Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

Our little ship, as is the usual custom among the Greeks, had a shrine in the end of its saloon, with an icon, and a lamp was perpetually burning before it. The Greek takes his religion seriously, and makes it a part of his life afloat and ashore, it would seem. On Good Friday, for example, our national flag was lowered to half-mast and kept there in token of mourning for the crucified Lord, until the church proclaimed His rising from the dead, when it once again mounted joyously to the peak. The men seemed religiously inclined, and it was in deference to a request of the united crew, preferred while we lay in the harbor of Santorin, that it was decided to run north from that island to Nios, which was not far away and which possessed one of the best harbors in the Ægean, in order that the native sailors and the captain might observe the churchly festival according to custom—a request that was the more readily granted because we were all rather anxious to see the Easter-eve ceremony at its climax. Those who had witnessed it in previous years vouched for it as highly interesting, and such proved to be the fact; for between the ceremony itself and the excitement of reaching the scene, this evening furnished one of the most enjoyable of all our island experiences.

In reply to questions touching upon the remoteness of the church at Nios from the landing, the second officer, who spoke Italian, had assured us with a high disregard of the truth that it was “vicino! vicino!” It was pitch dark before we neared Nios, however, and as the moon was due to be late in rising that night we got no warning glimpse of the land, but were made aware of its approach only by a shapeless bulk in the dark which suddenly appeared on either hand, the entrance to the harbor being vaguely indicated by a single light, past which we felt our way at little more than a drifting pace until we were dimly conscious of hills all about, half-guessed rather than visible in the gloom. Then, faint and far away, we began to hear the clamor of the village bells, rung with that insistent clatter so familiar to those acquainted with southern European churches. That their notes sounded so distant gave us some idea at the outset that the mate’s “vicino” might prove to be a rather misleading promise, but very little was to be told by the sound, save that the churches from which the bells were pealing lay off somewhere to the right and apparently up a hill. Light there was none, not even a glimmer; and our three dories put off for the shore over an inky sea in becoming and decorous silence, toward the point where a gloom even more dense than the sky showed that there was land. The effect of it all was curious and had not a little of solemnity in it, as we groped our way to shore with careful oars and then felt about in the dark for the landing. The forward boat soon announced that some stone steps leading upward from the water had been found, and the rowers immediately raised a shout for lights, as one by one we were handed up the slimy stairs to the top of a broad stone quay, on which some white buildings could be dimly seen. A lantern did materialize mysteriously from some nook among the ghostly houses, and came bobbing down to the water’s edge, serving little purpose, however, save to make the rest of the darkness more obscure. By its diminished ray the party were assembled in a compact body, and received admonition to keep together and to follow as closely as possible the leader, who bore the light.

These instructions, while simple enough to give, proved decidedly difficult to follow. The moon was far below the horizon, and the stars, while numerous and brilliant, gave little aid to strangers in a strange land, who could see no more than that they were on a deserted pier flanked by dim warehouses, and a long distance from the bells which were calling the devout to midnight prayer. The lantern set off along the flagstones of the deserted hamlet; and after it in single file clattered the rest of us, keeping up as best we could. We emerged in short order from the little group of huts by the wharf and came out into a vast and silent country, where all was darker than before, save where the leading lantern pursued its fantastic way upward over what turned out to be a roughly paved mule track leading into a hill. Like most mule tracks, it mounted by steps, rather than by inclines, and the progress of the long file of our party was slow and painful, necessitating frequent halts on the part of the guide with the lantern, while a warning word was constantly being passed back along the stumbling line of pedestrians as each in turn stubbed his toes over an unlooked-for rise in the grade. There was little danger of wandering off the path, for it was bordered by high banks. The one trouble was to keep one’s feet and not to stumble as we climbed in the dark, able scarcely to see one another and much less to see anything of the path. The bells ceased to ring as we proceeded, and even that dim clue to the distance of the town was lost. Decidedly it was weird, this stumbling walk up an unknown and unfrequented island path in the dead of night; for it was long past eleven of the clock, and the Easter mass, as we knew, should reach its most interesting point at about twelve. Knowing this we made such haste as we could and the little town of Nios stole upon us ere we were aware, its silent buildings of gray closing in upon the road and surrounding us without our realizing their presence, until a sudden turning of the way caused the lantern far ahead to disappear entirely from our view in the mazes of the town.

It was as deserted as the little wharf had been. Moreover it was as crooked as it was dark. Here and there an open doorway gave out across the way a single bar of yellow light, but most of the habitations were as silent as the tomb, their owners and occupants being in church long before. On and on through a seeming labyrinth of little streets we wound, the long thread of the party serving as the sole clue to the way, as did Ariadne’s cord; for the lantern was never visible to the rear guard now, owing to the turns and twists of the highway. Twice we met belated church-goers coming down from side paths with their tiny lanterns, and the utter astonishment on their faces at beholding this unexpected inundation of foreigners at that unearthly hour of night was as amusing as it was natural. Once the thread of the party was broken at a corner, and for an anxious moment there was a council of war as to which street to take. It was a lucky guess, however, for a sudden turn brought the laggards out of the obscurity and into a lighted square before the doors of the church itself—a tiny church, white walled and low roofed, and filled apparently to its doors, while from its open portals trickled the monotonous chant of a male choir, the voices always returning to a well-marked and not unmelodious refrain.

In some mysterious way, room was made for us in the stifling church, crowded as it was with men and women. Candles furnished the only light. On the right a choir of men and boys, led by the local schoolmaster, chanted their unending, haunting minor litany. An old and bespectacled priest peered down over the congregation from the door of the iconostasis. Worshipers came and went. The men seemed especially devout, taking up the icon before the entrance and kissing it passionately and repeatedly. On each of us as we entered was pressed a slender taper of yellow wax, perhaps a foot in length, and we stood crowded in the little auditorium holding these before us expectantly, and regarded with lively and good-humored curiosity by the good people within. Presently the priest came forward from the door of the altar-screen with his candle alight, which was the signal for an excited scramble by a dozen small boys nearest him to get their tapers lighted first—after which the fire ran from candle to candle until everybody bore his tiny torch; and following the old priest, we all trooped out into the square before the church, where the service continued.

That was a sight not easily to be forgotten—the tiny square, in the centre of which stood the catafalque of Christ, while all around stood the throng of worshipers, each bearing his flaring taper, the whole place flooded with a yellow glow. The monotone of the service continued as before. The gentle night breeze sufficed now and then to put out an unsheltered candle here and there, but as often as this occurred the bystanders gave of their fire, and the illumination was renewed as often as interrupted.

The quaint service culminated with the proclamation of the priest that Christ had risen,—"Christos anéste,"—at which magic words all restraint was thrown off and the worshipers abandoned themselves to transports of holy joy. A stalwart man seized the bell-rope that dangled outside the church and rang a lively toccata on the multiple bells above, while exuberant boys let fly explosive torpedoes at the walls of neighboring houses, making a merry din after the true Mediterranean fashion; for the religious festivals of all southern countries appear to be held fit occasions for demonstrations akin unto those with which we are wont to observe our own national birthday. We were soon aware that other churches of the vicinity had reached the “Christos anéste” at about the same hour, for distant bells and other firecrackers and torpedoes speedily announced the rising of the Lord.

Doubtless a part of the Easter abandon is due to the reaction from the rigorous keeping of Lent among the Greeks, as well as to a devout sentiment that renews itself annually at this festival with a fervor that might well betoken the first novel discovery of eternal salvation as a divine truth. The Greek Lent is an austere season, in which the abstinence from food and wine is astonishingly thorough. Indeed, it has been reported by various travelers in Hellas in years past that they were seriously inconvenienced by the inability they met, especially in Holy Week, to procure sufficient food; for the peasantry were unanimously fasting, and unexpected wayfarers in the interior could find but little cheer. The native manages to exist on surprisingly little sustenance during the forty days. On the arrival of Easter it is not strange that he casts restraint to the winds and manifests a delight that is obviously unbounded. However, it need not be inferred from this that undue license prevails, for this apparently was not the case—not in Nios, at any rate. The service, after the interruption afforded by bells and cannonading, resumed its course, and was said to endure until three o'clock in the morning; a fact which might seem to indicate that the Easter pleasuring was capable of a decent restraint and postponement, although the Lord had officially risen and death was swallowed up in victory.

Our own devotion was not equal to the task of staying through this long mass, as it was already well past the midnight hour, and we had made a long and strenuous day of it. So, with repeated exchanges of “Christos anéste” between ourselves and the villagers, we set out again through the narrow byways of the town, and down over the rough mule path to the ship, each of us bearing his flaring taper and shielding it as well as possible from the night wind; for the sailors were bent on getting some of that sacred flame aboard alive, and in consequence saw to it that extinguished candles were promptly relighted lest we lose altogether the precious fire. We made a long and ghostly procession of winking lights as we streamed down over the hillside and out to the boats—a fitting culmination to one of the most curious experiences which the Ægean vouchsafed us.

We found the “red eggs” peculiar to the Greek Easter awaiting us when we came aboard—eggs, hard-boiled and colored with beet juice or some similar coloring matter, bowls of which were destined to become a familiar sight during the week or two that followed the Easter season. The Greeks maintain that this is a commemoration of a miracle which was once performed to convince a skeptical woman of the reality of the resurrection. She was walking home, it seems, with an apron full of eggs which she had bought, when she met a friend whose countenance expressed unusual rejoicing, and who ran to meet her, crying, “Have you heard the news?” “Surely not,” was the reply. “What is this news?” “Why, Christ the Lord is risen!” “Indeed,” responded the skeptic, "that I cannot believe; nor shall I believe it unless the eggs that I carry in my apron shall have turned red." And red they proved to be when she looked at them!