Constantinople old and new

One of the most characteristic things about Constantinople is that while it has become Turkish it has not ceased to be Greek. The same is true of Thrace, Macedonia, and the fringe of Asia Minor, which contain large Turkish and other populations, but which still form a part of the Greek world to which they always belonged. The two races have indisputably influenced each other, as their languages and certain of their customs prove. A good deal of Greek blood now flows, too, in Turkish veins. Nevertheless there has been remarkably little assimilation, after five hundred years, of one element by the other. They coexist, each perfectly distinct and each claiming with perfect reason the land as his own.

This is perhaps one cause why religious festivals are so common among the Greeks of Turkey. It is as a religious community that they have remained separate since the conquest. Through their religious observances they live what is left them of a national life and assert their claim to the great tradition of their race. The fact doubtless has something to do with the persistence of observances that elsewhere tend to disappear. At all events, those observances are extremely interesting. They have a local colour, for one thing, of a kind that has become rare in Europe and that scarcely ever existed in America. Then they are reckoned by the Julian calendar, now thirteen days behind our own, and that puts them into a certain perspective. Their true perspective, however, reaches much farther back. Nor is it merely that they compose a body of tradition from which we of the West have diverged or separated. Our religious customs and beliefs did not spring out of our own soil. We transplanted them in full flower from Rome, and she in turn had already borrowed largely from Greece and the East. But in the Levant such beliefs and customs represent a native growth, whose roots run far deeper than Christianity.

In the Eastern as in the Western church the essence of the religious year is that cycle of observances that begin with Advent and culminate at Easter. It is rather curious that Protestantism should have disturbed the symbolism of this drama by transposing its climax. Christmas with the Greeks is not the greater feast. One of their names for it, in fact, is Little Easter. It is preceded, however, by a fast of forty days nearly as strict as Lent. The day itself is purely a religious festival. A midnight mass, or rather an early mass, is celebrated at one or two o’clock on Christmas morning, after which the fast is broken and people make each other good wishes. They do not exchange presents or follow the usage of the Christmas tree, that invention of Northern barbarism, except in places that have been largely influenced by the West.

The real holiday of the season is New Year’s Day. This is called Aï Vassíli, or St. Basil, whose name-day it is. There is an old ballad relating to this venerable Bishop of Cappadocia—too long, I regret, to translate here—which men and boys go about singing on St. Basil’s eve. The musicians are rewarded with money, theoretically for the poor of the community. If it happens to stick in the pockets of the performers, they doubtless regard themselves as representative of the brotherhood for whose benefit they sing. This custom is imitated by small boys who go among the coffee-houses after dark, begging. They make themselves known by lanterns that are oftenest wicker bird-cages lined with coloured paper. I have also seen ships, castles, and aeroplanes of quite elaborate design. These curious lanterns are used as well on Christmas and Epiphany eves of both calendars. The principal feature of St. Basil’s eve is the vassilópita, a kind of flat round cake or sweet bread something like the Tuscan schiacciata. At midnight the head of the house cuts the pita into as many pieces as there are members of the family. A true pita should contain a coin, and whoever gets it is sure to have luck during the new year. The next day people pay visits, exchange presents, tip servants, and make merry as they will. They also go, at a more convenient hour than on Christmas morning, to church, where the ancient liturgy of St. Basil is read.

Epiphany, or the old English Twelfth-Night, has retained in the East a significance that it has lost in the West. The day is supposed to commemorate the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Hence it is the day of the blessing of waters, whether of springs, wells, reservoirs, rivers, or the sea. Holy water plays a particular rôle in the Greek Church—although the Roman custom of moistening the fingers with it, before making the sign of the cross on entering a church, is not followed. On the first of every month except January a ceremony called the Little Blessing takes place in the churches, when water is blessed; and this ceremony may be repeated by request in private houses. In January the Little Blessing takes place on Epiphany eve, the fifth. But on Epiphany itself, as early in the morning as local custom may dictate, takes place the Great Blessing. It is performed in the middle of the church, on a dais decorated with garlands of bay, and the important feature of the long ceremony is the dipping of a cross into a silver basin of water. The water is carefully kept in bottles throughout the next year and used as occasion may require. It is sometimes administered, for instance, to those who are not thought fit to take the full communion. The outdoor ceremony which follows this one is extremely picturesque. In Constantinople it may be seen in any of the numerous Greek waterside communities—by those who care to get up early enough of a January morning. One of the best places is Arnaout-kyöi, a large Greek village on the European shore of the Bosphorus, where the ceremony is obligingly postponed till ten or eleven o’clock. At the conclusion of the service in the church a procession, headed by clergy in gala vestments and accompanied by candles, incense, banners, and lanterns on staves of the sort one sees in Italy, marches to the waterside. There it is added to by shivering mortals in bathing trunks. They behave in a highly unecclesiastical manner in their anxiety to get the most advantageous post on the quay. The banners and lanterns make a screen of colour on either side of the priests, incense rises, choristers chant, a bishop in brocade and cloth of gold, with a domed gilt mitre, holds up a small cross; he makes the holy sign with it, and tosses it into the Bosphorus. There is a terrific splash as the rivals for its recovery dive after it. In days gone by there used to be fights no less terrific in the water over the precious object. The last time I saw the ceremony, however, there was nothing of the kind. The cross was even made of wood, so that there was no trouble in finding it. The first man who reached it piously put it to his lips and allowed the fellow nearest him to do the same. Then the half dozen of them paddled back to shore and hurried off to get warm. The finder of the cross is a lucky man in this world and the world to come. He goes from house to house with the holy emblem he has rescued from the deep, and people give him tips. In this way he collects enough to restore his circulation and to pass a convivial Epiphany. The cross is his to keep, but he must provide a new one for the coming year.

The blessing of the waters is firmly believed by many good people to have one effect not claimed by mother church. It is supposed, that is, to exorcise for another year certain redoubtable beings known as kallikántzari. The name, according to one of the latest authorities on the subject,[2] means the good centaurs. Goodness, however, is not their distinguishing trait. They are quarrelsome, mischievous, and destructive monsters, half man, half beast, who haunt the twelve nights of the Christmas season. One of the most efficacious means of scaring them off is by firebrands, and I have wondered if the coloured lanterns to which I have alluded might owe their origin to the same idea. Many pious sailors will not venture to sea during the twelve days, for fear of these creatures. The unfurling of the sails is one of the ceremonies of Epiphany in some seaside communities. Similarly, no one—of a certain class—would dream of marrying during the twelve days, while a child so unfortunate as to be born then is regarded as likely to become a kallikántzaros himself. Here a teaching of the church perhaps mingles with the popular belief. But that belief is far older than the church, going back to Dionysus and the fauns, satyrs, and sileni who accompanied him. In many parts of the Greek world it is still the custom for men and boys to masquerade in furs during the twelve days. If no trace of the custom seems to survive in Constantinople it may be because the early fathers of the church thundered there against this continuance of the antique Dionysiac revels, which became the Brumalia and Saturnalia of the Romans.

I should not say that no trace survives, because Carnival is, of course, a lineal descendant of those ancient winter celebrations. As it exists in Constantinople, however, Carnival is for the most part but a pale copy of an Italian original, imported perhaps by the Venetians and Genoese. It affords none the less pleasure to those who participate in it, and curiosity of various colours to the members of the ruling race. I remember one night in Pera overhearing two venerable fezzes with regard to a troop of maskers that ran noisily by. “What is this play?” inquired one old gentleman, who evidently had never seen it before and who as evidently looked upon it with disapproval. “Eh,” replied the other, the initiated and the more indulgent old gentleman, “they pass the time!” The time they pass is divided differently than with us of the West. The second Sunday before Lent is called Apokreá and is the day of farewell to meat. Which for the religious it actually is, although the gaieties of Carnival are then at their height. The ensuing Sunday is called Cheese Sunday, because that amount of indulgence is permitted during the week preceding it. After Cheese Sunday, however, no man should touch cheese, milk, butter, oil, eggs, or even fish—though an exception is made in favour of caviar, out of which a delicious Lenten savoury is made. Lent begins not on the Wednesday but on the Monday, which is called Clean Monday. In fact the first week of Lent is called Clean Week. Houses are then swept and garnished and the fast is stricter than at any time save Holy Week. The very pious eat nothing at all during the first three days of Lent.

Clean Monday, nevertheless, is a great holiday. In Constantinople it is also called Tatavla Day, because every one goes out to Tatavla, a quarter bordering on open country between Shishli and Hass-kyöi. A somewhat similar custom prevails in Venice, where every one goes on Ash Wednesday to promenade on the ordinarily deserted quay of the Zattere. But no masks are seen on the Zattere on Ash Wednesday, whereas masks are the order of the day at Tatavla on Clean Monday. They are not so much the order of the day, however, as the progress of a traditional camel, each of whose legs is a man. It carries a load of charcoal and garlic, which are powerful talismans against evil, and it is led about by a picturesquely dressed camel driver whose face is daubed with blue. This simple form of masquerading, a common one at Tatavla, descends directly from the pagan Dionysia. Another picturesque feature of the day is the dancing by Epirotes—Greeks or Christian Albanians. Masquerading with these exiles consists in twisting a handkerchief about their heads in guise of a fillet and in putting on the black or white fustanella—with its accompanying accoutrements—of their native hills. They form rings in the middle of the crowd, which is kept back by one of their number called the Shepherd. Like the Christmas mummers of the Greek islands, he wears skins and has a big bronze sheep or camel bell fastened to some part of him. He also carries a staff to which is attached a bunch of garlic for good luck. He often wears a mask as well, or is otherwise disguised, and his clowneries give great amusement. In the meantime his companions join hands and dance around the ring to the tune of a pipe or a violin. The first two hold the ends of a handkerchief instead of joining hands, which enables the leader to go through more complicated evolutions. Sometimes he is preceded by one or two sword dancers, who know how to make the most of their hanging sleeves and pleated kilts. Some of these romantic young gentlemen are singularly handsome, which does not prepare one to learn that they are butchers’ boys.

The Greeks keep no mi-carême, as the Latins do. Their longer and severer fast continues unbroken till Easter morning—unless Annunciation Day happens to fall in Lent. Then they are allowed the indulgence of fish. Holy Week is with them Great Week. Services take place in the churches every night except Wednesday, and commemorate the events of Jerusalem in a more dramatic way than even in the Roman Church. The symbolic washing of the disciples’ feet, however, which takes place in Jerusalem on Holy Thursday, is not performed in Constantinople except by the Armenians. On Good, or Great, Friday a cenotaph is erected in the nave of each church, on which is laid an embroidery or some other representation of the crucifixion. Sculpture is not permitted in the Greek Church, although on this one occasion a statue has sometimes been seen. The faithful flock during the day to the cenotaph, where they kiss the embroidery and make some small donation. Each one receives from the acolyte in charge a jonquil or a hyacinth. This graceful custom is perhaps a relic of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which Easter superseded and with whose symbolism, celebrating as they did the myth of Demeter and Persephone, it has so much in common. Spring flowers, at all events, play a part at Easter quite different from our merely decorative use of them. Flower stands are almost as common at church doors as candle stands. For people also make the round of the icons in the churches, on Good Friday, lighting votive tapers here and there. The true use of the tapers, however, is after dark. Then a procession figuring the entombment of Christ issues from the church with the image of the cenotaph and makes the circuit of the court or, in purely Greek communities, of the surrounding streets, accompanied by a crowd of lighted candles. The image is finally taken to the holy table, where it remains for forty days.

An even more striking ceremony takes place on Saturday night. About midnight people begin to gather in the churches, which are aromatic with the flowering bay strewn on the floor. Every one carries a candle but none are lighted—not even before the icons. The service begins with antiphonal chanting. The ancient Byzantine music sounds stranger than ever in the dim light, sung by the black-robed priests with black veils over their tall black caps. Finally, the celebrant, in a purple cope of mourning, withdraws behind the iconostásion, the screen that in a Greek church divides the holy table from the chancel. As the chant proceeds candles are lighted in certain chandeliers. Then the door of the sanctuary is thrown open, revealing a blaze of light and colour within. The celebrant comes out in magnificent vestments, holding a lighted candle and saying: “Come to the light.” Those nearest him reach out their own tapers to take the sacred fire, and from them it is propagated in an incredibly short time through the entire church. In the meantime the priests march in procession out-of-doors, headed by a banner emblematic of the resurrection. And there, surrounded by the flickering lights of the congregation, the celebrant chants the triumphant resurrection hymn. At this point tradition demands that the populace should express their own sentiments by a volley of pistol-shots. But since the reactionary uprising of 1909, when soldiers took advantage of the Greek Easter to make such tragic use of their own arms, an attempt has been made in Constantinople to suppress this detail. I have been told that each shot is aimed at Judas. The unfaithful apostle, at all events, used to be burned in effigy on Good Friday at Therapia. And I have heard of other customs of a similar bearing.

The patriarchal church at Phanar is the most interesting place to see the ceremonies of Easter morning. They are not for every one to see, by reason of the smallness of the church. One must have a friend at court in order to obtain a ticket of admission. Even then one may miss, as I once did through ignorance, and perhaps through a lack of that persistence which should be the portion of the true tourist, certain characteristic scenes of the day. Thus I failed to witness the robing of the Patriarch by the prelates of his court. Neither did I get a photograph of them all marching in procession to the church, though I had moved heaven and earth—i. e., a bishop and an ambassador—for permission to do so. Nevertheless, I had an excellent view of the ceremony of the second resurrection, as the Easter morning vespers are called. The procession entered the church led by small boys in white and gold who carried a tall cross, two gilt exeptérigha on staves, symbolic of the six-winged cherubim, and lighted candles. After them came choristers singing. The men wore a species of fez entirely covered by its spread-out tassel. One carried an immense yellow candle in front of the officiating clergy, who marched two and two in rich brocaded chasubles. Their long beards gave them a dignity which is sometimes lacking to their Western brothers, while the tall black kalymáfhion, brimmed slightly at the top with a true Greek sense of outline, is certainly a more imposing head-dress than the biretta. The Patriarch came next, preceded and followed by a pair of acolytes carrying two and three lighted candles tied together with white rosettes. These candles symbolise the two natures of Christ and the Trinity; with them His Holiness is supposed to dispense his blessing. He wore magnificent vestments of white satin embroidered with blue and green and gold. A large diamond cross and other glittering objects hung about his neck. In his hand he carried a crosier of silver and gold and on his head he wore a domed crown-like mitre. It was surmounted by a cross of gold, around it were ornaments of enamel and seed pearls, and in the gold circlet of its base were set immense sapphires and other precious stones. The Patriarch was followed by members of the Russian embassy, of the Greek, Montenegrin, Roumanian, and Servian legations, and by the lay dignitaries of his own entourage, whose uniforms and decorations added what they could to the splendour of the occasion. These personages took their places in the body of the nave—standing, as is always the custom in the Greek Church—while the clergy went behind the screen of the sanctuary. The Patriarch, after swinging a silver censer through the church, took his place at the right of the chancel on a high canopied throne of carved wood inlaid with ivory. He made a wonderful picture there with his fine profile and long white beard and gorgeous vestments. On a lower and smaller throne at his right sat the Grand Logothete. The Grand Logothete happens at present to be a preternaturally small man, and time has greatly diminished his dignities. The glitter of his decorations, however, and the antiquity of his office make him what compensation they can. His office is an inheritance of Byzantine times, when he was a minister of state. Now he is the official representative of the Patriarch at the Sublime Porte and accompanies him to the Palace when His Holiness has audience of the Sultan.

No rite, I suppose, surpasses that of the Greek Church in splendour. The carved and gilded iconostasis, the icons set about with gold, the multitude of candles, precious lamps, and chandeliers, the rich vestments, the clouds of incense, make an overpowering appeal to the senses. To the Western eye, however, there is too much gilt and blaze for perfect taste, there are too many objects in proportion to the space they fill. And certainly to the Western ear the Byzantine chant, however interesting on account of its descent from the antique Greek modes, lacks the charm of the Gregorian or of the beautiful Russian choral. At a point of the service the Gospels were read by different voices in a number of different languages. I recognised Latin and Slavic among them. Finally, the Patriarch withdrew in the same state as he entered. On his way to his own apartments he paused on an open gallery and made an address to the crowd in the court that had been unable to get into the church. Then he held in the great saloon of his palace a levee of those who had been in the church, and each of them was presented with gaily decorated Easter eggs and with a cake called, curiously enough, by the Persian name of chörek—except that the Greeks mispronounce it tsouréki. These dainties are the universal evidence of the Greek Easter—these and the salutation “Christ is risen,” to which answer is made by lips the least sanctimonious: “In truth he is risen.” Holy Thursday is the traditional day for dyeing eggs. On Holy Saturday the Patriarch sends an ornamental basket of eggs and chörek to the Sultan. Chörek is like the Easter cake of northern Italy. It is a sort of big brioche made in three strands braided together.

Easter Monday is in some ways a greater feast than Easter itself. In Constantinople the Christian population is so large that when the Greeks and Armenians stop work their fellow citizens find it easy to follow suit. The Phanar is a favourite place of resort throughout the Easter holidays, an open space between the patriarchate and the Golden Horn being turned into a large and lively fair. The traditional place for the celebration of the day, however, is in the open spaces of the Taxim, on the heights of Pera. The old travellers all have a chapter about the festivities which used to take place there, and remnants of them may still be seen. The Armenians gather chiefly in a disused cemetery of their cult, where the tomb of a certain St. Kevork is honoured at this season and where peasants from Asia Minor may sometimes be seen dancing among the graves. A larger and noisier congregation assembles at the upper edge of the parade-ground across the street. Not a little colour is given to it by Greeks from the region of Trebizond, who sometimes are not Greeks at all, but Laz, and who often wear the hood of that mysterious people knotted around their heads. They have a strange dance which they continue hour after hour to the tune of a little violin hanging from the player’s hand. They hold each other’s fingers in the air, and as they dance they keep up a quivering in their thighs, which they vary by crouching to their heels and throwing out first one leg and then the other with a shout. An even more positive touch of colour is given to the scene by the Kürds. They set up a tent in front of which a space is partially enclosed by screens of the same material. I remember seeing one such canvas that was lined with a vivid yellow pattern on a red ground. There swarthy Kürds in gaily embroidered jackets or waistcoats gather to smoke, to drink tea, and to dance in their own more sedate way, while gipsies pipe unto them and pound a big drum. I once asked one of the dancers how it was that he, being no Christian, made merry at Easter time. “Eh,” he answered, “there is no work. Also, since the constitution we are all one, and if one nation rejoices, the others rejoice with it. Now all that remains,” he went on, “is that there should be no rich and no poor, and that we should all have money together.” Interesting as I found this socialistic opinion in the mouth of a Kürdish hamal, I could not help remembering how it had been put into execution in 1896, when the Kürds massacred the Armenian hamals and wrested from the survivors the profitable guild of the street porters. It was then that the Easter glory departed from the Taxim. But the place had already been overtaken by the growing city, while increasing facilities of communication now daily lengthen the radius of the holiday maker.

One assembly of Easter week which still is to be seen in something of its pristine glory is the fair of Balîklî. This takes place on the Friday and lasts through Sunday. The scene of it is the monastery of Balîklî, outside the land walls of Stamboul. It is rather curious that the Turkish name of so ancient a place should have superseded even among the Greeks its original appellation. The Byzantine emperors had a villa there and several of them built churches in the vicinity. The name Balîklî, however, which might be translated as the Fishy Place, comes from the legend every one knows of the Greek monk who was frying fish when news was brought him that the Turks had taken the city. He refused to believe it, saying he would do so if his fish jumped out of the frying-pan—not into the fire, but into the spring beside him. Which they promptly did. Since when the life-giving spring, as it is called, has been populated by fish that look as if they were half fried. The thing on Balîklî day is to make a pilgrimage to the pool of these miraculous fish, to drink of the water in which they swim, to wash one’s hands and face and hair in it, and to take some of it away in a bottle. The spring is at one end of a dark chapel, half underground, into which the crowd squeezes in batches. After receiving the benefits of the holy water you kiss the icons in the chapel. A priest in an embroidered stole, who holds a small cross in his hand, will then make the holy sign with it upon your person and offer you the cross and his hand as well to kiss, in return for which you drop a coin into the slot of a big box beside him. Candles are also to be had for burning at the various icons. The greater number of these, however, are in the monastery church hard by. And so many candles burn before them that attendants go about every few minutes, blow out the candles, and throw them into a box, to make room for new candles. There are also priests to whom you tell your name, which they add to a long list, and in return for the coin you leave behind you they pray for blessing upon the name. All this is interesting to watch, by reason of the great variety of the pilgrims and the unconscious lingering of paganism in their faith. And, while there is a hard commercial side to it all, you must remember that a hospital and other charitable institutions largely profit thereby.

There are also interesting things to watch outside the monastery gate. Temporary coffee-houses and eating places are established there in abundance, and the hum of festivity that arises from them may be heard afar among the cypresses of the surrounding Turkish cemetery. I must add that spirituous liquors are dispensed with some freedom; for the Greek does not share the hesitation of his Turkish brother in such matters, and he considers it well-nigh a Christian duty to imbibe at Easter. To imbibe too much at that season, as at New Year’s and one or two other great feasts, is by no means held to impair a man’s reputation for sobriety. It is surprising, however, how soberly the pleasures of the day are in general taken. As you sit at a table, absorbing your own modest refreshment, you are even struck by a certain stolidity in those about you. Perhaps it is partly due to the fact that the crowd is not purely Greek. Armenians are there, Bulgarians, Albanians, Turks too. Then many of the pilgrims are peasants, come in ox-carts from outlying villages and dazzled a little by this urban press. They listen in pure delight to the music that pours from a hundred instruments. The crowning glory of such an occasion is to have a musician sit at the table with you, preferably a hand-organ man or a gipsy with his pipe. Gipsy women go about telling fortunes. “You are going to have great calamities,” utters one darkly when you refuse to hear your fate. “Is that the way to get a piastre out of me?” you ask. “But afterward you will become very rich,” she condescends to add. Other gipsies carry miniature marionette shows on their backs in glass cases. Wandering musicians tempt you to employ their arts. Vendors of unimaginable sweets pick their way among the tables. Beggars exhibit horrible deformities and make artful speeches. “May you enjoy your youth!” is one. “May you know no bitternesses!” exclaims another with meaning emphasis. “May God forgive your dead,” utters a third. “The world I hear, but the world I do not see,” cries a blind man melodramatically: “Little eyes I have none.” Diminutives are much in favour among this gentry. And every two minutes some one comes with a platter or with a brass casket sealed with a big red seal and says, “Your assistance,” adding, “for the church,” or “for the school,” or “for the hospital,” if you seem to fail to take in what is expected of you. Your assistance need not be very heavy, however, and you feel that you owe something in return for the pleasures of the occasion.

Beyond the circle of eating places stretches an open field which is the scene of the more active enjoyment of the day. There the boat-swings beloved of Constantinople children are installed, together with merry-go-rounds, weights which one sends to the top of a pole by means of a hammer blow, and many another world-old device for parting the holiday maker and his money. One novel variant is an inclined wire, down which boys slide hanging from a pulley. Dancing is the favourite recreation of the men. When they happen to be Bulgars of Macedonia they join hands and circle about one of their number who plays the bagpipe. Every few steps the leader stops and, steadied by the man who holds the other end of his handkerchief, indulges in posturings expressive of supreme enjoyment. The pas’haliático of the Greeks is less curious but more graceful. After watching the other dances, picturesque as they are, one seems to come back with it to the old Greek sense of measure. And it is danced with a lightsomeness which is less evident with other races. The men put their hands on each other’s shoulders and circle in a sort of barn-dance step to the strains of a lanterna. Of which more anon.

The feast of Our Lady of the Fishes is one of the greatest popular festivals in Constantinople. By no means, however, is it the only one of its kind. The cult of holy wells forms a chapter by itself in the observances of the Greek Church. This cult has an exceptional interest for those who have been touched by the classic influence, as offering one of the most visible points at which Christianity turned to its own use the customs of paganism. An ἁγίασμα, an áyazma as the Greeks colloquially call it, is nothing more or less than the sacred fount of antiquity. Did not Horace celebrate such a one in his ode to the Fons Bandusiæ? As a matter of fact, a belief in naiads still persists among Greek peasants. And you can pay a lady no greater compliment than to tell her that she looks, or even that she cooks, like a nereid. For under that comprehensive style the nymphs are now known. But as guardians of sacred founts they, like some of the greater divinities, have been baptised with Christian names. There is an infinity of such springs in and about Constantinople. Comparatively few of them are so well housed as the áyazma of Balîklî. Some of them are scarcely to be recognised from any profane rill in the open country, while others are in Turkish hands and accessible only on the day of the saint to which they are dedicated. On that day, and in the case of an áyazma of some repute on the days before and after—unless the nearest Sunday determine otherwise—is celebrated the paniyíri of the patron of the spring. Paniyíri, or panayíri as perhaps it is more commonly known, has the same origin as our word panegyric. For the reading of the saint’s panegyric is one of the religious exercises of the day. Which, like the early Christian agape and the contemporary Italian festa, is another survival of an older faith. During the Byzantine period the annual pilgrimage in state of an emperor to one of the shrines of the city was a πανήγυρις. But religious exercises are not the essential part of a panayíri to most of those who take part in one. Nor need a panayíri necessarily take place at a holy well. The number of them that do take place is quite fabulous. Still, as the joy of life was discovered in Greece, who shall blame the Greeks of to-day for finding so many occasions to manifest it? And it is natural that these occasions should oftenest arise during the clement half of the year, when the greater feasts of the church are done.

One of the earliest “panegyrics” of the season is that of Aï Saránda, which is held on the 9th/22d of March. Aï Saránda means St. Forty to many good people, although others designate thereby the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste—now the Turkish city of Sîvas. There is a spring dedicated to these worthies on the outskirts of Pera, between the place called The Stones and the Palace of Dolma Ba’hcheh. I find it difficult to share the popular belief that the forty martyrs of Sîvas ever had anything to do with this site. It is true that the pious Empress Pulcheria dug them up in the fifth century and transported them with great pomp to the church she built for them on the farther side of the Golden Horn. It is also true that their church was demolished shortly before the Turkish conquest, and its marbles used in fortifying the Golden Gate. But why should a Turkish tomb on the hillside above the áyazma be venerated by the Greeks as the last resting-place of “St. Forty”? Has it anything to do with the fact that the forty martyrs are commemorated at the vernal equinox, which happens to be the New Year of the Persians and which the Turks also observe?

Being ignorant of all these matters, my attention was drawn quite by accident to the tomb in question by some women who were tying rags to the grille of a window. The act is common enough in the Levant, among Christians and Mohammedans alike. It signifies a wish on the part of the person who ties the rag, which should be torn from his own clothing. More specifically, it is sometimes supposed to bind to the bar any malady with which he may happen to be afflicted. Near this grille was a doorway through which I saw people coming and going. I therefore decided to investigate. Having paid ten paras for that privilege to a little old Turk with a long white beard, I found myself in a typical Turkish türbeh. In the centre stood a ridged and turbaned catafalque, while Arabic inscriptions adorned the walls. I asked the hoja in attendance who might be buried there. He told me that the Greeks consider the tomb to be that of St. Forty, while the Turks honour there the memory of a certain holy Ahmed. I would willingly have known more about this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of a saint; but others pressed behind me, and the hoja asked if I were not going to “circulate.” He also indicated the left side of the catafalque as the place for me to begin. I accordingly walked somewhat leisurely around the room. When I came back to the hoja he surprised me not a little by throwing a huge string of wooden beads over my head, obliging me to step clear of them. He then directed me to circulate twice more, which I did with more intelligence, he muttering some manner of invocation the while. The third time I was considerably delayed by a Greek lady with two little boys who carried toy balloons. The little boys and their balloon strings got tangled in the string of the big wooden beads, and one of the balloons broke away to the ceiling, occasioning fearful sounds of lamentation in the holy place. The hoja kept his temper admirably, however. He was not too put out to inform me that I owed him a piastre for the service he had rendered me. I begged his pardon for troubling him to remind me, saying that I was a stranger. He politely answered that one must always learn a first time, adding that a piastre would not make me poor nor him rich. I reserved my opinion on the latter point when I saw how many of them he took in. At the foot of the catafalque a Turkish boy was selling tapers. I bought one, as it were an Athenian sacrificing to the unknown god, lighted it, and stuck it into the basin of sand set for the purpose. That done, I considered myself free to admire the more profane part of the panaïr—as the Turks say.

Part of it covered the adjoining slopes, where peaceably inclined spectators, including Turkish women not a few, might also contemplate the blossoming peach-trees that added their colour to the occasion, and the farther panorama of Bosphorus and Marmora. But the crux of the proceedings was in a small hollow below the tomb. I must confess that I shrank from joining the press of the faithful about the grotto of the sacred fount. I contented myself with hovering on their outskirts. A black group of priestly cylinders marked the densest part of the crowd, and near them a sheaf of candles burned strangely in the clear spring sunlight. A big refreshment tent was pitched not too far away to receive the overflow of devotion, reaching out canvas arms to make further space for tables and chairs. The faded green common to Turkish tents was lined with dark red, appliquéd to which were panels of white flower-pots and flowers. I wondered if the tent-man wittingly repeated this note of the day. For flowers were everywhere in evidence. Lilacs, tulips, hyacinths, jonquils, violets, and narcissi were on sale under big green canvas umbrellas at the edge of the hollow, while every other pilgrim who came away from the áyazma carried a bottle of holy water in one hand and a spring flower in the other.

Interesting as is the panayíri of the forty martyrs, it does not rank with the later and greater spring festival of St. George. This also has Turkish affiliations—at least in Constantinople and Macedonia. Both races count St. George’s Day, April 23d/May 6th, the official beginning of summer—of the good time, as modern Greek pleasantly puts it. The Turks, however, dedicate the day to Hîd’r Eless. But it is not too difficult to relate this somewhat vague personage to our more familiar friend Elijah, who in his character of St. Elias shares with St. George the mantle of Apollo. Nor is the heavenly charioteer the only one of the Olympians whose cult survives to-day among their faithful people. The Hebrew prophet would doubtless have been much astonished to learn that he was to be the heir of a Greek god. He owes it partly to the similarity of his name to the Greek word for sun and partly to the chariot of fire that carried him out of the world. As for “the infamous George of Cappadocia,” as Gibbon denominates the patron saint of our ancestral island, his part in the heritage of Apollo is due to his dragon, cousin german to the python of the Far Darter. The sanctuaries of these two Christian legatees of Olympus have replaced those of Apollo on all hilltops, while their name-days are those when men feasted of old the return and the midsummer splendour of the sun.

The place among places to celebrate St. George’s Day is Prinkipo. That delicious island deserves a book to itself. Indeed, I believe several have been written about it. One of them is by a political luminary of our own firmament who flamed for a moment across the Byzantine horizon and whose counterfeit presentment, in a bronze happily less enduring than might be, hails the motor men of Astor Place, New York. Sunset Cox’s work bears the ingratiating title of “The Pleasures of Prinkipo; or, The Diversions of a Diplomat”—if that be the order of the alternatives. The pleasures of Prinkipo are many as its red and white sage roses, but none of them is more characteristic than to climb the Sacred Way through olive and cypress and pine to the little monastery crowning the higher hill of the island, and to take part in the ceremonies of rejoicing over the return of the sun. This is a panayíri much frequented by the people of the Marmora, who come in their fishing-boats from distant villages of the Marble Sea. Their costumes become annually more corrupt, I am pained to state; but there are still visible among them ladies in print, sometimes even in rich velvet, trousers of a fulness, wearing no hat but a painted muslin handkerchief over the hair, and adorned with dowries in the form of strung gold coins. They do not all come to make merry. Among them are not a few ill or deformed, who hope a miracle from good St. George. You may see them lying pale and full of faith on the strewn bay of the little church. They are allowed to pass the night there, in order to absorb the virtue of the holy place. I have even known of a sick child’s clothes being left in the church a year in hope of saving its life.

But these are only incidents in the general tide of merrymaking. Eating and drinking, music and dance, go on without interruption for three days and three nights. The music is made in many ways, of which the least popular is certainly not the way of the lanterna. The lanterna is a kind of hand-organ, a hand-piano rather, of Italian origin but with an accent and an interspersing of bells peculiar to Constantinople. It should attract the eye as well as the ear, usually by means of the portrait of some beauteous being set about with a garland of artificial flowers. And it is engineered by two young gentlemen in fezzes of an extremely dark red, in short black jackets or in bouffant shirt-sleeves of some magnificent print, with a waistcoat more double-breasted than you ever saw and preferably worn unbuttoned; also in red or white girdles, in trousers that flare toward the bottom like a sailor’s, and in shoes or slippers that should have no counter. Otherwise the rules demand that the counter be turned under the wearer’s heel. Thus accoutred he bears his lanterna on his back from patron to patron and from one panayíri to another. His companion carries a camp-stool, whereon to rest his instrument while turning the handle hour in and hour out. I happen, myself, to be not a little subject to the spell of music. I have trembled before Fitzner, Kneisel, and Sevčik quartettes and I have touched infinity under the subtlest bows and batons of my time. Yet I must confess that I am able to listen to a lanterna without displeasure. On one occasion I listened to many of them, accompanied by pipes, drums, gramophones, and wandering violins, for the whole of a May night on St. George’s hilltop in Prinkipo. What is more, I understood in myself how the Dionysiac frenzy was fed by the cymbals of the mænads, and I resented all the inhibitions of a New England origin that kept me from joining the dancers. Some of them were the Laz porters of the island, whose exhausting measure was more appropriate to such an orgy than to Easter Monday. Others were women, for once; but they kept demurely to themselves, apparently untouched by any corybantic fury. The same could not be said of their men, whose dancing was not always decent. They were bareheaded, or wore a handkerchief twisted about their hair like a fillet, and among them were faces that might have looked out of an Attic frieze. It gave one the strangest sense of the continuity of things. In the lower darkness a few faint lights were scattered. One wondered how, to them, must seem the glare and clangour of this island hilltop, ordinarily so silent and deserted. The music went up to the quiet stars, the revellers danced unwearying, a half-eaten moon slowly lighted the dark sea, a spring air moved among the pines, and then a greyness came into the east, near the Bithynian Olympus, and at last the god of hilltops rode into a cloud-barred sky.

The second feast of Apollo takes place at midsummer, namely on St. Elias’s Day (July 20/August 2). Arnaout-kyöi is where it may be most profitably admired. Arnaout-kyöi—Albanian Village—is the Turkish name of a thriving suburb which the Greeks call Great Current, from the race of the Bosphorus past its long point. It perhaps requires a fanatical eye to discover anything Apollonic in that lively settlement. No one will gainsay, however, that the joy of life is visible and audible enough in Arnaout-kyöi during the first three days of August. There also is a sacred way, leading out of an odoriferous ravine to a high place and a grove, whither all men gather in the heat of the day to partake of the water of a holy well. But waters less sanctified begin to flow more freely as night draws on, along the cool quay and in the purlieus thereof. Fringes of coloured paper are strung from house to house, flags hang out of windows or across the street, wine-shops are splendid with banners, rugs, and garlands of bay, and you may be sure that the sound of the lanterna is not unheard in the land. The perfection of festivity is to attach one of these inspiriting instruments to your person for the night. The thing may be done for a dollar or two. You then take a table at a café and order with your refreshments a candle, which you light and cause to stand with a little of its own grease. In the meantime perhaps you buy as many numbers as your means will allow out of a bag offered you by a young gentleman with a watermelon under his arm, hoping to find among them the mystic number that will make the melon your own. But you never do. When your candle has burned out—or even before, if you be so prodigal—you move on with your lanterna to another café. And so wears the short summer night away.

To the sorrow of those who employ Greek labour, but to the joy of him who dabbles in Greek folklore, panayíria increase in frequency as summer draws to a close. The picturesque village of Kandilli, opposite Arnaout-kyöi—and any church dedicated to the Metamorphosis—is the scene of an interesting one on Transfiguration Day (August 6/19). No good Greek eats grapes till after the Transfiguration. At the mass of that morning baskets of grapes are blessed by the priests and afterward passed around the church. I know not whether some remnant of a bacchic rite be in this solemnity. It so happens that the delicious chaoush grapes of Constantinople, which have spoiled me for all others that I know, ripen about that time. But as the blessing of the waters drives away the kallikántzari, so the blessing of the grapes puts an end to the evil influence of the thrímes. The thrímes are probably descended from the dryads of old. Only they now haunt the water, instead of the trees, and their influence is baleful during the first days of August. Clothes washed then are sure to rot, while the fate of him so bold as to bathe during those days is to break out into sores.

The next great feast is that of the Assumption, which is preceded by a fortnight’s fast. Those who would see its panegyric celebrated with due circumstance should row on the 28th of August to Yeni-kyöi and admire the plane-shaded avenue of that fashionable village, decorated in honour of the occasion and musical with mastic glasses and other instruments of sound. A greater panayíri, however, takes place a month later in the pleasant meadows of Gyök Sou, known to Europe as the Sweet Waters of Asia. Two feasts indeed, the Nativity of the Virgin and the Exaltation of the Cross (September 8/21 and 14/27), then combine to make a week of rejoicing. There is nothing to be seen at Gyök Sou that may not be seen at other fêtes of the same kind. I do recollect, though, a dance of Anatolian peasants in a ring, who held each other first by the little finger, then by the hand, then by the elbow, and lastly by the shoulder. And the amphoræ of the local pottery works in which people carry away their holy water give the rites of the áyazma a classic air. But this panayíri has an ampler setting than the others, in its green river valley dotted with great trees, and it enjoys an added importance because it is to all practical purposes the last of the season. No one can count on being able to make merry out-of-doors on St. Demetrius’s Day (October 26 / November 8). St. Demetrius is as interesting a personality as St. George. He also is an heir of divinity, for on him, curiously enough, have devolved the responsibilities of the goddess Demeter. He is the patron of husbandmen, who discharge labourers and lease fields on his day. Among working people his is a favourite season for matrimony. I know not how it is that some sailors will not go to sea after Aï Thimítri, until the waters have been blessed at Epiphany. Perhaps it is that he marks for Greeks and Turks alike the beginning of winter, being known to the latter as Kassîm. This division of the seasons is clearly connected with the Pelasgian myth of Demeter.

The feast of her successor I have never found particularly interesting, though I must say I have seen it only at Kourou Cheshmeh. Kourou Cheshmeh, or Dry Fountain, as the Turks call it, is where Medea, during her somewhat stormy honeymoon in the Argo, planted a laurel, and where a very different notability of a later day, St. Daniel the Stylite, stood for many years on a pillar. No sign of laurel or pillar are there to-day, or of the famous Byzantine church of the Archangel Michael, which existed somewhere in the vicinity and which Sultan Mehmed II pulled down to build into Cut-Throat Castle. But there is a remnant of antiquity in Kourou Cheshmeh which goes very well with feasts of Demeter. This is an old altar, half buried in the earth near the mosque of the village, festooned about with garlands between battered rams’ heads—a curiously vivid symbol of the contrasts and survivals that are so much of the interest of Constantinople.