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Συρματικό
Don’t have me settle far from home, good fortune, I beseech you,
but if perchance that’s what you do, don’t visit me with illness,
for illness puts a man to bed and props him up with pillows.
It needs a mother at his side, a father at his head,
it needs a caring sister, too, who’ll run and fetch cold water
so that the gravely stricken one may drink and quench his fever.
I saw with mine own eyes how I would quit that foreign country:
no holy oil or candle there, no praying priest and deacon —
so distant from the village church, a wilderness that far field.
But came the day when it was time the field be sown and reaped:
the ploughshare disinters the bones and scatters them in fragments,
the ploughman kicks the skull about and bangs it on the boulders.
Translated by John Leatham
Παρακαλώ σε, μοίρα μου, να μη με ξενιτέψεις
κι αν είν’ και ξενιτέψεις με, αρρώστια μη μου δώσεις.
Κι η αρρώστια θέλει στρώματα, θέλει μαξελαράκια,
θέλει και μάνα στο πλευρό, και κύρη στο κεφάλι,
θέλει α(δ)ερφή πονετική κρύο νερό να φέρνει,
να πίνει να δροσίζεται το βαριαρρωστημένο.
Κι είδα(ν) κι εμέ τα μάτια μου τα ξένα πώς τα θάβγου(ν),
χωρίς λι(β)άνι και κερί, χωρίς παπά και διάκο
κι αλάργ’ από την εκκλησιά, σ’ αγριόμερο χωράφι.
Κι ήρτε καιρός του χωραφιού, να το σπεροθερίσου(ν).
Τ’ άλοτρο σύρνει κόκκαλα τα σπα’ και τα σκορπίζει,
κλωτσά ο ζευγάς τη(ν) κεφαλή κι εχτύπα τη στις πέτρες.
A tune that is usually accompanied by dance, though in many cases it is also sung at the table and serves as an introduction to the celebration. The rhythmic pattern of the first part is in 6/8 time, and the dance steps follow the style of the kato horos. Then, the rhythmic pattern shifts to 4/4 time, with the rhythm gradually speeding up, eventually reaching 2/4 time. In the second part, the dance steps initially follow the gonatisto style and culminate in the pano horos.
© Constantine Manos
The woman in the photograph is Thetekoula of Moraitis (1914–2013), wife of the Olympos lyric poet Michalis I. Dargakis. Born in 1914, Thetekoula was fifty years old in 1964, the year the photograph was taken.
The distinguished photographer Konstantinos Manos traveled through the Greek countryside between 1961 and 1964, capturing with his sensitive lens the life and people of rural Greece. The photograph above, along with several others, comes from his 1964 journey to Olympos, Karpathos.
The photograph appeared in K. Manos’s collections Suite Grecque (1972) and A Greek Portfolio (1999). This photograph, together with others from the Suite Grecque collection, was granted by Konstantinos Manos to the Association and is featured on the inner sleeves of the LP Songs About Greeks Far From Home.
Studio recording (1989).
