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Sweet basil of the Holy Cross
and royal flower of Christ,
I strolled around your garden
and round your flower-beds.
I picked your woodland violets
and gathered Easter blossom,
and put them in my bosom
to make my bosom fragrant.
I plucked them from my bosom
and took them to the chapel
with tapers and with candles
and with silver censers.
Many happy returns!
Translated by John Leatham
Σταύρι σταύρι βότανε
Σταύρι σταύρι βότανε
και Χριστέ βασιλικέ,
μπήκα μες στον κήπο σου
και στο περιβόλι σου,
έμασα τα ίτσια1 σου
και τα πασχαλίτσια σου,
τά ’βαλα στον κόρφο μου,
να μυρίζ’ ο κόρφος μου,
τά ’βγαλ’ απ’ τον κόρφο μου,
να τα πάω στην εκκλησιά
με λαμπάδες, με κεριά,
μ’ ασημένια θυμιατά.
Και του χρόνου.
1ίτσια: αγριομενεξέδες
The song belongs to a custom enacted by girls on the day of the feast known as Holy Cross Day or the Veneration of the Cross, a custom still observed in some villages of Thessaly. Both the action and the words of the song clearly establish the custom as a fertility-initiation rite of the Lazarus type (see ‘And eros danced with fair April...’), which has not yet been studied. There follows a description of custom preserved at Metaxochori, Aghia Larissa, in the words of a woman then eighty years old, just as it was recorded in 1990:
‘On the feast of the Veneration of the Cross we used to play “nyphades” (young girls or brides). We put them together in pairs. One girl, the elder one, would make the younger her bride. So one of the girls is the bride, the other her mother-in-law. Up to fifteen years old the mother- in-law, eight to ten the bride. They had to be related or neighbours or be friendly with each other. Or even sisters. Many pairs were formed. They dressed up the brides and made a cross of plaited stuff of green growths and flowers. Each mother-in-law took the bride by the hand, and they began the round of all the village houses. The pair then reached one of the houses. The mother-in-law stood here, the bride there, who kept her hands crossed in front of her and bowed to her mother-in-law and venerated her. She made repentance and sang the song right there before the door, before the family they had called on.
Sweet basil of the Holy Cross
and golden basil plant,
go into your garden
among your flower-beds,
gather up your pretty flowers
your sweetly smelling flowers
to make your bosom fragrant,
your bosom, little bosom.
Look,the bride is coming,
bathing herself, combing out her hair,
tying up her kerchief.
Both this year and the next.
Once they’d made the round of the village and collected money, then they took the cross to vespers in the church. Afterwards all the girls, the brides and the mothersin- law, danced together and they placed the cross in the middle and they danced around it. And the priest went and blessed them’. Miranda Terzopoulou (1998)
Translated by John Leatham
Recorded in a studio, in 1997.
Domna Samiou taped this song in Alexandroupoli, sung by a woman who originated from the village Megalo Monastiri, Larissa, in 1973.
