Καλλιτεχνικός Σύλλογος Δημοτικής Μουσικής Δόμνα Σαμίου

Easter has come round again, throw out the koukouràs¹
and put a red egg laid this year upon the ikon stand².

Glad returns of Easter Day,
the day all eat red eggs,
glad returns of Easter Day,
and all say ‘Christ is Risen’.

Easter has come round again, it is the festive season,
the girls will get themselves dressed up in their newest dresses.

This very day has Christ arisen, and all rejoice and revel,
in every house they feast and drink, to all the doors stand open.

Christ has risen from the dead and over death has triumphed³.
I’ll sell whatever I possess to spend it all on her.

Translated by John Leatham

¹Lent, a strict forty-day period preceding Holy Week, was a period of trial that seemed neverending. Lenten fasters contrived all manner of ways to give themselves the sense of time passing and the strength to endure such time as still remained. In Chios, for instance, they personified Lent as a woman at prayer. The figure, made of paper, had no mouth but seven legs, that is, as many legs as there were weeks before Easter. At the end of each week they cut off one leg, to which incidentally they attributed magical powers. In Pontos the koukourás was a kind of calendar, similarly frightening to children. It was made out of a large onion with long trailing roots and smoked in the fire till it was blackened. Some wild features were added and seven hens’ wings stuck in it. It was then hung from the ceiling, one wing being removed at the end of each week. In Holy Week it was made to disappear and children were told a variety of storiesabout its arrival and departure.
²In the evening of Holy Saturday each family took with it to church as many red eggs as there were members of the family for the priest to bless and one in addition which they placed on the icon stand as a ‘blessed egg’. They believed this last would never rot and kept it till the following Easter when it was replaced with a fresh egg.
³This line is taken from the Easter hymn ‘Christ is Risen’.