4. The ritual lament for gods and heroes

The close connection between ritual and lamentation analysed in Part I suggests that the traditional lament for the dead fulfils a dual function: objectively, it is designed to honour and appease the dead, while subjectively, it gives expression to a wide range of conflicting emotions. But the lament for the dead should not be viewed in isolation from two other important and ancient types of lament, the lament for the death of gods and heroes, and the historical lament for disasters affecting a city or a people. By examining their growth in more detail, I hope in Part II to indicate how these three types of lament, for gods, cities and men, became fused in such a way as to provide material for a rich and varied poetic response, in both literary and vernacular laments.

The earliest reference to the lament for Adonis in Greek literature comes from a fragment generally attributed to Sappho. It was probably part of a lament performed antiphonally as a dialogue between Aphrodite and the Nymphs: [1] After Sappho, there is no substantial literary reference to Adonis until the comic poets of the mid-fifth century B.C. [1a] It seems that the Adonia {55|56} was an essentially popular festival, at no time incorporated into official Athenian cults, and that it belonged exclusively to the women. In the Lysistrata, we are told how the women would make a wooden image of Adonis and lay it out on the rooftops for lamentation and interment, weeping and beating their breasts (387-98). Fragments from other comic poets confirm the popular character of the festival, and suggest that it was an occasion for ritual joy and ecstatic dancing as well as for lamentation. [2]

Nearly two centuries later, Theokritos describes the same popular festival as it was celebrated in Alexandria (Idyll 15). It is a penetrating sketch of two Syracusan ladies residing in Alexandria, who exchange gossip on children, servants, difficult husbands and the latest fashions as they prepare to attend the first day of the ritual for Adonis organized by Queen Arsinoe within the precincts of royal palace. After fighting their way through the crowded streets to the palace, they admire the intricacy of the tapestries, which realistically depict the dying Adonis, and listen to the hymn sung by a professional singer who had won a prize the previous year for her singing of dirges. The singer praises Adonis, and describes in detail the ritual cakes and the ‘gardens of Adonis’, or quick-growing seed plants in silver pots which will be taken, together with the image of Adonis, by the women on the next day to be thrown into the sea and lamented. She concludes with a farewell to Adonis until the following year, leaving the lady Gorgo to ponder, not on the importance of the ritual, but on returning home to prepare a meal for her irritable husband.

The Epitáphios for Adonis, attributed to Theokritos’ contemporary Bion, is different in that it was probably intended for actual performance on the second day of the Adónia. [3] It has the quality of a love song as well as that of a lament: the poet tells us how the rivers, trees, springs and mountains join his dirge for the fair Adonis, killed by a boar while hunting, and the cry to Adonis is echoed in refrain throughout the poem by the Loves. Kythereia herself utters a passionate farewell, varying the ritual custom of the mourner’s last greeting to the dead by asking Adonis for a final kiss before his lips are cold (42-50). At the end of the poem it is said that Hymenaios has quenched every marriage torch on the doorposts and has torn the bridal crown to shreds, changing his usual song to Hymen into a lament for Adonis (87-90).

Throughout antiquity the belief persisted that the cult of Adonis was associated with the ripening and harvesting of the fruit and flowers. The death of Adonis symbolised the cutting of the fruit and crops, his sojourn in Acheron their ripening underground. [4] If Adonis originated {56|57} in some kind of vegetation cult, it is likely that the laments sung for his death in the countryside were very different in character from the sophisticated and literary laments which have come down to us. Even so, his connection with flowers and young plants was remembered not only in the words of the lament, where it has an obvious poetic value, but in the details of the ritual: he was laid out on a bed strewn with flowers of every hue, and the ‘gardens of Adonis’ which accompanied his departure were seen as a symbol of his ephemeral life on earth. [5]

The cult can be traced back to eastern origins of extreme antiquity, and it survived at least until the fourth century A.D. After the advent of Christianity there was a tendency for Adonis' seasonal return to earth to be regarded as a mystic death and resurrection. The resulting confusion in popular imagination between Adonis and Christ may not have been discouraged by the Church fathers during the first centuries of our era. [6] But whatever changes the cult may have undergone, the fundamental and constant element of the lament was the refrain, ὦ τὸν Ἄδωνιν, which survived as long as the memory οf Adonis himself. This refrain, in Greek tradition personified into a young man who died a violent death and yet returned to earth, is thought to be Semitic in origin, meaning simply ‘Ah, lord!’ [7]

The history of Linos is not unlike that of Adonis, although it is rather more obscure and confused. Homer mentions the existence of a folk song called Linos, although it sounds more like a dance song than a lament, and Herodotos identifies the Linos song with a song common in Cyprus and Phoenicia, but also in Egypt, where it was known from earliest times, being the very first song the Egyptians sang and going under the name not of Linos but of Maneros, the son of the first Egyptian king, who died young and was mourned by his people ever afterwards. In fact, Maneros may also be a mistaken personification of the refrain 'Maa-ne-hra!', or 'Come to the house!’ [8] The Linos song is mentioned by Sappho and Pindar, and seems to have been developed as an art form in the sixth century, at the same time as the thrênos. [9]

Alongside the personified, mythical Linos and his cult song, there existed also the popular refrain αἴλινον, αἴλινον!, associated in tragedy both with the Oriental, barbaric cry of grief first uttered over the dead, and with the cry of victory. This divergence may reflect the dual nature of the cult and its ritual, death and return, lamentation and joy; if so, then the contradictory nature of the sources, some calling the aílinos a lament and others a folk song, would be explained. [10]

Related to Linos is the figure of Hymenaios. Known in Homer and {57|58} Hesiod as the nuptial hymn sung during the wedding procession, and in Sappho as a kind of bridal refrain, he is personified in a fragment of Pindar as the son of a Muse, brother of Linos and Ialemos, who, like them, died prematurely. [11] His nuptial hymn was, in one sense, the exact antithesis of the funeral songs associated with his brothers Linos and Ialemos; and yet the close connection between marriage and death, which has a long history in Greek tradition, is further borne out by Hymenaios' tragic intervention in so many funeral scenes in art and literature, where he quenches or reverses the marriage torches, and turns the wedding celebrations into funeral lamentation. [12]

Finally, according to the historian Polykrates, cited by Athenaios, in Laconia there was an annual festival to Hyakinthos and Apollo which lasted for three days. The first part was a period of mourning, devoted exclusively to Hyakinthos, who was killed by Apollo, probably accidentally. No garlands, bread or wine were brought to the banquets, and contrary to usual practice, the paean was not sung. But when the festivities to Apollo began on the second day, young boys played the lyre, sang to the accompaniment of the aulós, and danced in quick, anapaestic rhythm to express their praise of Apollo, while yet others performed, singing local songs to the accompaniment of dancers. The whole city, including the slaves, joined in the music, dancing, contests, procession and feasting (Ath. 139d-f). It was an annual festival which began with fasting and ritual lamentation, and ended in joyous feasting and ecstatic celebrations.

While mythology and literature have given to Adonis and Linos a separate lineage, identity and personality, Bormos and Lityerses appear to have existed mainly in local cults, frequently confused in ancient sources. The song for Lityerses was, according to one tradition, a comic version of the lament sung by the Black Sea people, the Mariandynoi, for Bormos, who is described by Athenaios as the son of a famous and wealthy man. In the prime of beauty and youth he disappeared while going to fetch water for the thirsty reapers, and has been invoked and lamented ever since by the Mariandynoi at harvest time. Another tradition has it that Tityos had two children, Priolas and Mariandynos, and that Mariandynos was killed while hunting. [13]

None of these figures has attracted much attention from the poets, but the annual lament sung by the Mariandynoi made a deep and lasting {58|59} impression. Aeschylus, in the Persians, refers to the Mariandynian mourner as particularly wild and ecstatic, and this is explained in two scholia with a quotation from the historian Kallistratos of the first century B.C., affirming that the popular lament of the Mariandynian aulós-players still continued in his own day (A. Pers. 935-40, cf. 937 Sch. (Α), 938 Sch. (Μ) = FHG 4.353). Its survival is independently confirmed by Nymphis (third century B.C.), cited by Athenaios (619-20). Traditions about the Mariandynoi are also found in various Byzantine sources, and the memory of their lament survived in the proverb Μαρυανδηδῶν μέμνησο θρηνητηρίων (Remember the Mariandynian mourners!), frequently quoted without reference to its Aeschylean context until at least the thirteenth century. [14]

Although the details vary, and there is considerable confusion in the ancient sources, there are certain significant features common to all these ritual laments. First, all appear to have originated in some kind of vegetation cult, in which the reaping of the corn or the harvesting of the vine, fruit and flowers was lamented. Gradually, this ancient tradition of eastern origins was transformed and diversified in Greek mythology and literature into a fully personified story, sometimes involving violent death during hunting. This alternative tradition, in which the young god or man was the victim of a wild boar, may be no less ancient, and perhaps reflects the destructive effects of hunting on a predominantly field economy. Nor was the theme a creative source for mythology only in the archaic and classical periods. Besides many variations on old themes, the Hellenistic poets were constantly elaborating new ones, such as the story of Hylas in Theokritos’ thirteenth Idyll, which is almost a replica of the story of Mariandynos. Although they became a pastoral convention, it is likely that many of the details of these stories were drawn not from imagination, but from the great diversity of local traditions. This is confirmed by the continued emphasis on the harvest associations of the ritual as it is known to have been practised by the people throughout antiquity. And one element of the primitive lament which was never forgotten or ignored, even in the most sophisticated literary compositions, was the refrain calling the dying man or god by name. This invocation was frequently expressed by the verb ἀνακαλεῖσθαι (to call upon, invoke). [15]

Second, there appears to be a connection between the development from relatively primitive to ordered musical forms, and the adaptation and refinement of an early Oriental type of lament. According to one tradition, [16] Linos was a primeval composer of thrênoi, at a time when several mythical figures invented and established new musical forms; {59|60} he, son of Ourania, was also mourned by all the singers and lyre players. [16a] In another tradition, from Argos, he was the son of Apollo and Psamathe, and his death was lamented antiphonally by groups of women and girls. In Thebes, he was a musician killed by Apollo for exciting his jealousy by his musical skill; while, according to Pindar, his memory was honoured in threnodic song. [17] Adonis, though not a musician himself, was mourned by Aphrodite and the Loves in an antiphonal lament. Of Mariandynos it is expressly stated 'that he developed particularly the singing to the aulós in lamentation, and that he taught this art to Hyagnis, father of Marsyas. There are in fact Mariandynian auloí specially suited to dirges, hence the current saying, “he plays on Mariandynian reeds”, when playing in the Ionian mode (A. Pers. 937 Sch. (A), ed. Dindorf 498-9). This tradition helps to explain why the memory of the Mariandynian lament lasted for so long. Further, although little is known of the kind of music associated with lamentation in antiquity, in all these types of lament the evidence is consistent in saying that it was performed to the shrill, high-pitched tone of the aulós (Ath. 174f-175b).

Third, both ritual and myth centre on the death and return, the káthodos and ánodos (descent and ascent) of the god. Leaving aside that controversial question of origins, the point here remains that the lament for death, frequently enacted by women weeping over images, is inseparable from the rejoicing for return, which is associated with fertility and the return of spring. It is possible that the connection between this lament and nature, which is imbedded in the ritual, explains the poetic convention of calling upon all nature to join in lamentation. Originally it belonged to the lament for the dying god, but whom nature mourned because without him it could not survive, but later it was extended to the lament for man as well.

Finally, although these laments appear to be of eastern origin, the personification into a fair youth killed prematurely is a characteristically Greek element. In myth and poetry alike great stress is laid on the you and beauty of the god, and on the wounds which only enhance his looks, even in death:

In Herodotos’ account of the hero cult for Adrastos, as reformed by Kleisthenes of Sikyon, there is no explicit reference to a lament, but the ritual character of the tragic dances for Adrastos’ páthea (sufferings) is emphasised (Hdt. 5.67). Elsewhere, annual laments as part of heroes’ festivals were common: the Thebans lamented Leukothea, but were warned by Lykourgos that if she were a goddess, it was not right to mourn her as mortal; and if mortal it was not right to pay her divine honours. Achilles was mourned with beating of the breast and lamentation by the women of Kroton, Elis and Thessaly; and at Corinth there was an annual festival, known as 'the festival of mourning' for Medea's children, which included the same 'ritual and divine lament' as for Melikertes. Similarly the daughter of Klytias, king of Megara, who married a certain Bakchios of the royal clan of the Bakchiadai of Corinth, died at an early age, and so the Megarians were made to send their young men and girls to Corinth in order to mourn her. The thrênos was probably sung antiphonally, with one choir of boys and one of girls. [18]

Besides the hero cults, many of which continued throughout antiquity, lamentation is known to have played a part in the Dionysiac and Orphic tradition and in the Eleusinian and later mysteries. As early as the sixth century B.C. the tragic dances for Adrastos were transferred to Dionysos, and we are also told that Orpheus attached to the worship of Dionysos the singing of thrênoi. Not much is known about the nature of these laments in the classical period, but later Christian writers are more explicit. Clement, at the end of the second century A.D., describes the mystic drama at Eleusis about Demeter and Kore as it was performed in his own day, mentioning mourning as an important and integral part of it. Eusebios of Caesarea (fourth century A.D.) may have exaggerated some of the activities that went on during the mysteries in his account, but his mention of thrênoi, supported as it is by other evidence, cannot be dismissed. [19] But it is Firmicus Maternus, a converted Roman senator, whose vigorous attack on Oriental and other mystery cults, written in about A.D. 345, affords the most complete account of the mystic lamentation: This account may not be significant for our knowledge of lamentation in the mystery cults of antiquity, but it shows that in the fourth century A.D., at the dawn of the Byzantine period, there still survived a mystic, ritual lamentation over the image of a god, followed by the lighting of lamps and the joyful cry of salvation and deliverance from suffering.

The lament was therefore as important in religious and mystic ritual as it was in poetry and myth. Further, in the mysteries its associations with crop fertility became fused with the belief that it was a means of salvation and deliverance. The secret páthea made the mortal initiate into a god, as is affirmed in the following Orphic text inscribed on a gold tablet for burial with the dead (from Thurii in S. Italy, fourth to third centuries B.C.): The descent of god or hero to the Underworld no longer symbolised only the burial of the crops underground, but a journey deliberately undertaken to combat Hades and save mankind from death. Finally, the grief of Demeter for Persephone, of mother for child, was a dominant element of the Eleusinian mysteries until the end of antiquity, ritually enacted at the women’s festivals.

The story of the Crucifixion as told in the Gospels ignores the lament of the Virgin. Only in the Gospel of Saint John are there to be found two not very explicit statements on which later laments appear to have been partly based. [20] Byzantine Greek tradition goes to the other extreme, sometimes focusing attention on the figure of the weeping Mother to the exclusion of Christ. The earliest example in {62|63} Greek which can be dated with certainty is Romanos’ kontákion, Mary at the Cross (early sixth century), in the form of a dramatic dialogue between Mary and Christ. Mary reacts to her son's theological arguments not as a woman who is divinely inspired, but as an ordinary woman of the people; and this characterisation is neither extraneous nor irrelevant, since it is through her gradual and painful realisation of the necessity of the Crucifixion that the dramatic tension is created and sustained.

What was Romanos’ source? One of the hymns of Synesios of Cyrene (c. A.D. 370-414) had treated the theme of Christ’s descent to the Underworld, but without reference to Mary (Hymns IX = Cantarella 34). The Church fathers had used the grief of Mary, as that of Sarah and Rachel, to illustrate an exemplary fortitude which the people would do well to emulate. On the other hand there seems to have been some precedent to Romanos’ treatment in Syriac liturgy, and more especially in the work of Ephraem (A.D. 306-73), one of whose homilies refers to Mary as ‘leaning her head against the cross, and murmuring in Hebrew words of lamentation and sorrow’. [21] The boldness of Romanos’ conception lies in his dramatic setting and in his use of dialogue: his Mary does not mourn her dead son at the foot of the cross, but laments and challenges his fate on the way to Calvary.

If Romanos’ kontákion was inspired partly by Syriac tradition, it certainly exercised a profound influence on later Greek liturgy. Some later tropária of the ninth century, attributed to the Emperor Leo VI, and known as Stavrotheotókia because their theme is the lament of the Mother of God at the Cross, share many similarities of detail with Romanos, although they are shorter and less dramatic in form. [22] Further, detaching the words from the music, a considerable number of verses fall easily into politikòs stíchos, the fifteen-syllable accentual verse of Greek folk poetry. [23] This suggests that from the ninth century at least there was some reciprocal influence between the liturgy and hymns for Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and the emerging songs of Byzantine popular tradition.

Five or six centuries later, after a modified form of the vernacular and the use of politikòs stíchos had become an established medium for poetry, we find probably the first extant example of the Virgin’s lament in the vernacular. Its author is unknown, but the number of manuscripts in which it has survived suggests a wide popularity and diffusion. The similarity of many motifs and phrases with the earlier Stavrotheotókia and with Romanos’ kontákion, together with the archaising tendency of the language, has led many scholars to believe that it {63|64} is a literary composition, put together from the hymns and the liturgy. [24] No doubt there was some degree of literary redaction, but on the other hand it is unlikely to be altogether dependent on literary sources, since several features of its style, notably the use of incremental repetition in groups of three, and traces of a refrain at key points in line, would seem to owe something to the techniques of oral poetry (Th rênos Theotókou 29-33, 65-6, 71-2). Further, the similarities could point to a common oral tradition rather than to literary interdependence; in either case, they indicate a gradual popularization kontákion, in which striking and memorable features lived on in a new form and in more popular language.

Meanwhile the figure of the weeping Virgin had not been ignored by Byzantine learned tradition. The question of the date and authorship of the Christian tragedy Christòs Páschon is still unsolved. Since the attribution of the manuscripts and the Suda to Gregory Nazianzen was first doubled in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most the scholars have tended to support the view that it was written, not in the fourth to fifth centuries, but in the eleventh to twelfth. In his discussion of the problem Tuilier argues convincingly in favour of the work’s traditional attribution to Gregory. [25]

More important for the present study is the question of sources. Out of a total of 2,600 lines, 1,304 are taken from ancient tragedies known to us, mostly form seven plays of Euripides, but also from Aeschylus and Lykophron, Other sources include the Old and New Testaments and the apocryphal gospels and acts. It is easy to deride the play as a ridiculous hotchpotch of unsuitable tags, with Medea’s words lamenting the children she is about to kill put into the mouth of Mary weeping for Christ. But for all the slavish imitation of Euripides, and the deliberate attempt to compare Mary with Hekabe, there are signs of an influence of a different kind. First, there are several parallels to Romanos’ kontákion and to the Stav rotheotókia, including one passage so similar to Romanos’ opening strophe that they must be either interdependent, or taken from a common source. [26] Second, although Romanos' treatment of Mary is more convincing and more profound, several features in Christòs Páschon are undoubtedly more popular. These include Mary’s plea to Christ to manifest his divinity by rising from the dead, not in order to save mankind, as in Romanos, but to silence current slanders against her honour—slanders which are only hinted at in the Gospels, but which recur throughout the apocryphal gospels and acts. [27]

Then there is the theme of Mary’s despair and wish for suicide, and her complaint that if her son deserts her, she will be alone in the {64|65} world, without kin and without friends, a detail which is found in Symeon Metaphrastes' Planctus, written in learned prose during the tenth century, but also attributed to Nikephoros Basilakes (twelfth century), as well as in the vernacular Thrênos Theotókou. [28] Perhaps it is hardly surprising that the suicide wish was not developed in the kontákia, which tended to reflect more official Orthodox doctrine; but it has remained an important motif in many of the modern folk ballads, where it provokes the reply from Christ that if his Mother gives way to suicide and despair, there can be no salvation for the rest of the world—a point which Romanos and later hymn writers do not omit to elaborate at some length (Romanos 19.6-9, MMB 5.180.11).

Finally there is the Virgin's curse. In the Christòs Páschon it lasts for eighty-one lines, containing, in addition to the Euripidean echoes, a hesitation formula comparable to one used to introduce a curse in folk poetry today. [29] Mary makes no curses in Romanos’ kontákion, or in the other Byzantine laments; but in the modern ballads, on hearing the news, she hurries to the site of the Crucifixion, not omitting to call on the way at the house of the gipsy nail-maker, who made the nails to pierce Christ's body, and utters a curse that he should never make good, and never have a house and hearth (DIEE (1892) 722γ). In other versions she curses Judas and the whole race of Jews as well (Laog (1934) 252.90-1, cf. 255.72-6). Outside the Christòs Páschon, this theme is developed only in popular tradition.

One of the finest examples of the Virgin's lament in Byzantine homiletic tradition is Symeon Metaphrastes’ Planctus of the tenth century, already referred to. It is too rigidly structured in the rhetorical style to move us as deeply as Romanos’ kontákion; yet it contains much rich and evocative imagery, emphasising above all the physical beauty and youth of Christ (Migne 114.209-18). This theme, ignored in the kontákia and Stavrotheotókia but frequent in the Christòs Páschon and in the modern ballads, suggests that it would be a mistake to draw too fine a distinction between the learned and popular traditions.

Little is known about the date and authorship of the Epitáphios Thrênos, part of the liturgy still performed on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, except that it was in existence by the fourteenth century. Much of its content can be paralleled in Symeon Metaphrastes’ Planctus and in the Stavrotheotókia. [30] It is punctuated throughout with references to the weeping Mother, so that although only parts of the lament are spoken by her, she, rather than Christ, is the central figure. Above all, it is pervaded with imagery more striking than any to be found in earlier laments. It is extravagant, but not lacking in structure, since it {65|66} is concentrated on specific themes, such as the antithesis of life and death, god and man, man and nature. It also elaborates richly the Christian symbolism of sun and moon. Christ, the sun and prime source of light, life and righteousness, has descended to Hades, shedding his light beneath the earth, and depriving the earth and the moon, his mother, of light: [31] This Christian imagery of light and darkness is remarkably close to the imagery of the modern folk laments, where light has connotations not only of the divine wisdom and knowledge of God, but also of the vigorous health and beauty of life, as in the following tersely expressive couplet on the death of an only son: In the Epitáphios, the associations of this theme are elaborated in verses which dwell, almost erotically, on Christ's youth and beauty even in death. Just as Aphrodite and the Loves had mourned for Adonis in {66|67} Bion’s Epitáphios, so here Mary and the ‘chorus’ sing, adapting the words of Psalm 46.3: And Joseph asks: Romanos’ Ewe mourning the Lamb of God as he is led to the slaughter (1.1-2) has here become the more classical, and yet at the same time more popular, heifer lamenting her lost calf, her wild cry emphasised by the use of ἠλάλαξεν: [32] Again, just as Aphrodite had called on the mountains, valleys and streams to join her lament for Adonis, so here Mary says: Then comes the thrilling climax during the final section of praises, Áxion Estí: These lines reflect a feeling closer in tone than anything else so far {67|68} examined in Byzantine tradition to the ancient belief that nature, too, participated in the lament for the dying god: in both, the god and the lost spring are identified.

What, then, are the sources and inspiration of the Epitáphios? Although some of its features can be paralleled in the earlier hymns, stylistically it is closer to Symeon Metaphrastes’ Planctus than to Romanos’ kontákion or to the Christòs Páschon. At the same time, in its obsessive concern with the weeping mother and the beauty of the dying son, its closest affinities are with the ancient laments for Adonis. Deliberate imitation may, of course, be excluded. The popular style and tone of the Epitáphios suggest that many simple but fundamental associations of the ancient ritual lament for the dying god had not been forgotten, and had reemerged to influence the liturgy and become incorporated into the Good Friday service.

Confirmation of the popular character of the Virgin's lament in late Byzantine tradition comes from the second recension of the apocryphal gospels of Nikodemos, known as the Acta Pilati, and surviving in three manuscripts, non earlier than the fifteenth century. [33] All three manuscripts of this recension contain the lament—though with considerable variation and interpolation—which refers explicitly to its ritual character, ‘And saying these words she scratched her face with her nails and beat her breast’ (Tischendorf 283). The apocryphal lament constitutes a remarkable link between some of the earlier Byzantine material and modern folk tradition. It has some stylistic affinities with the Epitáphios and the vernacular Thrênos Theotókou; [34] but in the sequence and detail of the narrative, it is closest of all to the modern ballads. The most probable explanation is that the Epitáphios, the apocryphal lament and the modern ballads were drawing on a common tradition, the Epitáphios elaborating the lyrical elements and the ballads concentrating on the narrative. It is not possible to date this common tradition precisely, but it must have been well established and widely known by the time the second recension of the Acta Pilati was written down. The absence of the lament from the Latin versions of the Acta Pilati, which were probably based on the earlier recension of the fifth century, is indicative of the traditional character of the Virgin’s lament in Greek. It is also essentially different from the Stabat Mater of medieval Latin tradition, where great emphasis is given to the Virgin’s patience and fortitude. [35] No such lesson can be drawn from the Greek Virgin, whose grief is so violent that she has to be pushed aside: {68|69}

If the Virgin's lament had always existed in Greek tradition, and if it is true that it had absorbed certain features of the ancient laments for gods and heroes, then we should expect the modern ballads to bear some trace of their long oral history. It is notoriously difficult to date elements in oral poetry, because old themes and old stories are subject to constant variation and remoulding. But there are, as I hope to show, a sufficient number of indisputably ancient features, some of which are not found elsewhere, to establish that the modern ballads have a long history of their own. At the same time, the features which they share with the Byzantine laments indicate that, ultimately, they belong to the same tradition.

What, then, are the common features, and what are the main differences between the modern ballads and the earlier laments? The term ballad, as opposed to lament, is more appropriate to the modern songs in that they tell a story, which contains lamentation, but they are not addressed to the dead Christ in their entirety. They belong to the epic and dramatic rather than to the lyrical or functional songs.

These ballads have survived in fundamentally the same form, though with considerable local variation, from all parts of the Greek-speaking world—from Calabria in South Italy, from the Pontos, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete, the Dodecanese, the Ionian Isles, and from most regions of mainland Greece. [36] {69|70}

First, the common features. The Cypriot Song for Good Friday, related to an Asia Minor version probably dating from the fifteenth century, opens with a demand for universal lamentation in sympathy with Mary, who has lost her only son, just as in the opening lines of Romanos’ kontákion and the Stavrotheotókia (Sakellarios 2.84, 28, 1-3). As in the Christòs Páschon, Mary then calls on all the women to lament with her (ibid. 7-8, cf. CP 686-7). In modern tradition, this has an important ritual meaning, since until recently it was customary for all the women of the village to take part in the dressing and decoration of the Epitáphios, and to keep constant vigil over it throughout the night. Mrs Stamatopoulou, aged 86, from Sklithron informed me in 1962 that in her youth all the women, young and old, took part in the vigil, whereas now only a few do so. Mary then recalls the Annunciation, and thinks in anger of the betrayal of Judas. Christ interrupts her outburst with an appeal to her not to give way to excessive grief. [37] Next come Mary’s despair and wish for death found in the Christòs Páschon, the homilies and the apocryphal lament; and, in close association, the theme of her recurrent swooning (three times in one ballad). [38] Outside oral tradition, the swoon is found in Greek only in the apocryphal lament, thereby establishing a strong link between them. The significance of the despair, suicide wish and swoon in the ballads can be measured by the fact that in spite of local variations, these three motifs are never omitted. In answer to the rebuke from Christ which they provoke, she replies, as in the Christòs Páschon, Symeon Metaphrastes’ Planctus, and the Byzantine vernacular Thrênos Theotókou, that her lament is justified by her deprivation of her only son. She then praises her son’s beauty, in a line similar to the liturgy, and expresses a desire to kiss him, another motif found only in the Christòs Páschon and the apocryphal lament: [39]

Finally, all nature joins in sympathy to mourn the death of Christ. Most ballads open with the line, reminiscent of Romanos’ kontákion On the Passion (Maas-Trypanis 20): {70|71} In a version from Selybria in Thrace, Mary rises from her prayers on the fatal morning to see portentous signs in the heavens: [40]

One idea, fundamental to the Virgin's lament, is interpreted so differently in Byzantine and modern tradition as to be quite distinct. In Greek tradition, both iconographic and literary, the purpose of the Crucifixion was Christ’s descent to the Underworld and his victory over Hades. In Romanos’ kontákion, as in other Byzantine laments, Christ explains at length to his Mother that he must die in order to save mankind from the curse of Adam, who sinned willingly. She cannot understand why man’s salvation should require his death, and he replies, with a note of impatience, that it is not physical but spiritual salvation that must be won (19.9, 1-6). This essential point of theology is forgotten in the modern ballads, where Christ replies to her threat that she will throw herself over a cliff or hang herself, that if she despairs and kills herself, the whole world will follow suit. Instead, she is to return home, prepare the wine and rusk for the paregoriá (funeral feast), so that the whole world may partake of it, thereby uniting mother and child, brother and sister, husband and wife (Laog (1934) 252.120-8, cf. 256-7.98-115 and n. 5). Many of the women who sang these lines expressed the opinion that the custom of preparing paregoriá for their own dead originated here, but of course the truth is just the opposite: the ritual feast is an independent, pagan survival, which has become assimilated into Christianity. In the folk tradition the significance of the Resurrection lies not so much in the redemption of Adam’s sins, but in the liberation of the dead from their miseries in Hades. This is often understood quite literally, not as a symbolic {71|72} reference to Judgement Day, since it is believed that on Holy Thursday the souls of the dead are freed, and return to celebrate the Resurrection with their families. [41] In popular tradition, Christ's descent to the Underworld still fulfils the same function as the descent of Herakles, Orpheus or Apollo in antiquity.

Yet other features in the ballads, which are not present in the earlier laments, are believed to have originated in the Gospels, short extracts of which are read out in church services during Holy Week. Christ’s last words to Mary in the Gospel of Saint John, ‘Woman, behold thy son!’, meaning that John will become her spiritual son and she his spiritual mother (John 19.26–7), are interpreted more concretely in the ballads: before dying, Christ instructs John (sometimes confused with John the Baptist) to take the news to his mother, who arrives at the scene in a state of bewilderment, and fails to recognise her son: This dramatic treatment of events is thought by Romaios to be based on a misinterpretation of the Gospels. [42] If so, the misinterpretation has a long history, since precisely the same sequence is found in the Acta Pilati, where Mary’s question and John’s reply are later balanced by Christ’s address to his Mother, as in the Gospel: {72|73} John's message, the Virgin's swoon, the company of women, the bewildering crowd of people, her anxious question and the second swoon—all are found in the ballads from many parts of Greece. It is not a misinterpretation of the Gospel, but a characteristic example of the way in which oral tradition rehandles the same episodes and motifs in a more leisurely, yet inherently more dramatic manner. It is the same with the nails which are made for Christ’s body, whereas the Gospel mentions a spear, the ballads refer to a gipsy nail-maker, who says that he is going to make five nails (John 19.33—4, cf. DIEE (1892) 722γ).

Let us turn now to those features of the ballads which are not to be found in Byzantine tradition, or in the biblical sources, an which point to a long period of oral transmission. First, there is the strange metamorphosis of Christ after Judas’ betrayal, when the Jews arrive to seize him. In one of the versions from Thrace, Judas, true to his promise, takes the Jews to where Christ is sitting in the Garden of Gethsemane. Seeing them approach, Christ invites them to eat and drink with him, in a formula which has sinister echoes of Digenis’ invitation to Charos in the Akritic ballads. Like Charos, the Jews reply: Its antiquity in local tradition is confirmed by a folk story with yet another variation: when the Jews chased Christ on Maundy Thursday, he turned into a small child and hid in the basket of a passing Arab girl, who refused to give him away when asked if she had seen ‘the son of Mary, the magician’; in return for her kindness, Christ turned the hay in her basket into rare herbs, and however much she carried, her head never ached again. The story may have developed from a detail in the apocryphal Acta Pilati, where one of the accusations brought against Christ was that he was a magician (Laog (1934) 250 n.3, cf. Tischendorf 270).

Second, there is the theme of the Virgin’s bath. Mary Magdalene, who brings the news of the Crucifixion, finds Mary in her bath, and calls out accusingly: It may be assumed, as has been suggested, that this motif has crept in from similar theme in the Akritic cycle, as an extension of the swoon motif, after which the women revive Mary with somewhat excessive quantities of water (varying in different versions from one to sixty-two jars!), with the detail of the combing added later. If so, it should be stressed that the versions which portray her praying when the news is brought. [43] Again, it is the inevitable process of oral variation, in which themes, old and new, are introduced from other songs, not irrelevantly, but with deliberate effect, as in the Thracian version of the conversation between the Jews and Christ quoted above, which contains undertones of the grim dialogue between Charos and Digenis Akritas. {74|75}

The third and most curious motif of all is that of ‘Saint Kalé’. She does not appear in all versions, and her identity is rarely the same: sometimes she is a saint, sometimes an ordinary woman, and sometimes even Mary’s cousin. [44] Her behaviour in the following ballad from Asia Minor is hardly characteristic of a saint, any more than is Mary’s answering curse:

Who is Saint Kalé? None other than Kyrà Kalé (the lady Kalé), a survival of the cult title of Ártemis Kalliste, whose many transformations may be traced through the byways of ancient traditions and modern folklore—from Ino or Leukothea, referred to in the Odyssey and supposed to be identical with Kalé (5.333-34), to Kalé, [44a] the leader of the Nereids, associated with the Virgin and Saint John in some spells for the healing of sheep, [44b] to Kalé, the daughter or sister of Alexander the Great, who drank by mistake the water of life intended for him and so leapt into the sea to become a Nereid (a story preserved in folklore and in a later manuscript of Recension B of the {75|76} Life of Alexander, ed. Bergson 2.41, cf. Politis Paradóseis 651-2), and finally to Καλή τῶν Ὀρεῶν (Kalé of the Mountains) of Byzantine and modern tradition, transformed in Cyprus to Καλή τῶν Ὀβκῶν (Kalé of the Jews), mistress of magic and of evil spirits. This last may not be just a mistake, but a parallel survival of ancient Kalliste, who was Hekate herself as well as a nymph. [45]

Kalé, then, is an ancient figure of pagan origin who has survived in diverse forms, always magic and not infrequently evil, and hence grafted on to the concept of the wickedness of the Jews and their responsibility for the Crucifixion. Her presence in the ballads, where all the old pagan associations are implicit, is proof both of the independence and of the antiquity of their oral transmission. It only remains to explain how she came to be connected with the Virgin.

First, the Virgin’s biblical associations are frequently overlaid in Greek folklore by the more familiar background of Nereids and mountain creatures. In one tradition from Alikokkos, an old suburb of Athens, she was known as Panagía Trístratos (our Lady of the crossways), like ancient Hekate, and her ghost could sometimes be seen coming out of her church to sit and weep at the crossways, as a sign that one of her parishioners was about to die (Politis Paradóseis 512).

Further, a recurrent theme in the folk stories and the folk songs is that of weeping maidens, mothers and Nereids. Besides Kalé and the Nereids who wept for Alexander the Great, there were the three columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, who distributed the sleeping city at night by weeping for their lost sister, hacked down by a Turk in 1759 for a new mosque (Paradóseis 135); there were the five marble Daughters of the Fortress, as Karyatids of Erechtheion were known, who wept so bitterly for their sister snatched away by ‘my Lord’ that they frightened away the Turk, who returned at night to steal them as well (ibid. 136); finally, there was the old woman in a lonely house who, when awakened at midnight by the Nereids as the they brought in a dead man and began a ritual lament for him, did not hesitate to join their lamentation, and was laid out covered in silver (ibid. 803). These, and many similar stories, prove that until the nineteenth century there survived in Greek folklore a rich and creative use of an old theme. [46] They also help to explain why the figure of the weeping Virgin made such a deep and lasting impression in Greek tradition.

Besides Mary weeping for Christ, there is the tradition of a lament for Isaac, spoken by Abraham or Sarah before the sacrifice, which can {76|77} be traced back to the homilies of the Church fathers and to Romanos. [47] The seventeenth-century Cretan play, The Sacrifice of Abraham, differs from its Italian model, Groto’s Lo Isach, in its treatment of Sarah, whose many laments for Isaac are at times so close to folk poetry that many formulae, themes and couplets can be paralelled in the Cretan laments today. [48] To argue which came first, the drama or the folk laments, is to miss the essential point of close reciprocity between literary and folk poetry, which has determined also the development of the Virgin's lament. The immediacy of the Virgin’s lament to the mourner of today is illustrated by a fine couplet from Nisyros, in which a bereaved mother begs the Virgin to give her fortitude:

Finally, the antiquity of the Virgin’s lament is confirmed by some of the details of the ritual of which it is still an integral part. On the morning of Good Friday, women and girls gather in the church to decorate the Epitáphios, in which is laid a gold-embroidered likeness of the dead Christ. They weave garlands of spring flowers—violets, lilies, roses and lemon blossom—singing the Virgin’s lament. All day long the villagers come to the church to kneel beside the Epitáphios; and when evening falls, it is taken in slow procession around the streets by the people, each carrying a lighted candle, to the accompaniment of the tolling of the bells. During the procession, women place outside the windows of their homes icons, lighted candles; and in Thrace, shallow dishes of quick-growing seeds are prepared, not unlike the ‘gardens of Adonis’ placed round the eídolon of Adonis in antiquity. [49] The lamentation and vigil over the Epitáphios are kept up until midnight on Holy Saturday, the lament being sung usually by women, but in Thrace performed antiphonally by twelve girls on one side and twelve boys on the other. The Resurrection on the third day is welcomed in the church with joyful shouts of ‘Christ is risen!’ and with a sudden blaze of light, as the candles of the congregation are lighted one by one.

Details of the ritual which can be paralleled in antiquity include the prominence of the women, who decorate and then lament over an image, the use of spring flowers and quick-growing seeds, the torchlight procession, and the final scene of joy and light on the third day. {77|78} To the peasant, the Resurrection still signals the liberation of both dead and living from their miseries and the return of spring—and it is sometimes believed to ensure the safety of the year’s crops. [50]

The association with nature in the Virgin’s lament for Christ is implicit in much of the poetic imagery and in some of the details of the Easter ritual. But in the seasonal festivals ritually enacted in many parts of Greece for the death and return of a youth, it is both explicit and important. The name of the youth, the time of year of the celebration, and the details of the lament and ritual, vary considerably; but in all, the function of the ritual is similar.

In the village of Chalasméni in Aigina, on 14 September (the Feats of the Cross), an image of a young man called Leidinos is made out of cloth, straw and chaff. It is laid out and decorated with flowers, among which the most prominent is the Leidinos-flower, said to have first flowered on the grave of the dead Leidinos. It is then mourned and taken round the village streets in solemn procession, and laid down in the market-place. ‘Incense’, in the form of animal dung, is burnt over it, and kóllyra are handed round to all present as for the dead. The ritual used to be exclusive to the women; now it is prepared by the women and enacted by the children. [51]

Leidinos is a personified, dialect form of deilinós, which means supper. According to one local tradition, he was the youngest of three sons born to Hunger—Kolatsó (Snack), Yéma (Lunch) and Leidinós (Supper). When he was only three days old he was so puny that the Fates condemned him to live and support mankind for only half the year, the working half, and for the remaining half to hibernate underground. His festival coincides exactly with the end of the summer season, when labour contracts expire, and with them the summer habits of an afternoon rest and an evening meal, both known in Aigina as leidinós. [52]

Whether this neat, aetiological explanation is in fact the oldest one is to be doubted when we consider the words of the lament sung for him: Leidinos is here revealed as the spirit of vegetation, who withers and dies at the approach of winter and is invoked in the refrain to return in the spring. The tradition referred to above shows the same tendency to personify and rationalise the event as was apparent in the ancient cults. And whatever his origins, as he is now celebrated in Aigina he is in the process of merging with the Christian festival of the Cross. In other parts of Greece the lamented figure has disappeared, ut e ritual has survived in the custom of sowing seeds in the ground on the Feast of the Cross, in order to ensure the return of spring and fertility. [53]

A festival from the village of Zagori in Epiros celebrates Zafeiris, who symbolises the death and return of spring. In early May, the women and children go to the fields. One of the boys lies down on the grass as if dead, while the girls strew him with flowers and mourn him with an ecstatic lament, known not as nioirológi, but as kommós. Its passionate, lyrical character contrasts sharply with the scoptic tone of the song for Leidinos: Then everyone shouts ‘Arise, Zafeiris, arise!’, Zafeiris gets up and all run to the fields, singing. Until the Second World War the ritual of Zafeiris was celebrated on four successive Sundays in May, not with a child impersonating the dead spirit, but with a wooden image of Zafeiris made in the shape of a cross, which was taken into the church for a liturgy to be sung for it. It was then taken to the fields and dressed with pieces of cloth to resemble a young man, and afterwards returned to the church until the next Sunday. When the ritual was over and Zafeiris had truly risen, the image was destroyed and the wood thrown away. [54] These details, and the explicit injunction in the kommós that as now Christ has risen, and the swallow has returned, so must Zafeiris, illustrate how hard it still is in Greece to draw the line between Christian and pagan belief.

Leidinos and Zafeiris are just two examples, out of several which have survived, of seasonal cults for the death and return of a spirit of nature. They show how alongside the Virgin's lament there has persisted the same kind of cyclical, seasonal ritual as in antiquity, preserving in the case of Leidinos a similar mythical treatment, and in the case of Zafeiris a similar poetic use of invocation and nature imagery.