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The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of Dionysus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

R. M. Dawkins
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Extract

My attention was called recently to an account by G. M. Vizyenos of a Carnival festival celebrated in the district about Viza (ancient Βιζύη) in Thrace so remarkable that it seemed worth while to verify the author's account by a personal visit. This I was able to do at the Carnival of 1906, and the account below has been drawn up from my notes, supplemented by this article, from which I quote everything of value.

Of the writer's good faith there is no doubt, and of almost all the points he mentions I had ocular confirmation. He was a native, not of Haghios Gheorghios, the village whose festival he describes, but of Viza itself, the chief place in the district, lying some two hours to the west. He left his native place while still a boy, and died at Athens in 1896, aged forty-two. The middle part of his life he spent in Germany, and he does not seem ever to have returned to Thrace. His account is therefore probably a description of the festival as it was in his youth some forty years ago, when modern conditions had affected the district even less than' at present. He calls it σαλό and makes as many classical comparisons as possible. All these I have omitted, and drawn upon him only for matters of fact.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 26 , November 1906 , pp. 191 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1906

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References

1 In the first and only number published of the Θρᾳκικὴ Επετηρὶς ἐτήσιον δημοσίευμα τῆσ ἐν Αθήναις Θρᾳκικῆς Αδελφότητος Athens, 1897, to which my attention was first called by Mr. F. W. Hasluck.

2 Details of his life are given in a book on the district. Ιστορία τῆς Βιζύης καὶ τῆς Μηδείας ὑπὸ Σαββᾶ Θ. Λακίδου Constantinople, 1899.

3 B.C.H. xxv. 1901, pp. 156–220.

4 To be published in B.S.A. xii.

5 The fringe of a kind of woman's scarf is used for this purpose.

6 Capseḍḍa Mädchen, from Bova (Meyer, G., Neugr. Studien, iii. p. 29Google Scholar and καψαλᾶς δ κάμνων τέκνον ἐκ κλϵψιγαμίας, from Karpathos, (Ζωγραφєῖος Ἀγών I. p. 323)Google Scholar.

7 The meanings ‘nurse’ and ‘unmarried mother, mother who is not a wife’ are not so far apart but that the word may bear both senses.

8 Lakidhis explains σαλό as meaning μερό ‘innocent.’

9 I am uncertain whether the modern pronunciation does not as commonly demand χ in these words instead of κ It certainly does in the neighbouring district of Saránda, Ekklisíes (Ψάλτης, Θρᾳκικά, p. 43)Google Scholar.

10 A grecized form of the Turkish kulunk.

11 Περὶ τῶν ἀναστεναρίων καὶ ἄλλων τινῶν παραδόξων ἐθίμων καὶ προλήψεων ὐπὸ ᾿Α. Χουρ μουρζιάδου Constantinople, 1873, p. 22.

11a Κούκєρος, єἶδος φαντάσματος, Ψάλτης, Θρακικά, p. 183.

12 B.S.A. vi. p. 125.

13 B.S.A. xi. p. 72.

14 Reproduced nom B.S.A. xi. p. 73, Fig. 1.

15 Fiedler, , Reise durch alle Theile des Koenigreiches Griechenland, 1841, ii. p. 83Google Scholar.

16 Golden, Bough, i. p. 98.

17 Ibid. i. p. 36.

18 The Boukoleion and the Bouzygion, the field of the sacred ox-ploughing, were in close connexion. Harrison, and Verrall, , Mythology and Monuments, p. 166Google Scholar.

19 Harrison, J. E., ‘Mystica vannus lacchi,’ J.H.S. xxiii, p. 322Google Scholar.

20 It is possible that the second kalogheros is the divine king of the coming year, who kills his predecessor, just as at Nemi each king was killed by his successor. But the single actors in the parallel Greek observances make the view followed in the text, that the second kalogheros is later, more likely.

21 Golden Bough, ii. p. 205 sqq.

22 B.S.A. xi. p. 76.

23 ‘The Gong at Dodona,’ J.H.S. xxii. p. 5.

24 Roman Festivals, p. 41.

25 The reference is to a poem on Cretan history of which an analysis is given in Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἐλλáς, ủρὸ Κωνσ. Ν. Σαθᾶ, Athens, 1869, pp. 225–295. This deportation of the Skyrians is narrated on p. 265.

26 Σταματίου Β. Ψίλτου, Θρᾳκικὰ, ἤτοι Μєλέτη πєρὶ τοῦ γλωσσικοῦ ἰδιώματοςτῆς πόλєως Σαράντα Ἐκκλησιῶν, Athens, 1905.

27 Einleitung in die Neugriech. Grammatik, p. 342.

28 This and some other points in the dialect of Skyros I noted during a visit in 1905.