GREEKS AND VLACHS
In our account of the races ruled over by the Turks we must not forget
the Greeks, those enterprising colonists who, long before the Christian
era, settled along the coast of the Black Sea, and all along the
sea-line which now fringes the Ottoman Empire, as well as in its
islands, and who also founded commercial stations in the interior. In
earliest times we find them connected with such expeditions as the
Argonautic, in quest of the Golden Fleece, and returning, not only with
rich trophies, but with wonderful legends regarding the lands they
visited. I could entertain you at great length on their adventures in
the countries I am describing, but this is not the object of this book,
and my reference to the past must only be to show you that the present
Greeks in Turkey are much the same people as their ancestors, with the
same love for commerce, the same love for the beautiful and the same
glowing imagination. Yet they differ in this respect, that they are now
a subject instead of an independent people. They also differ in not
calling themselves Hellenes, but Romei--_i.e._, Romans--an appellation
which, strange to say, applies only to members of the Greek Church.
Roman Catholics contemptuously refuse to be called Romei, and style
themselves Latins.
Intermarriages have somewhat tainted the purity of their blood, and in
many cases they have lost the use of their mother-tongue, and can only
speak Turkish, but still they are Greeks to all intents and purposes,
and mostly members of the Greek or Orthodox Church.
The Greek type of face is much the same as what we see in the statuary
in our museums. The forehead is broad but rather low, the nose and
profile straight, the eyes large, the lips full, the chin firm, and the
neck rounded. They are tall and stately, and graceful in their
movements, and have small hands and feet.
In character they are highly imaginative, superficial, and shrewd, but
make excellent husbands and wives, and inspire their children with a
love for home and respect for their parents.
In education the wealthier classes are advanced, but the peasantry are
still backward. The Greek spoken by the latter is very corrupt, and has
a large admixture of Turkish and Italian, but the efforts of School
Boards and of the local newspapers are tending to purify and elevate it.
At present even the New Testament Greek is above the average man's
comprehension.
The Greeks, as of yore, have much of the heroic in their character, and
their ballads are full of the noble deeds, both of men and of women, in
their defence against their oppressors.
Their usual method of vindicating their rights and protecting themselves
consisted in forming bands of _Armatolae_, or _Kleptae_, and occupying
strongholds in the mountains, from which they would sweep down
unexpectedly and avenge themselves, or carry away some wealthy Pacha as
captive until he was ransomed.
These bands were looked up to by the people as heroes and
deliverers--the Jephthas and Gideons of their captivity.
But unfortunately their exploits were not resorted to for the cause of
freedom and justice alone, and have often degenerated into sheer acts of
brigandage. A series of them were recently enacted in Macedonia, and on
one occasion an Englishman was surprised, surrounded, and carried to the
mountains. A messenger was sent down with a demand for his ransom, and
with a threat that unless this was produced within a stated time, or if
pursuit was made, his life would be forfeited. The sum fixed upon was
the captives' weight in gold, and as he unfortunately happened to be a
heavy man, the amount represented L12,000. The ransom was duly paid,
but the money afterwards recovered from the Turkish Government.
As an instance of the strange mixture of superstition and depravity
among some of these brigand bands, it is related that on one occasion a
band plundered a church, and then, seizing the priest, the _Kleptae_ put
a sword to his throat until he absolved them from the offence.
Acts of brigandage are not, however, limited to Greeks, though they are
the chief offenders, but are shared with Albanians and Turks. Nor have
Macedonia and Greece had the monopoly, but Smyrna and the hill-country
near Constantinople have given scope for their activities. Their spies
and agents in these towns supplied them with information, and the
villagers and shepherds about their districts being in full sympathy,
kept them in supplies and ammunition.
From the bandit it is pleasant to turn to the agricultural and pastoral
life of the Greeks in Turkey, and describe the assistance that boys and
girls give to their parents.
When the wheat or barley has been harvested, the sheaves are spread on
the threshing-floor, which has previously been carefully prepared with
clay and stones beaten down into a smooth surface. A broad wooden sledge
is then provided, with sharp flint-stones firmly embedded into the under
portion. One or two horses are attached to the sledge and a boy or girl,
seated on a stool on the sledge, seizes the reins, and whip in hand,
drives the horses at full gallop round and round the threshing-floor.
The sharp flints, acting as knives, soon cut up the long stalks into
straw, and separate the grain. Then a windy day is selected, and with
long wooden forks the straw is tossed up into the air, the wind carrying
the chaff and straw to a short distance, and leaving the heavier grain
at the winnower's feet. The winnowed grain is then shovelled up into a
heap, and there it must remain until the tax-gatherer has come and
removed one-tenth on behalf of the Government. The harvest-festival
follows, when, attired in their best clothes and with flowers on their
heads and sheaves of golden grain in their hands, the harvesters proceed
to the towns, and dance and sing before the doors of their patrons.
One of their favourite dances is the old classical _syrto_, or
long-drawn dance, performed on the village green. The youths and maidens
don their picturesque gala costumes, and prepare for the dance, while
the elderly men group themselves round the coffee-house, smoking their
pipes and sipping coffee, and the matrons, with little ones, sit under
the trees and gossip. A musician, with fiddle, pipe, or viol, sits on a
barrel, while each youth produces his coloured handkerchief, and,
holding it by one corner, presents the other to the girl at his side.
She in her turn presents her own to the dancer next to her; a long line
or circle is formed, and the dance is proceeded with, the youths and
maidens responding to each other in the words of a song.
The dress of the girls differs very much according to the locality where
they reside. That of the villages near Constantinople consists of a
loose, bright-coloured bodice, worn over a blouse open at the neck, and
a coloured kerchief twisted round the head, from under the folds of
which the hair hangs down the back in rich plaited tresses. The trousers
are loose, baggy, and voluminous, and are fastened with a cord round the
waist.
[Illustration: A SHEKERDJIS' SHOP.]
Over the bodice a bright zouave is worn, richly embroidered in gold or
silver, and strings of gold or silver coins hang round the head, or as a
necklace round the throat, while on the wrists are heavy bracelets.
In other places it is described as consisting of "a skirt woven in
stripes of silk and woollen, reaching to the ankles, with a
tight-fitting bodice of the same, a cloth jacket braided or embroidered
round the borders in gold thread and lined with fur, and in some
districts a bright-coloured apron ornamented with needlework" (L.
Garnett, "Women in Turkey").
The same writer reports that in the islands a favourite amusement on
these occasions is for the girls to suspend a rope across a narrow
street from the wall of their own house to that of a neighbour, and
every youth who wishes to pass by must pay toll in the form of a small
coin, and give one of the girls a swing, while he sings the following
verse:
"O swing the clove-carnation red,
The gold and silver shining:
And swing the girl with golden hair,
For love of her I'm pining."
To which the maiden replies:
"O say what youth is swinging me,
What do you call him, girls?
For I a fez will broider him,
With fairest, whitest pearls."
The Vlachs that inhabit Macedonia follow principally pastoral and
agricultural pursuits. They spend the winter in their mountain
villages, but during the summer they lead a nomadic life in quest of
pastures, and move about, gipsy-like, in caravans.
The care of their father's flock is committed to the charge of the
daughters, whose beauty has often been extolled in many an amorous
folklore song. Their duties are to milk the sheep and goats, churn the
milk into butter, or convert it into cheese, bleach and spin the wool,
and weave garments for the use of the family. A loom occupies the corner
of every dwelling, and every spare moment is given to twisting thread
with a spindle.
There is considerable dislike among the Greeks to let their daughters go
out to service, but this feeling is not shared by the inhabitants of the
Greek islands. On the contrary, they supply the main stock of domestic
servants, and recognized agents sail to and from the islands to find
them occupation and attend to their interests. These Greek servants are
generally very ignorant, can seldom write, and depend on the agent or
some kind friend both for reading and writing their letters. They do not
draw their pay monthly or quarterly, but prefer to allow it to
accumulate with their masters, and withdraw it in a lump sum. After
having stayed for some years in service, the girls are greatly in demand
with their countrymen, and return to their islands and marry, but only
to go back to service when their lazy husbands have expended their
savings. Many of them return in the capacity of wet-nurses, a vocation
greatly in demand in the East, where children are seldom brought up on
the bottle. They are highly paid, and, moreover, receive presents on
such important occasions as the child's cutting its first tooth and the
like.
Their social position is also different from that of other servants, for
as foster-mothers they have a say in the child's upbringing, and their
own children can claim kinship as foster-brothers or foster-sisters.
Strange and incongruous connections are often the result, as, for
instance, in the case of an acquaintance of mine in Smyrna, a British
subject and manager of a bank. His foster-brother, a Greek, took to the
mountains, and was known as the famous brigand, Caterdjee Yiani, and
many a time the latter escaped detection and arrest by hiding in the
house of his British milk-kinsman.
Wet-nurses in the Sultan's palace are, it is stated, invariably
Circassians, and their own children become playmates with the Crown
Princes, and are not forgotten in after life. The foster-mother enjoys a
title of courtesy, and often her influence in the palace comes next to
that of the reigning Sultan's mother. In the case of the wet-nurse of
Sultan Abdul Aziz, her power was such that frequently the appointment or
dismissal of Governors and other State officials depended on her
good-will.
Greek servants are as a rule honest, but very slovenly, and at first
very raw and unused to the ways of civilized life. They love to go
about barefooted, or shuffle in slippers. Their hair is seldom combed,
and their garments hang loosely about them. Their head-dress is a
printed kerchief, called a _fakiol_, which they wear both indoors and
out of doors, but the more advanced wear hats, and consider it such a
distinction, that a man-servant of mine, who wanted to get married,
could not describe his intended to me in more flattering terms than by
saying that "she wears the _capello_" (hat).
On Sundays they put on their finery and are very keen to go to church,
and gossip with their fellow-servants in the women's gallery. It was
probably to similar tittle-tattling, so common in Eastern churches, that
St. Paul referred when forbidding women to "speak in the churches."
* * * * *
Factories are so seldom to be seen in Turkey that women have few
opportunities of employment as factory-girls, but in the silk-spinning
factories in Brusa Greek, Armenian, and Turkish girls work side by side.
Their great ambition is to be possessed of and wear gold coins about
their persons, but specially a five-lira piece, representing about L4
10s. of our money. Too eager to wait until their savings enable them to
buy that coin, they go to a money-changer and receive one immediately on
credit, paying him weekly a stipulated instalment, and interest at 12
per cent. a year in addition. The result is that when they have paid off
the debt they find that the coin has cost them at least L6 or L7; but
in the meanwhile their feminine vanity has been gratified, and the coin
displayed three or four years earlier than otherwise.
A curious class of people to be found in nearly every village in Turkey,
and even in the interior of Arabia, Egypt, and Khartoum, is that of the
_bakals_, or grocers, who are Greeks from Kaisarieh, in Karamania (Asia
Minor). Fat, dumpy, and oily, with dirty, baggy trousers, greasy vests
and shining countenances, they are as like one another as two peas. They
have practically the monopoly of the retail grocery business, and their
shops contain everything you can imagine in the way of Eastern articles
of diet--bread, cheese, black olives, salted anchovies, sardines,
curdled milk called _yiaourt_, oil, vinegar, salt, sugar, rice,
sausages, and dried meats, honey, butter, dried fruits, tallow candles,
matches, etc.
Their little boys--chips of the old block--go round every house, calling
out "_Bakalis_" and catering for orders, or bringing them back in
conical bags of brown paper. Nearly everybody buys on credit, and an
account is run up (not always too honestly) which, after a short time,
becomes formidable, and credit is stopped till an instalment is paid.
The _bakals'_ book-keeping is of the most primitive type, and will
baffle the sharpest chartered accountant; but mistakes are seldom on the
wrong side.
A peculiar method for recording the number of loaves of bread
distributed in each house is that of the _tchetoula_, and consists in
cutting a notch on a piece of stick for every loaf taken. The
householder retains the stick, and receives a new one when the amount is
paid. Another method is to make a chalk-mark on the door, and efface it
on payment.
With a community living from hand to mouth like the Eastern, it is
difficult to know what they would do without the ubiquitous _bakal_.
Besides making himself useful in the catering-line, he frequently is the
only man in his village who can read, and is resorted to both for
reading and writing letters. His correspondence is carried on in Turkish
words, but with Greek characters, full of conventional signs and
contractions, and is next to impossible to decipher.
Stray newspapers sometimes reach him, and the news of the day is
conveyed by him to clients; and should there be a Christian church in
his village, he is sure to be one of its dignitaries, and as _psaltis_,
or precentor, preside over the singing.
Another curious product, if I may so call it, of the Greek market is a
class of beggars known as the _Volitziani_. They come from villages in
Thessaly, and are young women who put aside their best garments, and don
an old black skirt and black jacket, so as to assume an air of abject
poverty. When about to start they receive from their community a
beggar's staff, as a badge or passport of their functions, and they
proceed to Constantinople, or any other town where begging offers
advantageous prospects. On their arrival they borrow or hire two or
three children, one of which is an infant, and which they drug and cause
to sleep on a handkerchief spread out in a corner of the street. The
beggar sits beside it, putting on her most tearful looks, and when any
likely passer-by approaches, she raises her voice in supplication, and
sends the other children to pull at his coat-tails. These _Volitziani_
frequent the neighbourhood of churches, and their appeal is: "Give for
the sake of the souls of the departed." The result is a plentiful
harvest of coins, which enables them to return with a bagful to their
country. The beggar's staff is then hung behind the door as a trophy.
Should they desire to proceed on another begging expedition, a second
staff is given them, and so on, and at each successive return the staff
that has done service is deposited behind the door. Sometimes as many as
seven make up the trophy. Young men desiring to find wives with money
pry behind the door, and form an approximate idea of the fortune of the
owner, the one with seven staffs taking, of course, the palm.
Constantinople was once the great resort of beggars of all descriptions,
and lines of them used to exhibit on the Galata Bridge (see
frontispiece) all manners of deformities to elicit sympathy, but one of
the reforming measures of the Young Turks was to expel them from the
city. In illustration facing Chapter III. you will see one of these
wayside beggars.