The Cretan Insurrection of 1866-7-8. William James Stillman
a Pelasgic name, from which we might conjecture that it was founded by the colony of Teutamos, who, with a band of Dorians, Achæans, and Pelasgi, the builders of all the early Greek cities, is said by the early historians to have arrived in Crete three centuries before the Trojan war, and to have settled in the eastern part of the island, and given the early city its Pelasgic name.
The present inhabitants betray differences of character so great as almost to indicate difference of race. The Sphakiotes are larger of build, more restless and adventurous, thievish and inconstant, turbulent and treacherous, than the people of any other section. The Seliniotes, in the western extremity, are the bravest of the Cretans, but less turbulent or quarrelsome, not given to stealing, and of good faith. In the eastern end, especially the region of Gortyna and Gnossus, the blessings of the rule of Minos seem to rest in pacific natures. The great Dorian invasion, about 1,000 B.C., gave the island a dominant caste, uniformity of language and customs, but without complete fusion of races.
The language of Crete to-day is a Dorian dialect, and preserves many characteristics noted by the ancient authors. The use of Kappa as c is used in Italian, either hard or soft (in terminal syllables generally the latter), the use of r for l, especially with the Sphakiotes, and the presence of many words in modern Cretan which have disappeared from modern continental Greek, with a comparative rareness of Turkish words, and entire absence of Albanian and Sclavonic, show how much less the Cretans have been affected by outside influences than other parts of the Greek community. I give a few of the words which retain their ancient form more closely than on the continent:
| Cretan. | Romaic. | English. |
| ἂγομαι, | πηγαίνω, | I go. |
| ἀκατεχος, | ἀνίδιος, | Inexperienced. |
| ἀναλαμπὴ, | φλόγα, | Flame. |
| ἀναλώματα, | —— | Emeutes. |
| ἁνω, ἔσω, (used to oxen), | Haw, jee. | |
| ἀποβόλη, (used in tracking animals), | Spoor. | |
| ἀποταχυάς, | πρίv, | Before. |
| ἀργατινή, | ἑσπέρα, | Evening. |
| κάμπτω, | ἀναχωρῶ, | I leave (the Cretan in the sense of the American "skedaddle"). |
| δροσια, (lit. dew), | τίποτε, | Nothing. |
| δῶρον, (a gift), | μπαχσίσι, (Turkish). | |
| ἐργῶ (ῥιγῶ), | κρυόνω, | I am cold. |
| καlλταλῶ, | φθείρω, | I destroy. |
| κτῆμα, | κτῆνος, | A beast of burden. |
| μαλάρα, | —— | Bare (of mountains generally), this being the appellation of the central mountains of the Sphakian range, Madara vouna. |
| μαλάκα, | —— | A peculiar kind of cream cheese—not the misithra of Greece. |
| μὰιαλ, | λογομαχία, | A wrangling. |
| νύχι, | τουφεκόπετρα, | Gun-flint. |
| παρασύρω, | σερνω, | I sweep. |
| παρίξω, | ἐξέρχωμαι, | I come out. |
| πόρος, | δίοδος, | Passage. |
| πράμα (πράγμα), | τίποτε, | Nothing. |
| ταῦτερου, | όυριον, | To-morrow. |
| χαλέπα, | πετρόλοφος, | A rocky site (generally applied to villages). |
There are few Turkish words in use, and those mainly of objects brought by the Turks: βουδαλά, a lubber; τσιμπούχι, a pipe; τουφέκι, a gun, etc. A few Italian: καπιτανός, captain; βετέμα (vendemmia), olive crop; βίστατο (guastato); ματινάδα, a song, and some names of implements, with idioms which cling, as the use of πίυ, the comparative, instead of τέρος.
There is a trace of genuine Cretan literature, though its chief work, the "Erotókritos," is by an Italian colonist, Vincenzo Cornaro. They have, however, many songs and many bards, though to any but Cretan ears the music is far from agreeable. I knew one of the popular singers, Karalambo, poet and singer at once, as most of them are (and many are improvisatori of considerable facility). He was so much in repute that no wedding or festivity was considered complete anywhere in the range of a day's ride from Canéa unless Karalambo was there; and at other times he used to sing in the cafés on the Marina, screaming, to the strain of a naturally fine tenor, songs which, though to me not even music, used to melt his audiences into tears. He was a patriot as well as poet, and when the insurrection of '66 actually broke out, his songs were so seditious, and excited the Khaniote Christians so much, that he was driven into the mountains, and, joining a band of his neighbors, was one day wounded by the accidental discharge of a pistol one of his comrades was cleaning. The wound was fatal from want of surgical attendance.
The Cretan music is always of a plaintive character, and monotonous; in singing, they have a habit of incessant quavering, and this, with the drawling tone, makes it far from agreeable to an ear accustomed to cultivated music, but it has a decided character of its own.
There were in Kalepa before the insurrection two improvisatori of considerable repute, who were accustomed to carry on musical disputes, one singing a couplet, and the other replying in a similar one. Sometimes it was a match of compliments, and sometimes the reverse, but following with tolerable exactitude the metre, a four-lined stanza, the second and fourth lines rhyming. All the ballads I have seen are in this form, the music also differing but little to my ear, though possibly to a Cretan there may be wide differences.
The Cretans possess, in common with all the Greeks, the avidity for instruction and quickness of intellect which make of this race the dominant element in the Levant. They are tenaciously devoted to their religion and to their traditions, which have kept them up and preserved the national character against such a continuation of hostile influences as probably no other people ever lived through. The history of Crete is a series of obstinate rebellions and barbarous repressions, since the first conquest by the Saracens in A.D. 820, a conquest which was followed by an almost complete apostasy from Christianity—sword-conversion, and by persistent attempts on the part of the Byzantine emperors to reconquer it, until 961, when Nikephoras Phocas succeeded in driving the Saracens out. They seem to have made no considerable addition to the Cretan stock, since the population rapidly returned to Christianity, to which, judging from the known and more recent past, they had always probably remained devoted at heart. At the division of the Byzantine empire, Crete passed to Boniface, Duke of Montserrat, and from him was purchased by the Venetian Republic, 1204, from which time till its conquest by the Turks, completed in 1669, the Cretans were under a yoke that would probably have depopulated any other section of the Old World. The cruelties and misgovernment of the governors sent from Venice would be incredible if not recorded by Venetian historians and official records. The Venetians seem to have regarded the Cretans much in the same light as the English colonists of America did the Indians, and, when their wretched state came to the knowledge of the Senate, they sent commissioners to examine into it, from whose reports I translate some extracts (quoted in Italian by Pashley), who took them from the original documents in the public library of Venice. Basadonna, the