Καλλιτεχνικός Σύλλογος Δημοτικής Μουσικής Δόμνα Σαμίου

Saint George

From a Macedonian workshop, late 16th century. Benaki Museum, inv. no. 27934.

© Benaki Museum

Saint George is the saint most revered by the faithful of the Eastern Church. His depiction in iconography as a young warrior on horseback has given rise to a similar image of him in popular imagination. He has become the saintly adversary of evil and injustice, the protector and liberator, and a hero upholding all that is good, a source of all hope.

It is not without significance that his feast day is not only confused with Easter but is virtually identified with it, so the saint’s already rounded character is further enhanced by the attributes of a hero of springtime who, like the resurrected Christ, marks the opening of a new period, the season of fair weather. It seems only natural that when new tasks are facing the farmer, when flocks are being driven to fresh pastures, and contracts for agricultural products are being signed the saint now celebrated should be chosen as the supreme protector of arable- and stockfarming communities throughout the Near East. There his feast is observed with votive offerings and visits to holy places in the countryside, with animal sacrifices, merrymaking, and play with swings.

Saint George

Mobile icon painted by Angelos, late 15th century, Benaki Museum, inv. no. 28129.

© Benaki Museum

Muslims also pay great honour to Saint George or, more correctly, to a similar sainted person, either by joining in the Easter celebration of the Christians or holding their own festival, Hidirellez, on the 6th of May in the old style calendar (the 23rd of April, the feast of Saint George, in the western, Gregorian calendar). This day marks the opening of their festive cycle, too, and is celebrated in comparable manner.

Scholars attribute the particular intensity of the worship of the saint in the Balkans and the Near East to the powerful influence of local pre-Christian and pre- Islamic divinities, such as the horseman Thrakas and the mounted gods of Persia. Even setting aside any such identifications, these festivals with their common characteristics are thought to point once more to pre-Christian spring ceremonies whose purpose was to further and celebrate growth and fertility. Miranda Terzopoulou (1998)

Saint George

Silver icon from Caesarea, Cappadocia, 1800. Benaki Museum, inv. no. 34585

© Benaki Museum

The Song of Saint George is an Easter song danced with the steps of the kamàra by women only at the opening of the community’s celebrations, in which everyone joins in. It is performed at any time after the Second Resurrection and during the next two days. When Saint George’s Day precedes or follows Easter, the same song is again sung and danced by the womenfolk on his feast in the courtyard of his church.

This popular and widely known long verse, composed in the original Greek of fifteen-syllable rhyming couplets of literary origin, is sung as the singers dance or during house-to-house rounds or is simply recited on the saint’s feast day. In close correspondence with stories about the saint so far as its subject matter is concerned and with his iconography in respect of the description of the hero in armour and on horseback, the song relates the legendary incident of the saint slaying the dragon and rescuing the king’s daughter.

N. G. Politis maintained that both the song and the legend echo popular traditions about dragon-slaying heroes, at the heart of which, in his opinion, there lies the ancient myth of Perseus and Andromeda preserved in the region of Cappadocia, which he considered to be the geographical origin of the song. The myth about the slaying of the dragon has been absorbed into the lives of many saints, perhaps because the allegorical meaning attached to the dragon as the devil subdued by the power of faith exactly complemented the attraction which, one way or another, the gallant figures of Christianity’s young fighting horsemen exercised over the simple minds of the newly converted. Miranda Terzopoulou - Zoe Margari (1998)

Studio recording, 1997. 

Domna Samiou collected the song in Skiathos Island in 1975, sung by an old woman.

In the same tape, Maria Agiioti 87 years, recites the lyrics of the song.

There is a newer version of the song in  Domna Samiou's music archive, taped in Athens in July 1997, when Domna Samiou visited Yannis Parisis in a clinic in Athens where he was hospitalized.