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Social Borderers: Themes of Conflict and Ambiguity in Greek Folk-song1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Michael Herzfeld
Michael Herzfeld*
Affiliation:
Vassar College
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Extract

The ‘Akritic cycle’ of Greek folk-songs consists of those texts in which scholars have found thematic resemblances to the epic poem of Digenes. The name Digenes itself has not been an essential criterion for the inclusion of a song in this category, although many of the songs do boast at least one seemingly Byzantine name; in a few cases, the name is that of Digenes, and other forms have been somewhat debatably claimed as corruptions of the latter. Like all learned taxonomies, the Akritic rubric involves a measure of distortion or oversimplification. True, the thematic resemblances exist, and are rarely likely to be the outcome of pure coincidence; but they can be matched against other, hardly less compelling similarities which violate the boundaries of the Akritic category.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 6 , 1980 , pp. 61 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1980

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References

2. The label ‘Akritic’ was first coined by K. Sathas, II (Venice, 1873), pp. xlv-vi; see also P. Kalonaros, I (Athens, 1970), p. xxxiii. It was extensively used by N. G. Politis; see especially his (Athens, 1914), and his I (1909), 169–275.

3. E.g. the name Yannis (and cf. also below): A. Ch. Yangas, 1000–1958 (Athens, n.d. [1959]), p. 32.

4. H. Grégoire, ‘O (New York, 1942). See also: Mavrogordato, J., Digenes Akrites (Oxford, 1956), pp. lxiff.Google Scholar

5. On this, see especially Finnegan, Ruth, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance, and Social Context (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 134–53 Google Scholar. A similar methodology is adopted in two studies of Balkan traditions in which historical references clearly cannot be interpreted as purely literal: M. Herzfeld, ‘“The Siege of Rhodes” and the Ethnography of Greek Oral Tradition’, XXV (1973), 413–40; A. L. Vincent, ‘The Two Sultanas: The Cretan War (1645–1669) in South Slav Heroic Songs’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, XII (1971), 237–42.

6. See especially G. Veloudis, Der neugriechische Alexander-Tradition in Bewahrung und Wandel (Munich, 1968). Cf. also Kalonaros, I, pp. xx—xxi; G. Lambrinos, (Athens, 1947), p. 31.

7. The nationalists’ viewpoint is given in summary form by Kalonaros, op. cit., I, p. xiv; II, p. 205. For a Marxist interpretation, see Lambrinos, op. cit., p. 32.

8. See especially P. Karolidis, (1905–6), pp. 188–246; Lambrinos, op. cit., p. 18.

9. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The difficulties of denning ‘ethnicity’ in the modern Greek context are discussed by Schein, Muriel D., ‘When is an Ethnic Group? Ecology and Class Structure in Northern Greece’, Ethnology, XIV (1975), 83–971 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. M. Herzfeld, ‘On the Ethnography of “Prejudice” in an Exclusive Community’, Ethnic Groups, in press.

10. For an anthropological view of polysemy, see Turner, V., The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, N.Y. and London, 1967), pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

11. A stringent analytical rebuttal of ‘literalism’ is offered by Crick, M., Explorations in Language and Meaning: Towards a Semantic Anthropology (New York and London, 1976), pp. 154–9.Google Scholar

12. Danforth, L. M., ‘Humour and Status Reversal in Greek Shadow Theatre’, BMGS, II (1976), 99–111 Google Scholar. Danforth’s discussion of symbolic reversal resonates tellingly with the materials explored here.

13. Sp. Zambelios, (Athens, 1859), p. 34; E. Legrand, . Collection de monuments pour servir á l’étude de la Langue Néo-Hellénique, XII (Paris, 1870), pp. 19–25. See also A. A. Sakellarios, II: (Athens, 1891), pp. 9–12.

14. Sakellarios, op. cit., p. 10 (line 42).

15. N. G. Politis, I: part 2 (Athens, 1874), p. 335; = N. Tommaseo, Canti popolari toscani, corsci, illirici, greci, III (Venice, 1842), p. 304.

16. A. Theros, I (Athens, 1951), p. 98, note, interprets as a ‘branch of thorny scrub’, hence But compare also ‘Araby’, in view of the mother’s origin as given in some texts.

17. Text from Cappadocia: Theros, op. cit., 97–8, no. 29; = idem, in XIII (1950), 186.

18. Reproduced as Theros, op. cit., pp. 98–9, no. 30.

19. Reproduced as Theros, op. cit., pp. 101–2, no. 33.

20. Sakellarios, op. cit., p. xv.

21. See Boulay, Juliet du, Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village (Oxford, 1974), p. 123.Google Scholar

22. Sakellarios, op. cit., p. 37.

23. A. Eleftheriadis, XXXVII (1973), 20–3.

24. Danforth,’Humour and Status Reversal’, p. 101.

25. See especially Campbell, J. K., Honour, Family, and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford, 1964), pp. 161–2, 174–7.Google Scholar

26. P. Aravandinos, (Athens, 1880), p. 227, no. 460.

27. Text from Greek Mainland: (Constantinople, 1891), p. 136, no. 223. In line 15, the hero is described as (‘a short, really short fellow, the bastard son of Tsamaidhinos’).

28. N. I. Laskaris, (Pyrgos, n.d. [1903–10]), pp. 426–7. no. 2. Cf. also XIII (1862–3), 460, no. 8.

29. Text from Crete: A. Jeannaraki, (Leipzig, 1876), p. 214, no. 276; N. G. Politis, p. 255, no. 45.

30. Alexiou, M. B., The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 120—2, etc.Google Scholar; M. Herzfeld, ‘An Indigenous Theory of Meaning and its Elicitation in Performative Context’, Semiotica, in press, paras. 3.1.1.-3.1.5.

31. E.g. p. 102.

32. Cf. Charos’ stratagem in defeating the hero; the victor’s trickery seems to constitute a subsidiary theme in its own right.

33. V. Kiparissis, (Athens, 1940), p. 76. no. 218.

34. See note 13, above.

35. G. Ioannou, (Athens, 1975), p. 97.

36. Baud-Bovy, S., Chansons du Dodécanèse, II (Paris, 1938), p. 130.Google Scholar

37. For a brief discussion of the ethnographic aspects of the problem, see Black-Michaud, J., Cohesive Force: Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (Oxford, 1975), pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

38. Chr. S. Kiprianou, I (Nicosia, 1967), pp. 210–11.

39. This concept is explored in connection with Greek materials in Herzfeld, ‘Exploring a Metaphor of Exposure’, Journal of American Folklore, XCII(1979), 285–301.

40. The relevant aspects of structuralist methodology receive good critical treatment in Leach, E., ed., The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, Monographs, A.S.A., V (London, 1967).Google Scholar