Little is known about the author of the 385 lines of this poem. Nikitas Niphakos came from the village of Mília not far from Leuktra and the point where our Maniot journey began. He is presumed to have lived approximately from 1750 to 1810. Professor Kouyeas thinks, on good grounds, that he was captured, while still a boy, by a Moslem-Albanian expedition into the Mani; that he escaped and fled to Bucharest, the capital and throne of the Phanariot Greek hospodars of Wallachia, where he probably learnt to read and write. He probably returned to the Mani during the reign of Zanetbey Grigorakis, who reigned from 1782 to 1788. (The praise of this celebrated Bey is laid on so thick that it is fair to assume that Niphakos was one of his clients.) His poem is little known either inside the Mani or out—deservedly perhaps, for it has no great poetical value. But it is of considerable linguistic interest; it is studded with Maniot dialect words, some of them already obsolete. Yet it gives a fascinating picture of Maniot life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a picture, alas, which would corroborate the darkest reports of Western strangers. It is full of regional Maniot prejudice. He cracks up the Lower Mani but, rather oddly, has not much good to say of the Outer where his own village lay. But it is the Deep Mani that catches it hottest. He seems to have put the poem about, in the first instance, himself. Col. Leake came across a manuscript in Mistra in 1810. There have been others since, all slightly different. When we were in Areopolis, I got permission from the kind gymnasiarch there to consult the great Greek Encyclopedia[2] in the library of the Lycée, and came across a copy of the poem there, and laboriously copied it out.[3]
After supper that night we sat about talking on the steps under the archway, half in lamplight, half in moonlight: the submarine koumbara, her two guests and her assembled brood of amphibians. They were a delightful, handsome, easy-going lot, full of charm, intelligence and fun. We had been talking about dirges, and the koumbara sang us a few fragments she remembered from her childhood. I asked them about Niphakos. They had all heard of him but none had actually read the poem. When I said I had got a copy, they suggested that I should read it out loud. I had copied it in a hurry without paying much attention to the content, so I fished out my notebook and confidently let fly.
“A great mountain stands on the Morea,” it begins, “in the region of Laconia. The ancient Spartans called it Taygetus, and the Maniots, the Far Away Elijah.[4]... Other smaller mountains lie between it and Cape Matapan. To these mountains fled the ancient Spartans, the same men who to-day are known as the Maniots.”
“That’s right,” said Petro, the youngest but one of the sons. “We’re ancient Spartans.”
“... To save their lives and their freedom they built villages and strong places in the mountains. It was not in their nature to be slaves, but to live as free men. No mules they. The poor lads were true Spartans, free-born and well-skilled in battle. That is why they built hamlets and refuges in the mountains, and there they live in freedom to this very day.” So far so good.
“Kalá ta graphei,” said another son. “He writes it well.”
Niphakos goes on to enumerate the villages of the Mani: “Seven and ten and a hundred are the villages held in freedom by their arms.” Considering the geography of the region, it is an enormous number. All travellers, and notably Lord Carnarvon in the 1830’s, have commented on the proliferation of villages and the teeming population in this desolate region. (Many of the villages are almost empty now.) The inhabitants had, quite literally, fled there at one time or another and taken root, for freedom’s sake. The poverty of a region so heavily populated was the source of all the Mani’s troubles.
There is no further mention of history—two thousand years are skipped with enviable nonchalance—until the tangle of contemporary politics. The bulk of the poem is a harmonious concatenation of the names of the hundred and seventeen villages of the Mani, region by region. Here and there a region or a village is singled out for qualification. “The Lower Mani, rich in cotton and vallonia acorns”; “Korogoyianika stands like an unhappy bride”; “Layia,” I was glad to see, is “beautiful and holy”—largely perhaps because the Greek word for holy (áyia) is such a splendid rhyme. Likewise, Skoutari “shines among the other hamlets like the moon” (fengari). Again, Korea is as cold as the north wind (vorea). “The Outer Mani produces plenty of silkworms and oil and acorns.” “It has terrible gorges and wild ravines, wonderful hamlets and powerful villages.” “An-drouvitza, with all its birds, lies in the foothills of Far Away Elijah.” “On the cape is Kelepha with its castle; but it is a desert and has nothing else.” “And so I come to Arachova the far-renowned, hidden away in a witch-haunted valley; and then to the paths of the wolves, the land of sheep- and goat-rustlers and of night walkers. I will name the villages of the eaters of stolen goat’s meat, the hole-dwellers and mule-thieves and the murderers of flocks.” He does so. But further on lies “Kastanitza, well known in many a battle and feared by the Turks, drunk though the villagers be.” The captaincies and the captains thereof are catalogued like a genealogical passage out of the Pentateuch.
At last we come to the great Zanetbey, “hero and wonder, father to orphans and firm pillar of his fatherland. He should be the first leader and bear the princely rank through all the confines of the Mani, even in all Laconia. He is great and hospitable and a mighty warrior. He does things that no one else in the Mani can do. I tell of things I have seen, not lies. A bell rings in his palace for the banquet in the evening and whoso hears it may go and eat at his table and come away filled. He loves strangers and the poor...but the evil he chases away and pounds to powder, like salt. So young and old obey him, and all the captains too. All except one, the lord Koumoundouros, who ravages his regions like a hawk and treads down the poor and steals their goods and eats their food and makes all the region sigh. He longs to hold sway over all the Mani, to take its silk away and seize its oil.” When he took troops and ships to attack Androuvitza, the effect was Biblical: “The brave youths answered him, dreadful captains went out before him. They met at Skardamoula, there they answered him, there they pounced on him like lions. One man repelled a hundred, and a hundred drove back a thousand. They stripped their enemies bare and sowed them to the winds. He (Koumoundouros) fled across the country in sore fright with his troops. On the shore he left the black Seraskier[5] and his army trembled until they were safe in the ships. And from his great fear he filled his breeches full.” This passage was a great success. “That’s what the Lower and Outer Mani are like in arms. They devour their foes and would lose themselves for their friends.”
A long plea for civil peace comes next. Let murders, piracies and robberies cease, let no more houses and churches be destroyed. All the disorder springs from carelessness and illiteracy. Disorder provokes battles, robberies, murder, destruction and upheaval. If only there were a few schools! If only the priests would lead and teach their flocks! If only the lowly would order themselves humbly before the great! “I indeed,” this passage concludes, “am deep in bitterness. I depart in sorrow, and I leave your [my?] homeland overshadowed with evening.” I paused.
“Yes, but what about the Deep Mani?” everyone cried.
“We’re just coming to it. Here we are.” I cleared my throat. “The Deep Mani.”
“With bitter sorrow in my soul and misgiving in my heart I enter...the land of Evil Council.” This sounded unpromising, but it continued harmlessly enough with a list of the twenty and six villages and hamlets of the Deep Mani. (Oddly, and perhaps just as well, there was no mention of Kypriano, the village where we were sitting.) Tsimova (Areopolis) is the first on the list, “and there rules the captain, one Mavromichalis.” The poet speaks of “Mina and Kitta the many-towered, and Nomia too... Vatheia and Alika... The Deep Mani it is called. It is all the same and quails and Arabian figs[6] are their only fare. Of woods, trees or bushes there is not even one. There is nowhere to stand in the shade on the burnt hills. There is not a water-spring in the whole Deep Mani. Crops? Nothing but ch
ickpeas and dried oats. The women sow them and the women reap and women scatter the sheaves on the threshing floor. On their unshod feet they grind them on the threshing floor and winnow them with their bare hands. Half-naked they load the grain on their backs, picking out the thick chaff lest it should harm the rest. And from the boiling heat and the burning of the sun their tongues hang out like the tongues of heatstruck dogs.”
“Po, po, po,”[7] interjected the koumbara deprecatingly here.
“Their hands and feet are horny and cracked, as tough as leather and hard as a tortoise’s shell. They grind away lamenting all night at the quern, pounding the grain at the handmill and singing dirges. Out they go betimes with their baskets, running to gather the droppings in the hollows and the places where the beasts go to drink at noon and to scatter their dung. Thither run the women and gather it up for fuel to cook their breadflaps on. There you see them, whiter than kourounes and more slovenly than pigs, for they knead the cattle droppings with their hands and spread dung-cakes in the sun to dry (‘Po, po, po!’) and then take them home to cook the food of the widows and orphans.”
I was beginning to regret embarking on this poetical reading. I looked up in some trepidation, and was relieved to find them all smiling with amusement and interest.
“The hornwearer!” said one of the sons, and “What do you expect? He was only an Outer Maniot,” another; and a third, “Read on, Michali.”
“The men,” I began.
“Now for the men!” one muttered.
“The men are for ever stalking forth in search of plunder, seeking how they can outwit their neighbours. Hither and thither they go seeking whom they may rob, everyone lying in wait to slay someone. One stands on guard in his tower lest another should capture it, one hunts one, another another. Neighbour looks on neighbour, godbrother on godbrother, true brother on true brother as if each were Charon himself. One claims death in vengeance, another is the debtor.... One lies in wait for the brother, another for the son, another for the father, another for the grandfather and another for the greatgrandsire himself...yet another for cousin or nephew or indeed, any other kinsman. And when they find them, to Hades they send them straightway and they are held accursed till they are avenged. They neither change their clothes nor wash nor barber their chins till they have their vengeance. You can see them there all bearded and smothered in filth, armed to the teeth and wilder than vampires: old men of eighty and even more, all bristling with arms. Savage is their frown and hideous their glance; their eyes are red and their nails as long as the talons of savage beasts. Only when someone dies a natural death who should have been slain do they weep, someone from whom they might have wrung vengeance and consolation. When children are born they distribute pancakes to bring him luck, and everybody gathers at his door and fires off his gun. The widows and married girls gather...and cry: ‘Welcome! May he live and learn how to handle arms and wipe out all his foes!...’”
“That’s correct,” the koumbara said.
“When strangers stray into their regions by chance they turn them into godbrothers and bid them to table. But when the stranger rises to leave, they hold him back, talking in soft and cozening voices. ‘Godbrother,’ they say, ‘we have only your welfare at heart, please don’t misunderstand us. Quick! Off with that jacket with its hanging sleeves,[8] your waistcoat and sash and those baggy trousers too in case an enemy should steal them. Should an enemy strip you bare, should others rob you, great shame and ill-renown would fall on us! That is why, dearest godbrother, it is best to tell you outright that we would be happier if you left your fez and your shirt with us as well. And off with those slippers, they will be no use to you. Now, at last you are safe from all harm.’ Thus they strip the wretched stranger down to the bone and send him pitilessly on his way.”
This passage was accompanied by a crescendo of laughter, concluding in a happy outburst and murmurs which were half amusement and half censure laced with admiration.
I think the sheer impossibility of such a crime against the laws of hospitality—nowhere more binding than in the Mani as the reader will have gathered and as all the memoirs prove—placed it in the realm of pure clowning and robbed it of its sting, harming neither satirist nor satirized.
There is a tradition that Niphakos was beaten up somewhere in the Deep Mani, probably in Kitta, dia gynaikodoulies, for “woman-business”—improper suggestions or worse. His gall seems unstaunchable. “Woe betide, if ever, for her sins,” he goes on, “a sailing ship chances on these shores, be she French, Spanish, English, Turk or Muscovite, be she large or small—everyone wants his share, my son. They dice for shares on the backgammon board without another thought in their heads. They have neither shame before man nor fear of God; they have neither compassion for the poor nor pity for strangers. Such are their rawness and beastlike madness that they bear no likeness to humankind. They sully the earth they tread upon, the devil himself is their only companion. These are the men who have given the rest of the Mani a bad name. Men and women, old and young, none of them even smell like human beings. Even to eat with them were a pollution and a curse on the soul. No one should as much as bid them good-day, but fly from them as from a serpent.”
A parliamentary cry of “Oh!” went up.
“Only the men of Tsimova are any good—and even they are merchants on the outside, but really secret corsairs. May the winds blow them all away!” He winds up with a repetitious lamentation about the internal discord of the Mani, the savage customs, the illiteracy and the general declension from the great old days of the Spartans. “Ah! Ah! Would I could shed a river of tears to submerge my fatherland! Once it was alive and famous, now it is dead and befouled. My country, covered once with glory and renowned through all the kingdoms of the world, what has become of you? Where are all your lances and your bows?”
In view of the Maniot passion for arms, it is a singularly inappropriate and ill-conceived peroration.
It was bedtime, the night was warm and still except for the drilling of crickets and the intermittent note of the little owl. The moon shone almost as bright as day, and we were led by three of the sons, carrying pillows and blankets and a water-pitcher, to a straw-padded threshing floor on a ledge of rocks just above the house. The beautiful koumbara was still spinning on the descending steps, the moonlight sending her shadow and a long loop of silver across the dark floor indoors.
“Light sleep and sweet dreams,” she said, “but remember where you are. Better put your clothes under the pillow.”
“Don’t worry, mamá,” cried one of the sons, “I’ll get their coats and shirts, whatever happens.”
“I’ve got my eye on their shoes,” another said. “Never fear.”
We climbed up the rocks past an enormous clump of cactus. The pewter-coloured blades, that seem moonlit even at noonday, were shining now like a sheaf of platinum. A small figure—the youngest of the sons—stepped from its shadow with a stage moan, his eyes eerily ablaze with a most peculiar light. We all jumped, as we were intended to. The still, fiery eyes were hauntingly strange and enigmatic. Suddenly he seemed to pluck them from their sockets and then to place one in each of our hands. They were enormous glow-worms which he had somehow stuck on his eyelids. He skipped off downhill. A strange conceit.
[1] The word is originally the same as compadre in Italian and Spanish. In Crete, where the godbrother network is very strong (I know, because I am deeply involved in it through many font-side ceremonies during the war), the word synteknos is used for the baptismal tie. The relationship is sometimes used as a joke, in addressing total strangers—“Yassou, Koumbare.” It strikes a note of friendly collusion.
[2] This invaluable work, of which I at last possess the twenty-two enormous volumes, can be found and consulted in the Greek Lycée or the Demarcheion—Town Hall—of any decent-sized town.
[3] I have translated the bits which appear later from a version in the oft-mentioned book by Mr. Dimitrakos-Messisklis.
[4] Helios? Ma
krynas—the Far Away One—is the demotic name for the Taygetus as well as for the demon of the Mani. See p. 83.
[5] The Turkish commander-in-chief.
[6] Prickly pear.
[7] The modern Greek “Tk, tk, tk!”
[8] The embroidered Greek loose-sleeved jacket known as the fermelé, in Crete the yeléka or zopáni.
17. UP THE LACONIAN GULF: ANIMALS AND WINDS
Aphrodite, Cythera, was painted smartly across the poop of the fast and racy looking caique we boarded next morning. Indeed, everything was as bright as a pin. There was silver paint on the cleats and, along the bows, touches of grass green, ox-blood and gilding in the swirl of carved wooden foliage from which the bowsprit sprang. The mast was painted in the blue and white Greek colours in a bold barber’s pole spiral for a third of its height. A tin framed picture of St. Catherine was nailed to it and on a folded sailor’s jacket a sleek and well-fed tortoiseshell cat stretched sleepily at the pother of embarkation. The entire glittering craft, presided over by a jolly whiskered Cerigiot captain who abetted our embarkation with cheerful cries of “aidé!” and a hauling hand stretched overboard and avuncular pats on the back, was as full of livestock as Noah’s ark. There were the usual trusses of chicken, three Maniot pigs and a whole flock of goats. There was even a donkey with its foal. As though this were not enough, just as we raised anchor, a cicada, rashly flying a few yards out to sea, alighted on the gigantic white whisker of an old man who lay sleeping with his mouth open in a stertorous recurring semibreve. After a few seconds on this flimsy perch it struck up. The din, so close to the sleeper’s ear, must have sounded like an alarm clock. He broke off in mid-snore and leapt up beating his head while the insect went whirring inland to safety.
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