The Cretan ‘Song of Teacher John’: a note

Extract

The Cretan song of ‘Teacher John’ narrates in an epic manner the tragic history of the revolt against the Turks in Sphakia led by Dhaskaloyannis. The poem was composed by an illiterate cheese-maker, named Barba Pantzelios, and written down in 1786, only sixteen years after the outbreak of the rebellion. In dialect the poem is an interesting link between medieval poems such as the epic of Erotokritos and modern Cretan ballads, but regarded as an epic it is something far more interesting. It is not so much a link with Homer as a reminiscence of the epic lays behind Homer, the lays sung not by Demodocus and other royal protégés, but by village bards celebrating the exploits of local heroes.

The metre is the ‘political’ metre regularly employed in medieval and modern ballads. The language is good Cretan dialect with only a smattering of Turkish words, and only rarely a word to indicate that the author was a West Cretan. Pantzelios is no Homer but can hold his own with the best of the balladists, and it is astonishing how Homeric traits of which he could never have read reappear in his poem.