Mani

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Authors: Patrick Leigh Fermor
inability to fight against death which meets Charon half-way. Invalids often waste away without reason and their eyes reflect neither the impending joys of paradise nor the terrors of hell fire—the temporary rigours of Purgatory and the mists of Limbo have been omitted from Orthodox theology—but extinction, the loss of friends, the end of everything. The bright day is done and they are for the dark, and when the soul flutters away at last no one knows whither it is flying and a shrill and heartrending wail of bereavement goes up.
    All over the Greek world—indeed, wherever the religion of Byzantium holds sway—village funerals are accompanied by outward signs of lamentation that come as a great surprise tothose who have only witnessed the prim obsequies of north-western Europe. The mourning is the work of the women. It begins as a lyke-wake, a wailing and keening round the body by candleflame, and when the coffin is carried out into the daylight with the corpse rocking from side to side on the carrying shoulders, the mourning lifts to a crescendo that only fitfully subsides during the funeral service in church, to rise once more on the way to the cemetery, in the wild cries of the kinswomen: “Oh my warrior! Ah, to pallikari mou! The arch and pillar of our house! Where are they taking him? Ah, my beautiful flower, my young cypress tree!” This soars to a climax as they reach the grave, the mourner’s voice turns to an hysterical screeching howl, she staggers like an intoxicated person, her coif falls off, her hair flies loose and tangled over her face and she scarifies her cheeks with her fingernails till they are criss-crossed with red gashes and running with tears and blood. The supreme moment comes when the coffin is lowered into the shallow grave. Then,—in extreme cases,—uttering shrieks she has to be withheld by force from flinging herself into the grave, a task in which her attendants are not always successful. Dragged to the surface once more, the hysteria seems to subside a little as the earth is thrown in, but all the way home, shaken with sobs and outbursts of wailing at widening intervals, she is supported and surrounded by a black-clad throng of women who guide her staggering along the lanes. For days afterwards during visits of condolence the same symptoms occur in a milder form. The gravity of mourning loses ground before a sudden rush of talk: he was the best of sons, a real warrior, such a good boy, kind to his mother and father, so full of life, the best shot in the village, he played the lyra so swiftly you couldn’t see the bow, he leapt higher than any of them at the dance, and flew like a bird! What’s the use of making sons with such pain and sorrow if Charon steals them from us? Tears are soon flowing fast. The mourner’s face breaks and her voice sails up in the thin ritualtrance-like wail of the miroloy . She is at once surrounded, embraced and gently scolded by her family who manage to quieten her bit by bit. In a few weeks’ time this dwindles and disappears. Gradually, backed by a host of comforting adages, the consolations of fatalism assert themselves. The deep sighs and the black clothes continue for life.
    After the first reactions of awe and horror, the sight of the general ritual of misery is desperately moving and sad. The fact that custom has evolved a formal framework for grief takes nothing away from its authenticity or from the sting of pity it evokes. There was a deep wisdom behind the orgiastic and hysterical aspects of ancient religion; there is much to be said in favour of this flinging open of the floodgates to grief. It might be argued that the decorous little services of the West, the hushed voices, the self-control, our brave smiles and calmness either stifle the emotion of sorrow completely, or drive it underground where it lodges and proliferates in a malign and dangerous growth that festers for a lifetime.
    In these

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