteous being set about
with a garland of artificial flowers. And
it is engineered by two young gentle-
men in fezes of an extremely dark red, in
short black jackets or in bouffant shirt-
sleeves of some magnificent print, with

a waistcoat more double-breasted than
you ever saw and preferably worn unbut-
toned; also in red or white girdles, in
trousers that flare toward the bottom like
a sailor's, and in shoes or slippers that

Fringes of colored paper are strung from liouse to liouse. — Page 500.

should have no counter. Otherwise the
rules demand that the counter be turned
under the wearer's heel. Thus accoutred
he bears his lanterna on his back from pa-
tron to patron and from one panaytr to
another. His companion carries a camp-
stool, whereon to rest his instrument while
turning the handle hour in and hour out.
I happen, myself, to be not a little subject
to the spell of music. I have trembled
before Fitzner, Kneisel, and Sevcik quar-
tets and I have touched infinity under
the subtlest bows and batons of my time.
Yet I must confess that I am able to listen

500

Greek Feasts

to a lanterna without displeasure. On one
occasion I listened to many of them, ac-
companied by pipes, drums, gramophones,
and wandering violins, for the whole of a
May night on Saint George's hilltop in
Prinkipo. What is more, I understood in
myself how the Dionysiac frenzy was fed
by the cymbals of the maenads, and I re-
sented all the inhibitions of a New Eng-
land origin that kept me from joining the
dancers. Some of them were the Laz por-
ters of the island, whose exhausting meas-
ure was more appropriate to such an orgy
than to Easter Monday. Others were
women, for once. But they kept demure-
ly to themselves, apparently untouched by
any corybantic fury. The same could not
be said of their men, whose dancing was not
always decent. They were bareheaded, or
wore a handkerchief twisted about their
hair like a fillet, and among them were
faces that might have looked out of an
Attic frieze. It gave one the strangest
sense of the continuity of things. In the
lower darkness a few faint hghts were
scattered. One wondered how, to them,
must seem the glare and clangor of this
island hilltop, ordinarily so silent and de-
serted. The music went up to the quiet
stars, the revellers danced unwearying, a
half-eaten moon slowly lighted the dark
sea, a spring air moved among the pines,
and then a grayness came into the east,
near the Bithynian Olympus, and at last
the god of hilltops rode into a cloud-
barred sky.

The second feast of Apollo takes place
at midsummer, namely on Saint Elias's
Day (July 20/August 2). Arnaoutkyoi is
where it may be most profitably admired.
Arnaoutkyoi, Albanian Village, is the Turk-
ish name of a thriving suburb which the
Greeks call Great Current, from the race
of the Bosphorus past its long point. It
perhaps requires a fanatical eye to dis-
cover anything Apollonic in that lively
settlement. No one will gainsay, how-
ever, that the joy of life is visible and
audible enough in Arnaoutkyoi during
the first three days of August. There also
is a sacred way, leading out of an odorif-
erous ravine to a high place and a grove
whither all men gather in the heat of the
day to partake of the water of a holy well.
But waters less sanctified begin to flow
more freely as night draws on, along the

cool quay and in the purlieus thereof.
Fringes of colored paper are strung from
house to house, flags hang out of win-
dows or across the street, wine-shops are
splendid with banners, rugs, and garlands
of bay, and you may be sure that the
sound of the lanterna is not unheard in
the land. The perfection of festivity is
to attach one of these inspiriting instru-
ments to your person for the night. The
thing may be done for a dollar or two.
You then take a table at a cafe and order
with your refreshments a candle, which
you light and cause to stand with a little
of its own grease. In the meantime per-
haps you buy as many numbers as your
means will allow out of a bag offered you
by a young gentleman with a watermelon
under his arm, hoping to find among them
the mystic number that will make the mel-
on your own. But you never do. When
your candle has burned out — or even be-
fore, if you be so prodigal — you move on
with your lanterna to another cafe. And
so wears the short summer night away.

To the sorrow of those who employ
Greek labor, but to the joy of him who
dabbles in Greek folklore, paniyiria in-
crease in frequency as summer draws to
a close. The picturesque village of Can-
dilli, opposite Arnaoutkyoi — and any
church dedicated to the Metamorphosis —
is the scene of an interesting one on Trans-
figuration Day (August 6/19). No good
Greek eats grapes till after the Transfigu-
ration. At the mass of that morning bas-
kets of grapes are blessed by the priests
and afterward passed around the church.
I know not whether some remnant of a
bacchic rite be in this solemnity. It so
happens that the delicious chaoush grapes
of Constantinople, which have spoiled me
for all others that I know, ripen about that
time. But as the blessing of the waters
drives away the kallikdntzari, so the bless-
ing of the grapes puts an end to the evil
influence of the thrymais. The thrymais
are probably descended from the dryads of
old. Only they now haunt the water, in-
stead of the trees, and their influence is
baleful during the first days of August.
Clothes washed then are sure to rot, while
the fate of him so bold as to bathe during
those days is to break out into sores.

The next great feast is that of the
Assumption, which is preceded by a fort-

Greek- Feasts

501

night's fast. Those who would see its
panegyric celebrated with due circum-
stance should row on the 28th of August
to Yenikeuy and admire the plane-shaded
avenue of that fashionable village, deco-
rated in honor of the occasion and mu-
sical with mastic glasses and other in-
struments of sound. A greater panaytr,
however, take^place a month later in the
pleasant meadows of Gyok Sou, known to
Europe as the Sweet Waters of Asia. Two
feasts indeed, the Nativity of the Virgin
and the Exaltation of the Cross (Sep-
tember 8/21 and 14/27), then combine
to make a week of rejoicing. There is
nothing to be seen at Gyok Sou that may
not be seen at other fetes of the same
kind. I do recollect, though, a dance of
Anatolian peasants in a ring, who held
each other first by the little finger, then
by the hand, then by the elbow, and lastly
by the shoulder.. And the amphorje of the
local pottery works in which people carry
away their holy water give the rites of the
aydsma a classic air. But this panayir has
an ampler setting than the others, in its
green river valley dotted with great trees.
And it enjoys an added importance be-
cause it is to all practical purposes the
last of the season. No one can count on
being able to make merry out of doors on
Saint Demetrius' Day (October 26 /No-
vember 8). Saint Demetrius is as inter-
esting a personality as Saint George. He
also is an heir of divinity, for on him,
curiously enough, have devolved the re-
sponsibilities of the goddess Demeter. He
is the patron of husbandmen, who dis-
charge laborers and lease fields on his day.
Among working people his is a favorite
season for matrimony. I know not how it
is that some sailors will not go to sea after
At thimitri, until the waters have been
blessed at Epiphany. Perhaps it is that he
marks for Greeks and Turks alike the be-
ginning of winter, being known to the lat-
ter as Kassim. This division of the seasons
is clearly connected with the Pelasgian
myth of Demeter. The feast of her suc-
cessor I have never found particularly
interesting, at least as it is celebrated at
Kourou Cheshmeh. I always remember
it, however, for an altar festooned about
with a battered sculpture of rams' heads

grapes, and indistinguishable garlands.
Very likely no sacrifice to Demeter was
ever laid on that old marble, as it pleases
me to imagine. But it stands half buried
in the earth near the mosque of the vil-
lage, a curiously vivid symbol of the con-
trasts and survivals that are so much of
the interest of Constantinople.

These paniytria are only a few of an
inexhaustible list, for every church and
spring has its own. I have not even men-
tioned certain famous ones that are not
easily visited. Of this category, though
less famous than the fairs of Darija, Pyr-
gos, or Silivri, is the feast of the Panayta
MavromolUissa. This madonna in the
church of Arnaoutkyoi is a black icon re-
puted to have been found in the fields at
the mouth of the Black Sea. Every year
on the 5th of September she is carried back
in a cortege of fishing-boats — weeping, it
is said — by priests and well-wishers who
hold a picnic panayir in the vicinity of
the Cyanean Rocks. I have not spoken,
either, of Ascension Day, which it is
proper to celebrate by taking your first
sea bath. Or of Saint John's Day, known
by its bonfires and divinations. The
Greeks often burn in the fires of Saint
John one or two effigies which are said to
represent Judas, though Herod and Sa-
lome should rather perish on that oc-
casion. Then there is May Day, when
young men and maidens get up early in
the morning, as they do in Italy, and go
out into the fields to sing, to dance, to
drink milk, to pick flowers, and to make
wreaths which the swain hangs up on the
door-post of the lady of his heart. And
equally characteristic, in a different way,
are the days when men eat and drink in
honor of their dead. No one, I suppose,
tries any longer to prove that the modern
Greek is one with his classic ancestor.
Yet he remains curiously faithful to the
customs of ancient Greece. Whereby he
affords us an interesting glimpse into the
processes of evolution. In him the an-
tique and the modern world come to-
gether and we see for ourselves, more
clearly than on the alien soil of the West,
how strangely habit is rooted in the heart
of man, and how the forms of Christianity
are those of the paganism that preceded it.