Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/96

82 There is something of the heroic in the way these Greeks pursue an ideal of education, disappointing as are too often the results when the means have been achieved. This mud village, obviously a miserably poor community, was engaged in building itself a school which, when completed, will be second only to the church in magnificence,—and every stone has to be brought from Urgub, at least a day's journey away! This enterprise is a sign of the times, and another fifty years will probably see great changes in the customs of this at present backward community. We were therefore delighted to hear on our arrival of a marriage to be celebrated on the morrow.

In Hasákeui they marry young,—boys from twelve to seventeen, and girls from ten to fourteen years of age. The betrothal takes place three or four years before marriage, and the practice of infant betrothal, which prevails, I believe, in some of the villages of these parts, was said not to exist here.

Eight days before the marriage ceremony, the representatives of the bridegroom go to the house of the prospective bride and 'give word' to her parents of the approaching event. The next ceremony is that of clothing the bridegroom, which takes place the evening before the marriage, and this we were fortunate enough to witness on the evening of our arrival.

We reached the house of the bridegroom's father about nine o'clock in the evening. The courtyard was occupied by the male friends of the family seated in a hollow square. Above on the roof were women and children, and throughout the proceedings a steady rain of fragments of the mud parapet over which they leaned kept us aware of their presence. We were seated on cushions in the place of honour, facing the gateway and next to the priest, who took his seat at our right shortly after our arrival. Mastic liqueur was now handed round, and the musicians struck up. The native songs are entirely lost, and the rhythmical but tuneless ditties were performed by a pair of hired Turkish professionals. Their instruments were tambourines held upright in front of the performer in both hands placed at the bottom edge, with fingers on the outside and thumbs inside towards the player. The position of the thumbs remains throughout unchanged, and the instrument is drummed with the fingers only. There is no