Listen
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A voice from heaven could be heard, a good archangel speaking.
My lady, that’s enough of prayers, enough of doing penance,
for they have roughly seized your son and hauled him to the blacksmith,
and thence to Pontius Pilate’s courts, and there they mock and beat him.
The Virgin, when she heard of this, fell to the ground and fainted,
they splashed a crock of water on her till she’d regained her senses,
and once she had come round again, she spoke these word with feeling.
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Translated by John Leatham
Το μοιρολόι της Παναγιάς (Μαραμαράς)
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Φωνή εξήλθ’ εξ ουρανού, απ’ αρχαγγέλου στόμα.
Σώνουν κυρά μου οι προσευχές, σώνουν και οι μετάνοιες
και τον υιόν σου πιάσανε και στο χαλκιά τον πάνε
και στου Πιλάτου τας αυλάς, εκεί τον τυραννάνε.
Η Παναγιά σαν τ’ άκουσε έπεσε και λιγώθη,
σταμνιά νερό της ρίξανε όσο να ’ρθει ο νους της
κι απάνω που συνέφερε, τούτον τον λόγο λέγει.
...
The Moirolόϊ or Lament of the Virgin, very widely known throughout Greek lands, is a long medieval rhyming poem of literary origin, but impressively familiar to broad sections of the populace. Influenced by relevant passages in the Gospels and by Church hymnography, it is an anthropocentric narrative lament for the sufferings of Christ on the way to his crucifixion and death, as observed and felt by his tragic mother. Chanted by women around Christ’s tomb in the manner and style of the mundane dirges they know so well, it expresses their compassion and identification with the maternal, human nature of the Virgin. Nonetheless, the way in which it is ritually performed lays bare the custom’s pre-Christian origins.
While there are local differences in some features of the song or in its melodic treatment, the structure and form of the moirolόϊ as well as its performance bear impressive similarities to those sung in lands as far apart as Lower Italy, Pontos, and Cyprus. The continuity of its narrative flow is clearly evinced in the sequence we have dared to select here of passages occurring in versions of varied provenance. Miranda Terzopoulou (1998)
Translated by John Leatham
Recorded in a studio, in 1978.
