Folk Songs of Old Ithaca

While time has eroded much of Ithaca’s rich folk song tradition, a handful of remarkable songs have endured.

These surviving gems are considered complete works, showcasing both clever poetic devices and a high degree of musical merit.

Often structured as dialogues between two characters, the themes explored in these songs encompass the universal experiences of love, heroism, friendship, and mortality.

Two girls among the vineyards
And they harvest with laughter
I passed by there too
I stand and watch them
Girls, take me with you in your life
To see how I harvest
How beautifully I sing

Come, my stranger, and harvest
Only have few words
All your mind on work
And absolutely no talk

What is that over there
That shines like day
I see a plump hand
And I leaned in to kiss it
Go on with your work, my stranger
So you don’t find trouble.

Song 2
A slender girl sang on a marble bridge
And the bridge collapsed and the sea became agitated
The galleys were passing by and they stopped
And there the sailor calls out, the captain calls out.

“Leave the oars, sailors, pick up the flutes
Let’s hear what the slender girl is singing.”

“Even if I sang, I sang it like a lament.
I lost my father and mother and seven soldier brothers
And my husband is in danger of dying.
He asked me for food to recover.
An apple from the east, a pomegranate from the west.
He recovered, got well, and took another woman
And called me to be the godmother to go and crown them
With what legs to stand, with what hands to reach out?”

Song 3
I want to go abroad
I want to leave
I beg you, foreign land
Do not give me sickness
Sickness needs bedding,
It needs fine sheets
It needs a mother’s knees
It needs a sister’s embrace.

The time came, and I got sick
I lay on the bed.
I look right, I look left
And see no acquaintance
I make a foreign sister
To wash my clothes.
She washes them once, she washes them twice
She washes them three and five times
And after the fifth time
She throws them into the alley
“Take your clothes, stranger
Take your clothes
And I got a message
To go to my mother.”

Song 4
The mountains dawn sweetly and the day shines sweetly
The birds go to graze and the beautiful ones to wash
I took my black horse to water it.
And there I saw a girl washing her husband’s handkerchief
Her husband’s and her lover’s and her beloved’s.
She washes her husband’s with water, her lover’s with soap
And her beloved’s with tears.
Forty days I searched without seeing her
And on the forty-fourth, I saw her weeping.

“What’s wrong, girl, why are you grieving and shedding black tears?”
“They tell me my husband is dead, and my lover is dead
And another says he died, another says he disappeared.”
“Indeed, girl, he died, indeed he disappeared
And I gave him a candle, and you to give it to me
And I lent him a kiss, and you to give it to me.”
“And since you gave him a candle, I will give it to you
And if you lent him a kiss, go and get it back.”
“I am your husband, my girl, I am your beloved.”