The Greek heritage of Macedonia
Tymphaios
April 28, 2009
Bulgarian and more recently Yugoslav policies under Tito, dictated by Stalin, have attempted again and again to present to the inhabitants of the region and to the world at large a picture of a Macedonian ethnicity as distinct or even opposed to Greek. With this aim, not only a fictitious Slav "Macedonian" ethnicity has been fashioned out of the Slavs of the central Balkans but they have even been alleged to exist in Greece itself, hidden secretly, terrorized or suppressed for decades without any of the world´s nations or humanitarian organizations realizing this. It would have been more honest for the Macedonists of FYROM if, rather than imagine a persecuted Slavic population in Greece, tried to understand the meaning of the words of Stalin in creating their artificial ethnicity in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria:
΄΄Cultural autonomy must be granted to Pirin Macedonia within the framework of Bulgaria… That a Macedonian consciousness has not yet developed among the population is of no account. No such consciousness existed in Byelorussia either when we proclaimed it a Soviet Republic. However, later it was shown that a Byelorussian people did in fact exist.΄΄
STALIN TO BULGARIAN DELEGATION, The Kremlin, 7 June 1946
That the Western nations actually understood this to be a thinly-veiled attack on Greek sovereignty was of little inconvenience in the scheme of things behind the Iron Curtain, where education and doctrine did not mean different things. The former inhabitants of southern Yugoslavia, knowing nothing but communist dogma for 50 years or so are now surprised to find out that the story in the West is different from what was written in their schoolbooks. See for example Risto Stefov´s:
΄΄As a result today we have a world which believes Macedonians do not exist and everything that is Macedonian is Greek… As unbelievable and bizarre as this may sound, it is true. It all starts in school where children are taught to believe that Macedonians are Greek and as these children grow up and some become teachers, they in turn teach new children to believe that Macedonians are Greek and the cycle of lies continues.΄΄
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/100122
Generations of children around the world have been apparently indoctrinated to believe a lie, that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks, when presumably according to Stalin they should have been southern Slavs. In a climate of this kind, attempts to present a clear-headed argument are bound to fall upon mainly deaf ears. Until education really becomes separated from political dogma, the attempt is next to futile. Nevertheless, one feels compelled to say something about the real heritage of Macedonia, the Greek one, as recorded before the times of Tito and Stalin.
The true character of Macedonia (in Greece) is clear not only from the historical and archaeological record but also from the cultural heritage of Macedonia, Greek from ancient times without interruption, that remains alive among Greeks in Macedonia. Among the first researchers of Macedonian folklore was George Frederick Abbott. A student at the University of Cambridge, in 1900 he visited Macedonia and studied the customs and songs of the region. He published two books based on that visit: "Macedonian Folklore" (1903) and "The Tale of a Tour in Macedonia" (1903). Among the other early collectors of Macedonian songs was Nikolaos Politis, a Greek Professor, who published Greek folk songs in a large anthology called "Eklogai" (1914). Stilpon Kyriakides, the founder of the Society for Macedonian Studies collected further material.
In Macedonian Folklore, George Abbott refers to many of the songs, riddles and stories he heard while travelling through Macedonia, specifically the area that is today in Greece. All the songs are in Greek and all the stories he heard, were told by Greeks and the customs were of Greeks. By "Macedonian", he means a Greek. By Macedonian folklore, he refers to the folklore of the Greeks, as he clearly says that from Serres southwards, the population (in modern Greek Macedonia) was Greek:
΄΄Everything that savours of antiquity is by the Macedonian peasant attributed to the two great kings of antiquity. His songs and traditions, of which he is vastly and justly proud, are often described as having come down "from the times of Philip and Alexander – and Herakles," a comprehensive period to which all remnants of the past are allotted with indiscriminating impartiality.΄΄
George F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (1903), Ch. 15: Alexander and Philip in folk-tradition. http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c259/panosvls/folklore/1.jpg
In this context many myths and legends were transmitted. According to one such legend, the sister of Alexander the Great, a mermaid ("gorgona") would ask sailors for news about her brother. If the sailors said that Alexander has been long dead, she would raise a storm and the ship would sink. How the sister of Alexander became a mermaid is not clear but similar myths existed in ancient Greece, for example of a Nereid who was bewitched by Circe and was turned into Scylla, a sea monster that terrorized sailors. George Abbott fills a chapter of his book with legends about the ancient Greek heroes and has recorded a short popular Macedonian rhyme (in Greek), echoing the answer of the sailors to the mermaid:
΄΄Alexander the Great liveth, aye he doth live and reign΄΄.
George F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (1903), Spirits and Spells. http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c259/panosvls/folklore/7.jpg
A similar legend exists in other parts of Greece (eg. John Cuthbert Lawson (1910) Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press).
The local traditions and legends amongst the Macedonians (i.e. the Greeks of Macedonia) about Alexander the Great were not of course invented in 19th or early 20th century, they existed many centuries ago, as the French traveler in Macedonia Pierre Belon attested in 1553. Pierre Belon mentions a local myth in the village Chalastrea close to ancient Philippoi: The locals called this village "town of Bucephalus" and they believed that there was the manger where Alexander the Great's horse was stabled:
΄΄Les habitans du pays en sont une fable enti eulx,estimants que c'est la mangeoire de la iument d' Alexandre le Grand.Mais par la iument fault entendre Bucephalus΄΄
Pierre Belon ( 1553) Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie et autres pays étrangèrs.
After the failure of the Greek revolution in Chalcidice in 1821, the village of Ierissos, which took part in the 1821 Greek War of Independence in Macedonia, was burnt down and 400 persons were killed. According to one tradition, they were taken to a place called "the black threshing floor" and were made to dance under the swords of the Turkish soldiers. With every turn a man was beheaded. According to another tradition, the notables among others, afraid for more reprisals escaped to the mountains. When Easter arrived, it is said that the city of Ierissos appeared deserted without its inhabitants. The Turks sent for them and informed them that if they came back they would not be prosecuted in any way. On Tuesday after Easter Sunday those that had left returned. When they reached a threshing floor at the outskirts of the town, the Greeks were obliged to pass under an arch formed by the swords of Turkish soldiers, in order to show how they are subjugated to the Ottoman rule. A young man ashamed for this humiliation in front of the eyes of his loved one, seized the swords and was killed by the Turks on the spot. The dance has been danced in Ierissos every year on the first Tuesday after Easter at a place known as the "threshing floor of the black lad". It was danced of course during the Ottoman period and the reference to the young man´s loved one is meant to be an allegory of liberty.
΄΄Begin the dance, first maiden,
That I may see the maid I love, and him who holds her hand;
A man proposes her engagement, a neighbour and a foe,
A neighbour and a foe, may he hold her hand with glee,
Until next Sunday, when we shall be engaged.΄΄
(Kangelevtos, abridged)
In many villages in Serres, every year on the 1st of March the ancient Greek custom "Chelidonismata" is revived (from the word helidoni - or chelidon in ancient Greek – the swallow). The children are celebrating the coming of spring, which is marked by the arrival of swallows. They make a swallow's simulacrum and go around the village houses singing a carol, the "Helidona".
΄΄The swallow is coming out of the Black Sea
When she had crossed a sea, she stopped and she sang.
She had learned the letters, the letters one studies,
The Greek letters that the children learn,
The children from their teacher.
The teacher sent us to please give us five eggs;
And if you give no eggs we shall take the hen,
To lay eggs and to roost and to lead her brood.΄΄
Housewives give them confectioneries or money, if they wish. This custom survives not only in Serres but in several regions of Macedonia and the rest of Greece, especially in Epirus, Thrace and the Dodecanese. Ancient authors such Athenaeus and Pliny make references to this custom and preserved the original song:
΄΄The swallow came,
bringing good times
and good years,
on her abdomen white,
black on her back΄΄.
by Athenaeus (3rd C AD)
This custom is maintained in Serres in the so called "darnakochoria" (Emmanouil Papas, Agio Pneuma, Neo Souli, Pentapoli, Chryso), the villages near Pangaeon mountain (Rodolivos, Prote, Palaiokome, Mesolakkia, Kormista, Krinida, Aggista, Nea Zichne), the Nigrita region villages (Nigrita, Terpne, Agia Paraskeve, Nikoklia, Verge) and many others. It is a local custom that did not come from other Greek regions with the refugees who settled in Serres after 1922. The tradition of the Chelidonismata survived even in the villages with Slavophone inhabitants, a fact that in combination with their use of other Greek customs, songs and dances which those Slavophones also maintain, strengthens the belief that under perhaps difficult circumstances they lost their Greek language but not their Greek sympathies.
George Abbott describes also other similar Macedonian customs: In pages 20-21, he describes the koronisma or crow song, an ancient term for the songs of basking musicians:
΄΄O dear crow, here is a tooth of bone,
Take it and give me a tooth of iron instead΄΄.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn17/kostas68/makfolk20-1.jpg
In the same book is described a custom celebrated in mid-Pentecost, that Abbott connects to the Roman Rosalia, the equivalent of the ancient Greek Feast of Flowers or Anthesteria. In fact Abbott points out that the word Rosalia is still used by the Greeks in the Peloponnese to denote the festival. According to this custom children knead ring-shaped cakes from flour, butter, honey and sesame oil. After baking, the cakes are kept as a protection against scarlet fever.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn17/kostas68/macfolk40anth.jpg
In the section about funeral customs, the author mentions similarities in the funeral rites between ancient Greeks and modern Macedonians. The body of the dead is anointed with wine. Coins are placed over the eyes or between the teeth, with which to pay the ferryman to Hades.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn17/kostas68/makfolk193.jpg
Similarly in the Macedonian graves excavated more recently in Pella, many males dressed as warriors were found with their eyes, mouths and chests covered in gold foil richly decorated with drawings of lions and other animals.
Other connections with the past can be found in folk song. According to Kyriakidis, a Macedonian song referred to also by Politis (Eklogai, 236) mentions a sheep with a golden fleece. The theme is similar to the golden fleece in the story of the Argonauts:
΄΄The klephts took the mountains, they stole the sacred sheep, the sheep with the golden fleece and the silver horns΄΄ Stilpon Kyriakides (1960) Macedonian songs, customs and beliefs. Makedonika, Volume 4.
Another folk song preserved by Kyriakides in the same article laments the death of a young man. It is thematically and in its language reminiscent of the battle of the medieval hero Digenis with Death.
΄΄I was going to the doctor to seek a cure for my ill-health
On the road I took, the road I am taking,
I did not cross another man´s path, I come across no one,
I crossed ways only with Death and greeted him.
Good morning Death – Welcome young lad.
Where are you going alone, my lad, are you not afraid?
I go to seek a cure, to cure my ill-health.
For you there is no cure, I am your doctor together with my sword.
God has sent me, to take your life.
Leave me Death, let me live for another four or five years.
I am young and a boy and newly wed.
I have a wife and she is young, and widowhood does not suit her.
For if she walked stately, people will say she is proud,
If she walked hastily, people will say she is looking for a husband.΄΄
These few examples convey the continuity of Greek folklore in Macedonia with the past as well as with the traditions of Greeks elsewhere. Some of the stories were transmitted to the Bulgarians and are echoed in their literature. For example in one story by the Miladinov brothers, Alexander´s sister is transformed into a dolphin (rather than into a mermaid). Rather than cherish in the shared traditions, FYROMacedonian Macedonist writers such as Alexander Donski, have tried to present Slavic customs as derived directly from ancient Greece (Macedonia) to legitimize a claim on Macedonia (Greek Macedonia). Others blithely deny that Greeks have any place in Macedonia – or even in Greece. The original intentions of the interchanges of the folkloric stories, not to say the transmission of Christianity to the Slavs, are the reverse of the recent attitudes towards Greece by the new populist Macedonists of FYROM.
΄΄Cultural autonomy must be granted to Pirin Macedonia within the framework of Bulgaria… That a Macedonian consciousness has not yet developed among the population is of no account. No such consciousness existed in Byelorussia either when we proclaimed it a Soviet Republic. However, later it was shown that a Byelorussian people did in fact exist.΄΄
STALIN TO BULGARIAN DELEGATION, The Kremlin, 7 June 1946
That the Western nations actually understood this to be a thinly-veiled attack on Greek sovereignty was of little inconvenience in the scheme of things behind the Iron Curtain, where education and doctrine did not mean different things. The former inhabitants of southern Yugoslavia, knowing nothing but communist dogma for 50 years or so are now surprised to find out that the story in the West is different from what was written in their schoolbooks. See for example Risto Stefov´s:
΄΄As a result today we have a world which believes Macedonians do not exist and everything that is Macedonian is Greek… As unbelievable and bizarre as this may sound, it is true. It all starts in school where children are taught to believe that Macedonians are Greek and as these children grow up and some become teachers, they in turn teach new children to believe that Macedonians are Greek and the cycle of lies continues.΄΄
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/100122
Generations of children around the world have been apparently indoctrinated to believe a lie, that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks, when presumably according to Stalin they should have been southern Slavs. In a climate of this kind, attempts to present a clear-headed argument are bound to fall upon mainly deaf ears. Until education really becomes separated from political dogma, the attempt is next to futile. Nevertheless, one feels compelled to say something about the real heritage of Macedonia, the Greek one, as recorded before the times of Tito and Stalin.
The true character of Macedonia (in Greece) is clear not only from the historical and archaeological record but also from the cultural heritage of Macedonia, Greek from ancient times without interruption, that remains alive among Greeks in Macedonia. Among the first researchers of Macedonian folklore was George Frederick Abbott. A student at the University of Cambridge, in 1900 he visited Macedonia and studied the customs and songs of the region. He published two books based on that visit: "Macedonian Folklore" (1903) and "The Tale of a Tour in Macedonia" (1903). Among the other early collectors of Macedonian songs was Nikolaos Politis, a Greek Professor, who published Greek folk songs in a large anthology called "Eklogai" (1914). Stilpon Kyriakides, the founder of the Society for Macedonian Studies collected further material.
In Macedonian Folklore, George Abbott refers to many of the songs, riddles and stories he heard while travelling through Macedonia, specifically the area that is today in Greece. All the songs are in Greek and all the stories he heard, were told by Greeks and the customs were of Greeks. By "Macedonian", he means a Greek. By Macedonian folklore, he refers to the folklore of the Greeks, as he clearly says that from Serres southwards, the population (in modern Greek Macedonia) was Greek:
΄΄Everything that savours of antiquity is by the Macedonian peasant attributed to the two great kings of antiquity. His songs and traditions, of which he is vastly and justly proud, are often described as having come down "from the times of Philip and Alexander – and Herakles," a comprehensive period to which all remnants of the past are allotted with indiscriminating impartiality.΄΄
George F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (1903), Ch. 15: Alexander and Philip in folk-tradition. http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c259/panosvls/folklore/1.jpg
In this context many myths and legends were transmitted. According to one such legend, the sister of Alexander the Great, a mermaid ("gorgona") would ask sailors for news about her brother. If the sailors said that Alexander has been long dead, she would raise a storm and the ship would sink. How the sister of Alexander became a mermaid is not clear but similar myths existed in ancient Greece, for example of a Nereid who was bewitched by Circe and was turned into Scylla, a sea monster that terrorized sailors. George Abbott fills a chapter of his book with legends about the ancient Greek heroes and has recorded a short popular Macedonian rhyme (in Greek), echoing the answer of the sailors to the mermaid:
΄΄Alexander the Great liveth, aye he doth live and reign΄΄.
George F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (1903), Spirits and Spells. http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c259/panosvls/folklore/7.jpg
A similar legend exists in other parts of Greece (eg. John Cuthbert Lawson (1910) Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press).
The local traditions and legends amongst the Macedonians (i.e. the Greeks of Macedonia) about Alexander the Great were not of course invented in 19th or early 20th century, they existed many centuries ago, as the French traveler in Macedonia Pierre Belon attested in 1553. Pierre Belon mentions a local myth in the village Chalastrea close to ancient Philippoi: The locals called this village "town of Bucephalus" and they believed that there was the manger where Alexander the Great's horse was stabled:
΄΄Les habitans du pays en sont une fable enti eulx,estimants que c'est la mangeoire de la iument d' Alexandre le Grand.Mais par la iument fault entendre Bucephalus΄΄
Pierre Belon ( 1553) Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie et autres pays étrangèrs.
After the failure of the Greek revolution in Chalcidice in 1821, the village of Ierissos, which took part in the 1821 Greek War of Independence in Macedonia, was burnt down and 400 persons were killed. According to one tradition, they were taken to a place called "the black threshing floor" and were made to dance under the swords of the Turkish soldiers. With every turn a man was beheaded. According to another tradition, the notables among others, afraid for more reprisals escaped to the mountains. When Easter arrived, it is said that the city of Ierissos appeared deserted without its inhabitants. The Turks sent for them and informed them that if they came back they would not be prosecuted in any way. On Tuesday after Easter Sunday those that had left returned. When they reached a threshing floor at the outskirts of the town, the Greeks were obliged to pass under an arch formed by the swords of Turkish soldiers, in order to show how they are subjugated to the Ottoman rule. A young man ashamed for this humiliation in front of the eyes of his loved one, seized the swords and was killed by the Turks on the spot. The dance has been danced in Ierissos every year on the first Tuesday after Easter at a place known as the "threshing floor of the black lad". It was danced of course during the Ottoman period and the reference to the young man´s loved one is meant to be an allegory of liberty.
΄΄Begin the dance, first maiden,
That I may see the maid I love, and him who holds her hand;
A man proposes her engagement, a neighbour and a foe,
A neighbour and a foe, may he hold her hand with glee,
Until next Sunday, when we shall be engaged.΄΄
(Kangelevtos, abridged)
In many villages in Serres, every year on the 1st of March the ancient Greek custom "Chelidonismata" is revived (from the word helidoni - or chelidon in ancient Greek – the swallow). The children are celebrating the coming of spring, which is marked by the arrival of swallows. They make a swallow's simulacrum and go around the village houses singing a carol, the "Helidona".
΄΄The swallow is coming out of the Black Sea
When she had crossed a sea, she stopped and she sang.
She had learned the letters, the letters one studies,
The Greek letters that the children learn,
The children from their teacher.
The teacher sent us to please give us five eggs;
And if you give no eggs we shall take the hen,
To lay eggs and to roost and to lead her brood.΄΄
Housewives give them confectioneries or money, if they wish. This custom survives not only in Serres but in several regions of Macedonia and the rest of Greece, especially in Epirus, Thrace and the Dodecanese. Ancient authors such Athenaeus and Pliny make references to this custom and preserved the original song:
΄΄The swallow came,
bringing good times
and good years,
on her abdomen white,
black on her back΄΄.
by Athenaeus (3rd C AD)
This custom is maintained in Serres in the so called "darnakochoria" (Emmanouil Papas, Agio Pneuma, Neo Souli, Pentapoli, Chryso), the villages near Pangaeon mountain (Rodolivos, Prote, Palaiokome, Mesolakkia, Kormista, Krinida, Aggista, Nea Zichne), the Nigrita region villages (Nigrita, Terpne, Agia Paraskeve, Nikoklia, Verge) and many others. It is a local custom that did not come from other Greek regions with the refugees who settled in Serres after 1922. The tradition of the Chelidonismata survived even in the villages with Slavophone inhabitants, a fact that in combination with their use of other Greek customs, songs and dances which those Slavophones also maintain, strengthens the belief that under perhaps difficult circumstances they lost their Greek language but not their Greek sympathies.
George Abbott describes also other similar Macedonian customs: In pages 20-21, he describes the koronisma or crow song, an ancient term for the songs of basking musicians:
΄΄O dear crow, here is a tooth of bone,
Take it and give me a tooth of iron instead΄΄.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn17/kostas68/makfolk20-1.jpg
In the same book is described a custom celebrated in mid-Pentecost, that Abbott connects to the Roman Rosalia, the equivalent of the ancient Greek Feast of Flowers or Anthesteria. In fact Abbott points out that the word Rosalia is still used by the Greeks in the Peloponnese to denote the festival. According to this custom children knead ring-shaped cakes from flour, butter, honey and sesame oil. After baking, the cakes are kept as a protection against scarlet fever.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn17/kostas68/macfolk40anth.jpg
In the section about funeral customs, the author mentions similarities in the funeral rites between ancient Greeks and modern Macedonians. The body of the dead is anointed with wine. Coins are placed over the eyes or between the teeth, with which to pay the ferryman to Hades.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn17/kostas68/makfolk193.jpg
Similarly in the Macedonian graves excavated more recently in Pella, many males dressed as warriors were found with their eyes, mouths and chests covered in gold foil richly decorated with drawings of lions and other animals.
Other connections with the past can be found in folk song. According to Kyriakidis, a Macedonian song referred to also by Politis (Eklogai, 236) mentions a sheep with a golden fleece. The theme is similar to the golden fleece in the story of the Argonauts:
΄΄The klephts took the mountains, they stole the sacred sheep, the sheep with the golden fleece and the silver horns΄΄ Stilpon Kyriakides (1960) Macedonian songs, customs and beliefs. Makedonika, Volume 4.
Another folk song preserved by Kyriakides in the same article laments the death of a young man. It is thematically and in its language reminiscent of the battle of the medieval hero Digenis with Death.
΄΄I was going to the doctor to seek a cure for my ill-health
On the road I took, the road I am taking,
I did not cross another man´s path, I come across no one,
I crossed ways only with Death and greeted him.
Good morning Death – Welcome young lad.
Where are you going alone, my lad, are you not afraid?
I go to seek a cure, to cure my ill-health.
For you there is no cure, I am your doctor together with my sword.
God has sent me, to take your life.
Leave me Death, let me live for another four or five years.
I am young and a boy and newly wed.
I have a wife and she is young, and widowhood does not suit her.
For if she walked stately, people will say she is proud,
If she walked hastily, people will say she is looking for a husband.΄΄
These few examples convey the continuity of Greek folklore in Macedonia with the past as well as with the traditions of Greeks elsewhere. Some of the stories were transmitted to the Bulgarians and are echoed in their literature. For example in one story by the Miladinov brothers, Alexander´s sister is transformed into a dolphin (rather than into a mermaid). Rather than cherish in the shared traditions, FYROMacedonian Macedonist writers such as Alexander Donski, have tried to present Slavic customs as derived directly from ancient Greece (Macedonia) to legitimize a claim on Macedonia (Greek Macedonia). Others blithely deny that Greeks have any place in Macedonia – or even in Greece. The original intentions of the interchanges of the folkloric stories, not to say the transmission of Christianity to the Slavs, are the reverse of the recent attitudes towards Greece by the new populist Macedonists of FYROM.
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