Καλλιτεχνικός Σύλλογος Δημοτικής Μουσικής Δόμνα Σαμίου

The main song accompanying the ritual fire-walking which takes place on Saints Constantine' and Helen's day, called the Saint's song, is a composite made up of verses from three well-known narrative songs selected and adapted to the needs and meaning of the rite from a vast musical repository: ‘The evil mother-in-law’, ‘The wolf avenger’ and ‘The murderous mother’. Most of the verses, which are sung and danced in an ecstatic state, are from the first of the three, randomly intermingled with a few verses from the other two. Since the fire-walkers know all three songs well, they will have no difficulty recalling their full meaning. All three songs revolve around the theme of the hero's catastrophic relationship with his mother. However, the sequence and content of the verses make little sense outside the given context and without an understanding of the forgotten archetypal myth which underlies the ritual. The symbolism here centres on the sacred, autonomous and transgressive female figure in a maternal-conjugal relationship, who alternatively births, loves and destroys her young consort, the annually-dying and resurrected fertility divinity.
The British neo-Hellenist, Roderick Beaton, argues that the song was adopted by the fire-walkers apparently because of its hero's name - even though there is nothing in the features and behaviour of either son or mother that mirrors those of the saints being worshipped. Beaton was the first - and, perhaps, the only - researcher to posit that there may be ‘some latent meaning or possibility of interpretation which would further explain its suitability for the ritual of the Anastenaria’¹.
Personally, I believe that the features of the mythic sacred figures that underlie the figures being worshipped in the Christian icons and the heroes of the secular folk songs both shed light on various aspects of the therapeutic fire-walking ceremony and, vice-versa, render comprehensible the composition criteria, function and meaning of the otherwise incomprehensible song². Miranda Terzopoulou (2017)

¹R. Beaton, Folk poetry of modern Greece, Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 21.
²M. Terzopoulou, Με τα τύμπανα και τα όργια της Μητέρας. Η γυναικεία λαϊκή λατρεία ως πολιτική μεταφορά σε ένα συγκρουσιακό περιβάλλον, in Chr. Vlachoutsikou (ed.), Όταν γυναίκες έχουν διαφορές, Athens 2003, pp. 320-360 (see http://epth.sfm.gr/articles/daoEn.pdf).

Recorded live in Langada on 23rd May 2001, at the Thracian Society’s house during the fire-walking ritual by Miranda Tezopoulou.