(Barbarossa of Lesvos; Photo: internet)
In Holland, December 5, the name day
of Saint Nicholas, is a big celebration day especially for children. On this
day they receive lots of presents and candy, distributed by Saint Nicholas (who
somewhat resembles Santa Claus) and his black valets: the Black
Petes. Because of the Dutch past as slave traders, since last year there have
been big discussions in Holland about the skin colour of Black Pete. Because he
is the valet, people no longer want him to be black.
Last week, visiting a Greek friend,
I thought I saw a puppet picturing a Black Pete hanging on the chimney. When I
looked at it closely it indeed had a black face but looked more like a troll. I
completely forgot that, similar to the Black Petes in Holland, in December in
Greece there are also creatures entering houses through the chimney: the
kallikantzaros.
These are little monsters which live
underground where they try to cut down the world tree. At Christmas, when they
are nearly done with their job, they are allowed to come above ground and they
love that so much that they forget all about the world tree. However they have
to be careful with water, fire, light and a cross. At Epiphany on January 6,
soon as the priests bless the sea, rivers and other waters the kallikantzaros
return underground, where they discover that the world tree has become
renewed and they have to start sawing the tree all over.
Kallikantzaros are a kind of black
gnome, but they may also have goat legs, a donkey’s tail or other animal aspects. What
they enjoy most is to spoil food or drinks, haunt houses and frighten people by
moving furniture and so on.
There are different ways in which to
keep those little bullies outside the house: lighting a fire in the fireplace and
keep it lit throughout the night (in some regions they even lay a special log
in the fireplace that keeps burning for days). You can put a black cross on
your front door or hang a sieve or a bundle of flax at the front door
(Kallikantzaros love to count, but only up to two; this way you keep them busy
outside).
A child born on Christmas Day means real trouble, because a
Christmas child can change into a Kallikantzaros. The way to protect it is to
cover the poor baby with garlic.
As far as I know there are no people
in Greece who care about how a kallikantzaros looks. There are regional
variations, but they are mostly black. Greece however has no past with black
slaves. Most slaves in ancient Greece were white and even also Greek. Since the
ancient times there were slaves in Greece, because where there was war, there
was looting and along with expensive goods, taking the losing people as slaves
was common practice. It was like that in those times all over the world and so
ancient Greek writers and philosophers did not see harm in it. During the Roman
Empire slavery was booming and in each town you could find a slave market.
After Rome, the biggest market was in Ephesus (now in Turkey, near the shores
opposite Samos) and the Greek island of Delos was also known for its slave
market.
The first Gattilusio who took power over Lesvos
originally was a pirate. One century later the last Gattilusio of the Italian
family reigning over Lesvos murdered his brother to become ruler, but that did
not bring him luck: a little later, in 1462, the Ottoman Empire conquered the
island and he and his family were taken to Constantinople as slaves.
Pirates were already known in Roman
times, but from the 16th century piracy became a serious plague
around the Mediterranean, because of political chaos in North Africa; small
Berber communities no longer listened to the sultans and started seafaring,
attacking ships and looting the coasts. The biggest booty was the people taken
back to North Africa as slaves. The historian Robert C. Davies has calculated that from the 16th until the 19th
century, in the area around Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis only, there must have
been 1 to 1.25 million slaves (in contrast to about half a million African
people captured as slaves and transported to America)
The pirates around the Mediterranean
were known as the Barbary corsairs. After many sea battles and attacks on the
pirate settlements (the biggest and last one being Algiers) sea powers like
England, Spain, France, Holland and the just founded United States (see: Barbary Wars) managed around 1830 to get the coasts and the sea safe.
Corsairs not only came from the
Ottoman Empire or from Africa. You’d better not have bumped into the Englishman Jack Ward, or the Dutchmen Simon de Danser (Zymen Danseker) or Ivan Dirkie de Veenboer (Sulayman Reis). However, the most
notorious pirates came from Lesvos: Oruç and Hizir Hayreddin, better known as the
brothers Barbarossa. This did not mean that the inhabitants of Lesvos did not
have to fear the corsairs. Also in Mytilini there used to be a slave market,
and as on all Greek islands nobody was crazy enough to live at the seaside in
an unprotected village. Possibly the people in Petra thought they were safe
because of their Maria-Glikofiloussa church. In 1675 the French corsair Hugo de
Crevellier visited this little village and not only left it in ruins but also
took 500 villagers and sold them on as slaves. The Taxiarchis Monastery of Mandamados also was once attacked by pirates,
but the story goes that the monks were murdered and the sole survivor created
an icon with mud and the blood of his brothers, an icon now still is said to
provide miracles.
Pirates have of course nothing to do
with Christmas, nor with kallikantzaros. Although, when you look at an etching
of Barbarossa, he could have been a big kallikantzaros, or even a Black Pete.
The difference between the slavery around the Mediterranean and in America was
that in America most were black slaves, but in Europe it were mostly white Christians
who became the slaves of the darker muslims. May that be a reason why the
kallikantzaroi are little black men?
(with thanks to Mary Staples)
©
Smitaki 2014
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