We sailed in the ship from Aghthamar,
We directed our ship towards Avan;
When we arrived before Vosdan
We saw the dark sun of the dark day.
Dull clouds covered the sky,
Obscuring at once stars and moon;
The winds blew fiercely,
And took from my eyes land and shore.
Thundered the heaven, thundered the earth,
The waters of the blue sea arose;
On every side the heavens shot forth fire;
Black terror invaded my heart.
There is the sky, but the earth is not seen,
There is the earth, but the sun is not seen;
The waves come like mountains
And open before me a deep abyss.
O sea, if thou lovest thy God,
Have pity on me, forlorn and wretched;
Take not from me my sweet sun,
And betray me not to flinty-hearted Death.
Pity, O sea, O terrible sea!
Give me not up to the cold winds;
My tears implore thee
And the thousand sorrows of my heart....
The savage sea has no pity!
It hears not the plaintive voice of my broken heart;
The blood freezes in my veins,
Black night descends upon my eyes....
Go tell to my mother
To sit and weep for her darkened son;
That John was the prey of the sea,
The sun of the young man is set!
Summer, with its flowers, and warmth, and wealth, never stays long
enough in Armenia for it to become a common ordinary thing. It is a
beautiful wonder-time, a brief, splendid nature-fair, which vanishes
like a dream before the first astonishment and delight are worn into
indifference. The season when "the nightingale sings to the rose at
dewy dawn" departs swiftly, and envious winter strangles autumn in its
birth.
What a winter, too! a winter which despotically governs the complete
economy of the people's system of life. Let us take a peep into an
Armenian interior on a December evening. Three months the snow has
been in possession of mountain and valley; for more than four months
more it will remain. Abroad it is light enough, though night has
fallen; for the moon shines down in wonderful brightness upon the
ice-bound earth. On the hill-slope various little unevennesses are
discernible, jutting out from the snow like mushrooms. In one part the
ground is cut away perpendicularly for a few feet; this is the front
of the homestead, the body of which lies burrowed in the slope of the
hill. When the house was made the floor was dug out some five feet
underground, while the ceiling beams rose three or four feet above it;
but all the dug-out soil was thrown about the roof and back and side
walls, and thus the whole is now embedded in the hillock. The roof was
neatly turfed over when the house was finished, so that in summer the
lambs and children play upon it, and not unfrequently, in the great
heats, the family sleep there--"at the moon's inn." What look like
mushrooms are in reality the broad-topped chimneys, on which the
summer storks build their nests. The homestead has but one entrance;
a large front door which leads through a long dark passage to a second
door that swings-to after you, and is hung with a rough red-dyed
sheepskin. This door opens upon the entrance-hall, whence you mount
half-a-dozen steps to a raised platform, under which the house dogs
are located. On two sides the platform is bounded by solid stone
walls, from which are suspended saddles, guns, pistols, and one or two
pictures representing the deeds of some Persian hero, and bought of
Persian hawkers. On the other two sides an open woodwork fence divides
it from a vast stable. Nearest the grating are fastened the horses
of the clan-chief; next are the donkeys, then the cows; sheep and
chickens find places where they can. The breath of these animals
materially contributes to the warmth of the house, which is at times
almost like an oven, even in the coldest weather. A clear hot fire
burns on the hearth; the fuel used is tezek, a preparation of cow-dung
pressed into a substance resembling peat turf. By day the habitation
is obscurely lighted through a small aperture in the roof glazed with
oiled silk, and supplemented by a sort of funnel, the wide opening
downwards. Now, in the evening, the oil burning in a simple iron lamp
over the hearth, affords a dim illumination.
The platform above described is the salemlik, or hall of reception. It
contains no chairs, but divans richly draped with Koordish stuffs; the
floor is carpeted with tekeke, a kind of grey felt. To the right of
the hearth sits the head of the family, a venerable old man, whose
word is incontrovertible law to every member of his house. He is also
Al Sakal, or "white beard" of the village, a dignity conferred on
him by the unanimous voice of his neighbours, and constituting him
intermediary in all transactions with government. When important
matters are at stake, he meets the elders of the surrounding hamlets,
who, resolved into committee, form the Commune. This ancient usage
bears witness to the essentially patriarchal and democratic basis of
Armenian society.
Our family party consists of three dozen persons, the representatives
of four generations. The young married women come in and out from
directing the preparations of the supper. Nothing is to be seen of
their faces except their lustrous eyes (Armenian eyes are famous for
their brilliancy), a tightly-fitting veil enclosing the rest of their
features. Without this covering they do not by any chance appear even
in the house; it is said they wear it also at night. One of them is
a bride; her dress is rich and striking--a close-fitting bodice,
fastening at the neck with silver clasps, full trousers of
rose-coloured silk gathered in at the ankles by a fillet of silver,
the feet bare, a silver girdle of curious workmanship loosely
encircling the waist, and a long padded garment open down the front
which hangs from the shoulders. Poor little bride! She has not uttered
a single word save when alone with her husband since she pronounced
the marriage vow. She may not hope to do so till after the birth of
her first-born child; then she will talk to her nursling, after a
while to her mother-in-law, sometime later she may converse with her
own mother, and by-and-by, in a subdued whisper, with the young girls
of the house. During the first year of her married life she may not
go out of the house except twice to church. Her disciplinary education
will not be complete for six years, after which she will enjoy
comparative liberty, but never in her life must she open her lips to
a person of the stronger sex not related to her. Turn from the silent
little bride to that bevy of young girls, merry and playful as the
kittens they are fondling--silky-haired snowballs, of a breed peculiar
to the neighbourhood of Van, their tails dyed pink with henna like the
tail of the Shah's steed. The girls are laughing and chatting together
without restraint--most probably about their love affairs, for they
are free to dispose of their hands as they choose. And they may walk
about unveiled, and show off their pretty faces and long raven plaits
to the fullest advantage.
Suddenly a knocking is heard outside; the dogs yell from under the
platform; the Whitebeard says whoever be the wanderer he shall have
bed and board, and he orders fresh tezek to be thrown on the fire; for
to-night it is bitter cold out abroad--were a man to stand still five
minutes, he would freeze in his shoes. One of the sons descends the
steps, pushes aside the sheep-skin, and leads the traveller in.
This one says he is the minstrel. What joy in the family! The blind
minstrel, who will sing the most exciting ballads and tell the most
marvellous tales. He is welcomed by all; only the young bride steals
out of the room--she may not remain in a stranger's presence. The
lively girls want to hear a story at once; but the Whitebeard says the
guest must first have rest and refreshment. But while they are waiting
for the meal to be laid out, the blind minstrel relates something of
his recent travels, which in itself is almost as good as a fairy tale.
He has just arrived from Persia, whither he will soon return; for he
has only come back to the snows of Armenia to breathe the air of home
for a little. Did he go to Teheran? No; to say the truth, he deemed it
wiser to keep at a discreet distance from that capital. Such a thing
had been heard of ere now as the Shah putting under requisition any
skilful musicians who came in his way to teach their art to the fair
ones of the harem; so that occasionally it was unpleasantly difficult
to get out of Teheran when once you were in it. Still he was by no
means without interesting news. In a certain part of Persia he had
met another blind master-singer, with whom he strove for the prize of
minstrelsy. Both were entertained by a great Persian prince. When
the day came they were led out upon an open grass-plot and seated one
facing the other. The prince took up his position, and five thousand
people made a circle round the competitors. Then the grand brain-fight
began; the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee.
Now one starts an acrostic on the prince's name, in which each side
takes alternate letters; then the other versifies some sacred passage,
which his opponent must catch up when he breaks off. The ball is kept
flying to and fro with unflagging zeal; the crowd is rapturous in its
plaudits. But at length our minstrel's adversary pauses, hesitates,
fails to seize the drift of his rival's latest sally, and answers at
random. A shout proclaims him beaten. The triumphant bard is led to
where he stands, and taking his lyre from him breaks it into atoms.
The vanquished retires discomfited to the obscurity of his native
village, where haply his humble talents will not be despised. The
victor is robed in the prince's mantle, and taken to the highest seat
in the banqueting-hall.
This is what the minstrel has to tell as he warms his hands over the
fire while the young married women serve the supper. A rush-mat is
placed upon the low round board, over that the table-cloth; then a
large tray is set in the middle, with the viands arranged on it in
metal dishes: onion soup, salted salmon-trout from the blue Gokschai,
hard-boiled eggs shelled and sliced, oil made from Kunjut seeds, which
does instead of butter; pilau, a dish resembling porridge; mutton
stewed with quinces, leeks, and various raw and preserved roots, cream
cheese, sour milk, dried apricots, and stoned raisins, form the bill
of fair. A can of golden wine is set out: there is plenty more in the
goatskins should it be wanted. The provisions are completed by an
item more important in Armenia than with us--bread. The flour-cake
or _losh_, a yard long and thin as paper, which is placed before each
guest, answers for plate, knives, forks, napkin, all of which are
absent. The Whitebeard says grace and the Lord's Prayer, everyone
crossing himself. The company wipe their mouths with a _losh_, and
proceed to help themselves with it to anything that tempts their fancy
on the middle tray. Some make a promiscuous sandwich of fish, mutton,
and leeks wrapped up in a piece of _losh_; others twist the _losh_
into the shape of a spoon and ladle out the sour milk, swallowing
both together. The members of the family watch the minstrel's least
gesture, so as to anticipate his wishes; one after the other they
claim the privilege of waiting on him. When the meal is done, a young
housewife gently washes the guest's head and feet, and the whole party
adjourn to the chimney-corner. The evening flies mirthfully away,
listening to the minstrel's tales and ballads, these latter being
mostly in Tartar, the Provencal of the eastern troubadour. Finally,
the honoured visitor is conducted to his room, the "minstrel's
chamber," which, in every well-ordered Armenian household, is always
kept ready.
Our little picture may be taken as the faithful reproduction of no
very extraordinary scene. Of ballad-singers such as the one here
introduced there are numbers in Armenia, where that "sixth sense,"
music, is the recognised vocation of the blind. Those who are
proficient travel within a very wide area, and are everywhere received
with the highest consideration.
In the East, the ballad-singer and the story-teller are just where
they were centuries ago. At Constantinople, the story-teller sits
down on his mat in the public place or at the _cafe_; listeners gather
round; he begins his story in a conversational tone, varying his voice
according to the characters; and soon both himself and his hearers are
as far away in the wondrous mazes of the "Arabian Nights" as if Europe
were still trembling before the sword of the Caliph.
With regard to the unique marriage customs of Armenia, I ought to say
that they are asserted to result in the happiest unions. The general
idea upon which they rest seems to be derived from a series of
conclusions logical enough if you grant the premisses--indeed,
curiously more like some pen and paper scheme evolved out of the inner
consciousness of a German professor than a working system of
actual life. The prevailing custom in the East, as in some European
countries, is for the young girl to know nothing whatever of her
intended husband; only in the one case this is followed by total
seclusion after marriage, and in the other by complete emancipation.
In Armenia, on the contrary, the young girl makes her own choice, and
love-matches are not uncommon; but the choice once made and ratified
by the priest, the order of things is so arranged as to cause her
husband to become the woman's absorbing thought, his society her sole
solace, his pleasure the whole business of her life. For the rest she
is treated with much solicitude; even the peasant will not let his
wife do out-door work.
Moses of Khoren gives the history of a wedding that took place about
one hundred years after Christ. In those days the tribes of the Alans,
in league with the mountaineers of the Caucasus and a part of the
people of Georgia, descended upon Armenia in considerable numbers.
Ardashes, the Armenian king, assembled his troops and advanced against
them. In a battle fought upon the confines of the two nations, the
Alans gave way, and having crossed the Cyrus, encamped on the northern
bank, the river dividing the contending forces. The son of the King of
the Alans had been taken prisoner and was conducted to Ardashes. His
father offered to conclude a peace on such conditions as Ardashes
might exact and under promise, guaranteed by a solemn oath, that the
Alans would attempt no further incursions on Armenian territory. As
Ardashes refused to surrender the young prince, the sister of the
youth ran to the edge of the river and climbing upon a lofty hillock,
caused these words to be addressed to the enemy's camp by the mouth
of interpreters: "Hear me, valorous Ardashes, conqueror of the brave
Alans; grant unto me the surrender of this young man--unto me, the
maiden with beautiful eyes. It is not worthy of a hero in order to
satisfy a desire for vengeance, to take the life of the sons of heroes
or to hold them in bondage and keep up an endless feud between two
nations." Ardashes, having heard these words, approached the river. He
saw the beautiful Sathinig, listened to her wise counsels, and fell
in love with her. Then, having called Sumpad, an aged warrior who
had watched over his childhood, he laid bare the wish of his heart to
marry the princess, make a treaty of amity with her nation and send
back the prince in peace. Sumpad, having approved of these projects,
sent to ask the King of the Alans for the hand of Sathinig. "What!"
replied her father, "will the valorous King Ardashes have ever
treasure enough to offer me in return for the noble damsel of the
Alans?"
A popular song, carefully preserved by Moses, celebrates the marriage
of Ardashes and Sathinig:--
The valiant King Ardashes, astride of a sable charger,
Drew forth a thong of leather, garnished with golden rings:
And quick as fast-flying eagle he crossed the flowing river
And the crimson leather thong, garnished with rings of gold,
Cast he about the body of the Virgin of the Alans,
Clasping in painful embrace the maiden's tender form:
Even so he drew her swiftly to his encampment.
Once again Ardashes appears in the people's poetry. He is no longer
the triumphant victor in love and war; the hour of his death draws
near. "Oh!" says the dying king, "who will give me back the smoke of
my hearth, and the joyous New Year's morning, and the spring of the
deer, and the lightness of the roe?" Then his mind wanders away to the
ruling passion: "We sounded the trumpets; after the manner of kings we
beat the drums."
The Armenian princes were in the habit, when they married, of throwing
pieces of money from the threshold of their palace, whilst the royal
brides scattered pearls about the nuptial chamber. To this custom
allusion is made in two lines which used to be sung as a sort of
marriage chaunt:--
A rain of gold fell at the wedding of Ardashes,
A rain of pearls fell on the nuptials of Sathinig.
Armenian nuptial songs, like all other folk-epithalamiums, so far as I
am aware, seem to point to an early state of society when the girl was
simply carried off by her marauding lover by fraud or force. Exulting
in what relates to the bridegroom, the favourite song on this subject
is profoundly melancholy as concerns the bride. The mother was cajoled
with a pack of linen, the father with a cup of wine, the brother
with a pair of boots, the little sister with a finger of antimony--so
complains the dismal ditty of a new bride. There is great pathos in
the words in which she begs her mother not to sweep the sand off the
little plank, so that the slight trace of her girl's footsteps may not
be effaced.
Marriage is called in Armenian, "The Imposition of the Crown," from
the practice of crowning bride and bridegroom with fresh, white
flowers. I remember how, in one of the last marriages celebrated in
the little Armenian church in the Rue Monsieur (which was closed a
few years ago, when the Mekhitarist property in Paris was sold), this
ceremony was omitted by particular request of the bridegroom, a rising
French Diplomatist, who did not wish to wear a wreath of roses. The
Armenian marriage formulae are extremely explicit. The priest, taking
the right hand of the bride, and placing it in that of the bridegroom,
says: "According to the Divine order God gave to our ancestors, I give
thee now this wife in subjection. Wilt thou be her master?" To which
the answer is, "Through the help of God, I will." The priest then asks
the woman: "Wilt thou be obedient to him?" She answers: "I am obedient
according to the order of God." The interrogations are repeated three
times, and three times responded to.
An Armenian author, M. Ermine, published at Moscow in 1850 a treatise
on the historical and popular songs of ancient Armenia.
Of popular songs current in more recent times there was not, till
lately, a single specimen within reach of the public, though it was
confidently surmised that such must exist. The Mekhitarist monks have
taken the lead in this as in every other branch of Armenian research,
and my examples are quoted from a small collection issued by their
press at Venice. I am not sure that I have chosen those that are
intrinsically the best, but think that those which figure in these
pages are amongst the most characteristic of their authors and origin.
The larger portion of these songs are printed from manuscripts in the
library of San Lazzaro; the date of their composition is thought
to vary from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth
century. The language in which they are written is the vulgar
tongue of Armenia, but in several instances it attains a very close
approximation to the classical Armenian.
It may not be amiss if I conclude this sketch with a brief account
of the remarkable order of the Mekhitarists, which is so intimately
related with all that bears on the subject of Armenian literature.
Those who are well acquainted with it will not object to hear the
history of this order recapitulated; while I believe that many who
have visited the Convent of San Lazzaro have yet but vague notions
regarding the work and aims of its inmates. It is to be conjectured
that, as a matter of fact, the majority of Englishmen go to San
Lazzaro rather in the spirit of a Byron-pilgrimage than from any
definite interest in the convent; and without doubt were its only
attraction its association with the English poet it would still be
worth a visit. Byron's connection with San Lazzaro was not one of the
least interesting episodes of his life; and it is pleasant to remember
the tranquil hours he spent in the society of the learned monks, and
the fascination exercised over him by their sterling and unpretentious
merit. "The neatness, the comfort, the gentleness, the unaffected
devotion of the brethren of the order," he wrote, "are well fitted to
strike the man of the world with the conviction that there is 'Another
and a better even in this life.'" The desire to present himself with
an excuse for frequent intercourse with the brothers was probably at
the bottom of Byron's sudden discovery that his mind "wanted something
craggy to break upon, and that Armenian was just the thing to torture
it into attention." He says it was the most difficult thing to be
found in Venice by way of an amusement, and describes the Armenian
character as a very "Waterloo of an alphabet." The origin of this
character is exceedingly curious, it being the only alphabet known
to have been the work of a single man, with the exception of the
Georgian, and now obsolete Caucasian Albanian. St Mesrop, an Armenian,
invented all the three about A.D. 406. Byron informs Moore, with some
elation, of the fate that befell a French professorship of Armenian,
which had then been recently instituted: "Twenty pupils presented
themselves on Monday morning, full of noble ardour, ingenuous youth,
and impregnable industry. They persevered with a courage worthy of the
nation, and of universal conquest till Thursday, then _fifteen_ out
of the _twenty_ succumbed to the six-and-twentieth letter of the
alphabet." The poet himself mastered all thirty-three letters, and a
good deal more besides, under the superintendence of the librarian,
Padre Paschal Aucher, a man who combined great learning with much
knowledge of the world. As the result of these studies we have a
translation into Scriptural English of two apocryphal epistles of St
Paul, and an Anglo-Armenian grammar, of which, with characteristic
liberality, Byron defrayed the cost of publication.
The order was founded by Varthabed Mekhitar, who was born at Sebaste,
in Asia Minor, in 1676. Mekhitar was one of those men to whom it comes
quite naturally to go forth with David's sling and stone against the
Philistine and his host. He could have been scarcely more than twenty
years of age when fearlessly and steadfastly he set himself to the
gigantic task of raising his country out of the stagnant slough of
ignorance in which he saw it sunk. He was then a candidate for holy
orders, studying in an Armenian convent.
The monks he found no less ignorant than the rest of the population;
those to whom he broached his ideas greeted them with derision, and
this did not fail to turn to cruel persecution when he began to preach
against certain prejudices which appeared to him to keep the Armenians
from conforming with the Latin Church--a union he earnestly desired.
Mekhitar now went to Constantinople, where he set on foot a small
monastic society; presently he moved to Modon, in the Morea, then
under the rule of Venice, but before he had been there long, the place
was seized by the Turks. A few of the monks, with their head, managed
to escape to Venice; the others were taken prisoners, and sold into
a temporary slavery. At Venice, in 1717, the Signory made over to
the fugitives in perpetuity a small barren island in the Lagune, once
tenanted by the Benedictines, who had there established a hospital for
lepers, but which, since the disappearance of that disease, had been
entirely uninhabited. Mekhitar immediately organised a printing
press, and began making translations of standard works, which were
disseminated wherever Armenians were to be found, that is to say,
all over the East. When he died in 1747, the work of the society was
already placed on a solid foundation; but it received considerable
development and extension from the hands of the third abbot-general,
Count Stephen Aconzkover, Archbishop of Sinnia, by birth a member of
an Armenian colony in Hungary, who sought admittance into the order,
and lived in the retirement of San Lazzaro for sixty-seven years.
He was a poet, a scholar of no mean attainments, and the author of
a universal geography in twelve volumes. The Society is now
self-supporting, large numbers of its publications being sold in
Persia, and India, and at Constantinople. These publications consist
of numerous translations and of reproductions of the great part of
Armenian literature. Many works have been printed from MSS. which are
collected by emissaries sent out from San Lazzaro to travel over the
plains and valleys of Armenia for the purpose of rescuing the literary
relics which are widely scattered, and are in constant danger of loss
or destruction, and at the same time to distribute Armenian versions
of the Bible. Another of the undertakings of the convent is a school
exclusively for the education of Armenian boys. About one hundred
boys receive free instruction in the two colleges at Venice. What this
order have effected, both towards the enlightenment of their country
and in keeping alive the sentiment of Armenian nationality, is simply
incalculable. In their self-imposed exile they have nobly carried out
the precept of an Armenian folk-poet:
Forget not our Armenian nation,
And always assist and protect it.
Always keep in thy mind
To be useful to thy fatherland.
On my first visit I passed a long summer morning in examining all
the points of interest about the monastery--the house and printing
presses, the library with its beautiful Pali papyrus of the Buddhist
ordination service, and its illuminated manuscripts, the minaretted
chapel, and the silent little Campo Santo, under the direction of
the most courteous and accomplished of cicerones, Padre Giacomo,
Dr Issaverdenz: a name signifying "Jesus-given." I saw the bright,
intelligent band of scholars: "of these," said my conductor, "five or
six will remain with us." I was shown the page of the visitor's book
inscribed with Byron's signature in English and in Armenian. Later
entries form a long roll of royal and notable names. The little museum
contains Daniel Manin's tricolor scarf of office, given to the monks
by the son of that devoted patriot. Queen Margherita does not fail to
pay San Lazzaro a yearly visit, and has lately accepted the dedication
of a book of Armenian church music.
During this tour of inspection, various topics were discussed: the
tendencies of modern thought, the future of the church, with
other matters of a more personal nature--and upon each my guide's
observations displayed a singularly intellectual and tolerant attitude
of mind, together with a way of looking at things and speaking of
people in which "sweetness and light" were felicitously apparent. It
was difficult to tear oneself away from the open window in Byron's
little study. The day was one of those matchless Venetian days, when
the heat is tempered by a breeze just fresh enough to agitate the
awning of your gondola; and the Molo and Riva, and Fortune's golden
ball on the Dogana, the white San Giorgio Maggiore, the ships eastward
bound, the billowy line of the mountains of Vicenza against the
horizon, lie steeped in a bath of sunshine. But the outlook from the
convent window is not upon these. Beneath are the green berceaux of
a small vineyard, a little garden gay in its tangle of purple
convolvulus, a pomegranate lifting its laden boughs towards us--to
remind the Armenians of the "flowering pomegranates" of their beloved
country. Beyond the vineyard stretches the aquamarine surface of the
lagune--then the interminable reach of Lido--after that the ethereal
blue of the Adriatic melting away into the sky. Such is the scene
which till they die the good monks will have under their eyes. Perhaps
they are rather to be envied than compassionated; for it is manifest
that for them, duty--to use the eloquent expression of an English
divine--has become transfigured into happiness. "I shall stay here
whilst I live," Dr Issaverdenz said, "and I am happy--quite happy!"