Καλλιτεχνικός Σύλλογος Δημοτικής Μουσικής Δόμνα Σαμίου

In modern Greek ethnology the swing figures is a simple ritual widely practiced in a multitude of versions, irrespective of the socio-cultural or religious context. Under different local names swings are set up throughout the Easter period, but particularly during the first three days of Easter week, and of the feast of Saint George as well as on certain other festive spring occasions. Normally, the rituals are held in the open countryside, though also in the villages and even in individual homes. Usually it is only the girls who sit on the swings, while the young men push them. The custom is accompanied by its own songs and erotic couplets containing a powerful element of a lyrical and adulatory nature.

‘Swings’, that is a ritual ‘hoisting’ or ‘suspension’ enacted as part of country festivals, has been a custom to many cultures since earliest times. We know of the αιώρα (for ‘hoisting’ or ‘suspension’) of girls during the ancient Anthesteria, the three-day Feast of Flowers held in Athens at the beginning of Spring. It must always have been, as it still is, an entertaining past-time of ritualistic and magical character. It is, as it were, a fresh-air spring-cleaning procedure even an invocation of the winds beneficial to agriculture. Modern Greek superstition is explicitly linked to the swing and other magical expediencies for the securing of good health, fertility and abundance.

Apart from their magico-religious content, swings served an obvious social function. First of all, they provided village lads and lasses with a rare opportunity to see one another legitimately at those quarters, to make their marriage choices, to declare mutually by means of songs, whose erotic symbolism established the appropriate mood, their preferences and feelings. More than that however, the festivity was the occasion for the exercise of the marriage strategies of the community while the songs, reflecting social realities and expressing popular ideology, formed the necessary prescriptive framework for the doings and initiatives of its younger participants. Miranda Terzopoulou (1998)

Studio recording, 1997.

Instructed by Sofia Korre from Komiaki, Naxos, in 1997.