# Folk-Lore/Volume 23/A Greek Marriage in Cappadocia

COLLECTANEA.
A Greek Marriage in Cappadocia.
Hasákeui, or as the Greeks call it Axó, is a village lying out in the middle of the Cappadocian plain about six hours' drive to the north of Nigde. With the exception of the church and the school now being constructed, the buildings consist entirely of flat-roofed houses of mud bricks, plastered over with a compound of straw, mud, and dung (Plate I). Against almost every wall are to be seen the dung cakes, which in this treeless country serve as fuel in the severe winter, plastered up to dry in the sun. The village naturally presents a somewhat squalid and insignificant appearance, but it is of considerable size. It is said to contain 800 houses, and in each house live the νοικοκύρης or head of the house, his unmarried daughters and his sons and their wives and families. In the house in which my companion and I were lodged the total number of the family was twenty-four. In the winter, when snow lies a metre deep on the ground and sheep and cattle are added to the human inhabitants of a mud dwelling, ill-calculated to withstand the assaults of rain and snow, the conditions of life must be uncomfortable indeed.
The inhabitants are all Christians, and, with the characteristic and pathetic hankering after an ancestral patrimony, the learned men of the place are convinced that Axó must have been a colony of Naxos! The majority of the people talk Turkish and one of the Cappadocian dialects of modern Greek. It was the latter indeed which brought Mr. Dawkins, whom I had the good fortune to accompany, to the place. One or two, the intellectual aristocracy, who had been taken out of their village by mercantile enterprise, spoke the "pure" tongue of modern Greece.
​There is something of the heroic in the way these Greeks pursue an ideal of education, disappointing as are too often the results when the means have been achieved. This mud village, obviously a miserably poor community, was engaged in building itself a school which, when completed, will be second only to the church in magnificence,—and every stone has to be brought from Urgub, at least a day's journey away! This enterprise is a sign of the times, and another fifty years will probably see great changes in the customs of this at present backward community. We were therefore delighted to hear on our arrival of a marriage to be celebrated on the morrow.
In Hasákeui they marry young,—boys from twelve to seventeen, and girls from ten to fourteen years of age. The betrothal takes place three or four years before marriage, and the practice of infant betrothal, which prevails, I believe, in some of the villages of these parts, was said not to exist here.
Eight days before the marriage ceremony, the representatives of the bridegroom go to the house of the prospective bride and 'give word' (δἰδουν λὀγον) to her parents of the approaching event. The next ceremony is that of clothing the bridegroom, which takes place the evening before the marriage, and this we were fortunate enough to witness on the evening of our arrival.
Plate II.
THE VILLAGE OF HASÁKEUI.
To face p. 82.
All this time the bridegroom had been standing, neglected by everybody, against a wall of the yard, a disconsolate figure with a guttering candle in his hand and by his side his σύντεκνος (sýnteknos) or best man. This official is a god-child of the bridegroom's father, and will himself be godfather to the first child born of the marriage. In this case he was an unhappy-looking little boy of eight or nine years old.
When the food had been taken away, the priest took a lighted candle in his left hand, and set in front of him a bundle of new clothes tied up in a handkerchief. He proceeded to chant a prayer for the blessing of the Holy Ghost, concluding with the words,—"Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." The bundle was then opened, and the bridegroom led in front of the priest. To his left and a little in his rear stood the παρισκάμενος (parisámenos), his brother-in-law, whose duty it is to prompt and direct his movements throughout the ceremony. To his right stood his κονμπάρος (kumbáros), or godfather, and to him the priest handed one by one the articles of clothing, two waistcoats, trousers, a belt, a coat, and a fez. As he received each, the kumbáros passed it three times widdershins round the bridegroom's head before clothing him with it, saying each time,—"I put this (naming the garment) on the boy; may he be of good repute and live many years,"—a refrain which is taken up by the crowd in chorus. When the bridegroom has thus been reduced to a helpless bundle of new clothes, he bends down, and the priest ties round his neck a yellow handkerchief and tucks the ends in his belt, forming a St. Andrew's Cross on his breast. This crossed handkerchief is called the πολνσταύρο (polysiávro).
After kissing the priest's hand, the bridegroom stands neglected for a time, while the collection of parádhes is conducted. The ​priest has a small tin tray in front of him; a few small coins are given by each of those present, and, as they are put into the priest's hand, he is told the donor's name. He then rattles them into the plate, shouting,—"Mashallá! May So-and-so have many children," or some wish suitable to the occasion and the donor's status. The priest and the pariskámenos entered with great zest into this part of the business, and shouted for χαιρετίσματα with all the energy of hawkers at a fair.
When the springs of charity have run dry, the bridegroom is again brought forward. His shoes are removed, and inside each is placed a small coin. He then puts them on again, and walks round the company, shaking and kissing hands, but holding all the while his left hand in front of his genital organs.
After this general salutation, the bridegroom disappeared for good, and until half-past ten o'clock, when we were given a hint to go and permit the party to break up, music and dance occupied the company. To the tambourines was added a reed pipe called a κερύκα (kerýka), to whose strains a local performer danced a wild dance with extraordinary and unflagging energy. It opened by his standing with feet wide apart, arms dangling out, and head, with closed eyes, hanging slack on his breast. In this posture he swayed five or six times from side to side, like a man in the last stages of sodden inebriation. The next movement consisted of a shuffling little step combined with a good deal of stomach play and twisting of the body. Then suddenly, sitting on his heels, he proceeded to bound round and round the circle, snapping his fingers and emitting sharp barking yells.
Plate III.
WEDDING PROCESSION AT HASÁKEUI.
To face p. 84.
After a further delay, the bride, surrounded by her women, was led out by the godmother of the bridegroom. She was dressed in so many clothes that she could hardly walk, and must have been nearly suffocated with the heat. Over her clothes she had a red robe of thick material, and over her head was a long yellow cloth, above which she wore a metal cap with a long tassel and a fringe of coins; over that again was the thick red veil. After seeing her led out, calling out on her mother and expressing loudly her grief and reluctance to leave her home, we were hurried on to a post of vantage. I was told afterwards that when the bride passes out of the outer gate of her home she kisses the door.
The procession made its way to the church. In front ran a posse of little boys indulging their natural aptitude for raising a din, and then a crowd of men led by the tambourine player in front drumming away and shrieking songs like one possessed, while the man with the spoon castanets danced. Next came the priest carrying his book under his arm, and his stick in his hand, puffing away at a cigarette. Behind him walked the main part of the procession, the bridegroom and sýnteknos side by side with candles in their hands, and on the right of the groom the bride; behind them again was the crowd of women (Plate III).
The service was of course in the language of the Greek Church, with the exception of the exhortation, which was read in Turkish, in order that it might be 'understanded of the people.' The first part took place just inside the church door, and was invisible from our position opposite the lectern in the middle of the aisle. To this the pair now advanced. The book from which one of the two officiating priests read the service was placed upon their ​bended heads, and for some time rested there. The godmother of the bridegroom stood behind with crossed arms resting on the backs of the happy pair. Throughout the service, she crossed and recrossed her arms in this position, after the ceremony of crowning holding one of the crowns in either hand. This crowning with wreaths of artificial orange blossom is of course the central point of the Greek marriage service. The crowns are blessed, and the sign of the cross is made several times with each of them over both parties before they are put on.
After the crowning an eikon was placed on the lectern and the pair were led round it three times, widdershins, kissing it each time they pass it. They were then made to stand, holding an eikon in their two hands, while first the priest, then the relatives, and then the rest of their friends went from bridegroom to bride kissing their foreheads and the eikons in their hands. The groom returned the salutation by kissing the hand of each one, and the bride after doing the same brought her forehead with a sharp jerk on to the hand she had kissed. After kissing the bridegroom, his friends are allowed, if they can elude prevention at the hands of the pariskámenos, to give him a slap in the face. The groom himself can of course do nothing to prevent them; throughout the service the principals do nothing for themselves. When, for instance, before the crowning, sacramental wine is given them to drink, the priest holds the cup to the bridegroom's lips, while her sister pours the wine down the bride's throat.
Plate IV.
Women returning from kissing bride- groom and sýntekos, Hasákeui.
To face p. 86.
The concluding ceremony followed of the handing over of the articles of the dowry piece by piece to the women representatives of the bridegroom (i.e. mother, sister, and godmother) by the women of the bride. When this was over, the company dispersed to meet again after the midday heat at convivialities which we did not attend, but of which the generosity was warranted by the noisy and somewhat unsteady gait of several of those who passed our house in the evening.
Two points further are of interest. The money προῖκα, to us such an unseemly feature of the marriage arrangements in Greece, was here absent. The προῖκα in Hasákeui was merely a trousseau. It is to be feared that civilisation may introduce the more mercenary system, if one may judge from the analogy of the far more advanced community of Σινασός, a flourishing village near Urgub, about a day's journey away.
The other feature of interest is the severity of the taboos on the bride. For forty days she is obliged to wear the veil. For two or three years she may not speak to her mother-in-law or the male relatives of her husband above the age of childhood. Any conversation which is necessary with her mother-in-law must be carried on indirectly through her sisters-in-law or the children of the house, to whom the words intended to reach the ears of the mother-in-law must be actually addressed. In cases where there ​are no sisters-in-law or young children, practical convenience is said to relax the rule as regards the mother-in-law. For several years, again, the bride may not eat out of the common dish, and, even when she is at length admitted to this privilege, she must sit on one side and eat with her head turned away. As to the exact duration of the taboos, I could not elicit a more definite date than "two or three years." My informant's brother had been married for three years, and his sister-in-law has not yet exchanged a word with him.
W. R. Halliday.
* ↑ At Phárasa or Varashós, a Greek-speaking village in the Taurus, we arrived just too late to witness the ceremony of removing the crowns, which are there worn for a week, and then ceremonially removed in church. The custom was said to be a local peculiarity. As I did not know of the existence of such a rite when we were at Hasákeui, I unfortunately asked no questions as to the removal of the crowns.
* ↑ See the chapter on marriage customs in Σινασός, an account of the community by the local scholar Ἀρχέλαος.
Plate V.
WOMEN ENTERING HOUSE OF BRIDES GODMOTHER TO FETCH DOWRY, HASÁKEUI.