Constantinople old and new

by H. G. Dwight

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 It is rather curious that the Turkish name of so ancient a place should have superseded even among the Greeks its original appellation.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.

Bulgarians dancing

Greeks dancing to the strains of a lanterna

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.