GREEK MOURNING SONGS
Mourning songs are laments about the people who have died or general laments concerning the human conviction. All the deep cries, the irrational thoughts, the weird and unprecedented human emotions in front of the beloved lifeless person have resulted, little by little, in those mourning songs which can be soul-stirring merely by reading them.
The songs express the deep sorrow for the loss of a beloved person and at the same time they praise the dead person’s virtues.
Besides, this same unbearable, almost physical pain, which tortures the mourning survivors, has created, apart from the mourning songs, some other masterpieces as well. The burial services and the tomb anaglyphs are also a result of this pain.
The mourning songs are lyrical poems of dramatic style and they remind us of the choral in an ancient Greek tragedy.They express the negation to accept the biological phenomenon of death and decay. Charon impersonates the death itself along with the underworld, who takes people’s souls whereas he is unbeatable himself.
Here, in the Greek territory, people have been used to mourning over their dead relatives, especially young men, since ancient times. In “Iliad” they mourn over the dead body of Hector:
Andromachi mourning over Hector’s dead body
And the white-handed Andromache started mourning
Moving her hands towards Hector’s head
My husband, you died young, leaving me, a widow,
In our home with our little child
The custom, naturally, is a much older one. In Euripides’ tragedy “Helen of Troy”, the heroine says to her husband, Menelaus:
Having my hair cut and with laments
I will be crying for you
In Euripides’ tragedy Hecuba, who is under captivity, mourns over the fall of Troy:
Disaster
How can me, the unfortunate one, but not cry
About my children, my country, my husband who are all lost,
Laments, no dancing songs,
This is the music that matches the unfortunate ones.
Yet, during Byzantine times the same things happened. But, the mourning songs took their final forms during the Turkish domination. Nowadays, with the conditions being totally different, the mourning songs still exist in a few places and mainly in the area of Mani. The common mourning song from this area is an eight-syllable, iambic one which also rhymes, whereas fifteen syllables are the usual poetic meter of the rest mourning songs.
In May’s croft
Your name, my little kid, was taken by the river,
It was taken and dragged into May’s croft,
May is watching it and he is laughing; his wife is crying,
Their kids are also watching it and they are playing and laughing.
Generally, every moment and every action connected with the dead person have their own mourning songs. The relatives, the friends, the mother can be heard to talk to their beloved dead person in a tender way, to ask questions carefully, to advise about the new pitfalls which are beginning right now and which are endless.
You have already set off, my child
You have already set off, my child, going to the underworld,
Leaving your mother behind, unfortunate and death-stricken,
My dear child, where am I to place my pain?
If I place it in a crossroads it will be taken away by the passersby,
If I place it on the tree branches it will be taken away by the little birds,
If it drops on the sea the ships will sink,
And if I keep it in my heart I will meet you soon.
There are mourning songs, though, in which the dead people themselves talk saying goodbye for ever, describing the dark netherworld and the lightless earth. The Underworld, they say, is a nightmarish place, the exact opposite of the human world.
This uneasy underworld of our folkloric songs, despite the Christian beliefs, has not quieted down at all. It differs no more than the frightful Hades of ancient times, which is so desperately described by Achilles in “Odyssey”.
His mother, Thetis, weeps along with the Nine Muses a little time before Achilles is buried:
In the meantime the old seaman’s daughters stood by his side
Mourning over you and dressing you up with immortal clothes
The nine Muses, with a sweet voice, were lamenting changing their music.
Nobody remained tearless.
Everybody was touched by their songs,
The mourning song lasted for seventeen days and seventeen nights
Of mortal people and immortal gods.
Consequently, the pain of death is diachronic and so is the human lament, the mourning songs which are also called death songs or songs of the underworld. Women in the region of Epirus still keep mourning. In the past there were expert women who were doing this work and were invited to mourn over the dead person. The mourning songs of Epirus are distinguished by their strong emotionalism, the imagination, the vividness, the dialogue and the philosophical analysis. A characteristic song of this type is the following which comes from the region of Pogoni.
This world
This world,
This world is not made for us,
I will miss this world,
This Earth, with its grass, devours the young men and spring lads,
This Earth is the place where we will all step into.