Καλλιτεχνικός Σύλλογος Δημοτικής Μουσικής Δόμνα Σαμίου

According to primeval pagan beliefs, the demonic forces that inhabit and govern Mother Nature demand something in exchange if they are to give their blessing to man’s interventions. So to firm the foundations of a major construction, the spirits must first be appeased with an offering of equal import; they demand blood: a human sacrifice. The soul of the victim will become a spirit in its turn, acquire invincible powers and protect the structure from all threats, natural and supernatural, in perpetuity.

The forgotten memory of ritual human sacrifice, a practice known in all societies, was preserved down the centuries orally in the form of legend. In Europe, of all the countless legends and traditions relating to human sacrifice, the macabre myth of the ‘haunting’ –the young woman walled into a large bridge, the spirit’s price for securing its foundations–is unique in assuming poetic form. This narrative song is widespread among the peoples of South-east Europe, Hungary and the Balkans. In Greece, Cyprus, the Greek islands and Asia Minor, it is known to all as the song of Arta’s bridge, and the bridge in question is mentioned in most of its variants.

Despite its fabulous nature, the dreadful murder the song describes would be hard to accept if the song did not echo the sacred nature of such sacrifices. That the song is danced ritualistically without instrumental accompaniment at Easter, the great Christian feast of death and rebirth, may be indicative of this intuitive memory, the wife of the master builder becoming one of the anonymous, emblematic dead venerated in the spring. Miranda Terzopoulou (2008)

Local dance, danced to the steps of the dance "kamara".

Domna Samiou taped the song in Skiathos, in 1975.

Watch a different version of the song by locals of Skiathos