The Mummers of Pontus

Abstract

AFTER the abortive Greek invasion of Turkey in 1921 and the complete rout of the Greek army in the following year, there was a peace settlement that involved a massive and compulsory exchange of populations. Moslems in Greece were sent to Turkey; Christians in Turkey were sent to Greece. In the years 1923 and 1924 about 1,400,000 Greeks were forcibly uprooted from Asia Minor and settled in Greece. The Greek community in Istanbul was excluded from the treaty. Apart from them, the principal Greek areas of Turkey had been the Aegean seaboard, especially around Smyrna, and an area of North-East Turkey centered on the city of Trabsun (formerly Trapezus, and Trebizond). In Greek this area is known by the ancient name for the Black Sea-Pontus. In the resettlement, the Aegean Greeks were brought as far as possible to southern Greece. They were comparatively well-educated and sophisticated, and many gravitated to urban areas, notably Athens. The Greeks of Pontus were taken to the North, to less desirable parts along the Bulgarian and Yugoslavian borders. Now their towns were Kozani, Edessa, Kilkis, Serres, and Drama. They brought with them a rich tradition of mummers' plays. 'Until at least the eve of the Second World War there were lively performances, though they continued to lose some vigour' (S p.56).' The Italian and German occupation disrupted the tradition. After the war, there were occasional revivals, but with an increasingly antiquarian motivation. In only one place, Ayios Markos near Kilkis, did something like a folk tradition continue annually at least until 1980. Outside the refugee villages of Northern Greece there was little knowledge of these plays. As early as 1927 there was a long article about them in a popular literary annual, but they again disappeared from view for ten years. Then they began to be mentioned in journals devoted to Pontic culture. A young scholar, Demetrios Loukatos, who was to become the dean of Greek folklore studies, had already collected two texts in 1938; but it was not until after the war that interest began to be more widespread. Books of memoirs by aging refugees started to describe old performances. The Folklore Archive of the Academy of Athens and the Centre for Asia Minor Studies received various texts. By the mid-seventies reproductions of mummers' plays were being put on both in Northern Greece and in Athens.