A tale of creation and deadlines

This is one of the more interesting Macedonian folk tales collected by Marko Cepenkov. Like many such tales, it is (very loosely) based on Biblical stories, but has a unique twist -- and may be of as much interest to project managers as to theologians...

This story was recorded by Marko Cepenkov in Prilep from an informant named Ivan Motev, and published in Sofia in the SbNU, vol. XV, pp. 91-92, in 1898. The original publication is in what appears to be a version of the 19th century Bulgarian orthography adopted for the central Macedonian dialect; the story has been since reprinted in the modern Macedonian orthography (again, adopted for the particular dialect), e.g. in Predanija i Legendi, ed. Kiril Penuševski, Skopje, 1969.

When the Lord created people (Господ кога и создаваше луѓето)

When the Lord created heaven and earth, with everything that's on them and in them, everything that we can or cannot see, living and dead; and when the Lord -- praise be to Him! -- saw that everything that He had made was made well, He also decided to create people on this earth, so that they would live and glorify Him. When creating everything in the world, the Lord scheduled one day to work on something, another day to work on something else, the third day for the third thing, the fourth day... and so on. He had just one day scheduled for creating people. He got up early in the morning, rolled up His sleeves, took a mattock in His hands, dug up some soil, prepared clay, and started making people, like a potter who makes pots. First He'd make the legs, then the trunk, then the arms, then the head, hair, ears, eyes, nose, and all other organs all put together; like a clockmaker, which puts the cogwheels of a clock together with a great skill, in this way He, too -- praise be to Him! -- put together all organs of a man with great skill, so that no part would be put incorrectly, thus resulting in a poorly made man.

He had made so many people by lunchtime, got hungry -- praise be to God! -- and sat down to lunch; and after lunch He'd make more people, as many as he needed. The Lord lunched on a bagel and milk, looking at the people whom He had made and whom He had lined up in front of Him, like a battalion of soldiers. He looked at them and smiled to Himself, because it was a pleasure to look at them, so handsome and smart they had been made.

"Oh, how good they are, these people whom I have made!", He said to Himself, "These people, they really are in My image! I have made so many before lunch; but if I make as many before the end of the supper time, that will be no good: I sill need ten times as many people as I have made! So I need to make a mould, and to make them with the mould; this way I will be able to make as many people as I need by supper time".

He quickly finished His lunch, crossed himself, rose from His meal, washed His hands, and made a mould - great job! He prepared more clay, as much as He needed, and started making the rest of the people, as many as He needed. Put clay into the mould, press it in, and here's a man for you, just take him out of the mould! The Lord would turn a wheel and keep getting people out of the mould. And even if some came out with a lame leg, or with a crooked arm or neck, or blind, or bald, or with scabs on his skin; or if he were a bully, or a traitor, or a stubborn blockhead -- and even if the Lord saw him come out of the mould among other people -- He did not have time to correct the defect, because He was in a hurry to complete the planned number of people by supper time.

But you will say, why did not the Lord allocate two days and made all people like those good ones in the first batch, instead of setting up the wheels and moulds, from which would come out bad people, and not good ones, like those which the Lord had made by hand and which had come out good? As much as I can say about it, it is that it pleased Him to do it this way; because when a king gives his word, he does not go back on it; and the Lord is not to going to say that He'd make the people in one day, and then spend two days on it. That's one thing that will not happen: the Lord won't go back on His word!

And this is why there are good and bad people in the world, because the Lord made the good ones by hand, and the bad ones, with the wheel and the mould, like a potter who makes pots on a potting wheel.

P.S. An audio recording of this story, read by Boris Majstorov for Radio Skopje, is available on Youtube, as the second of the two stories in this clip (starting at around 11:00).

The Salahor has arrived

A classic of the Macedonian and Bulgarian poetry, Grigor Prlichev's In the Year 1762 (В 1762-ро лето) tells the (fictionalized) story of the abolition of the Archbishopric of Ohrid (which, according to most sources, actually, happened in 1767). Written in 1872, the poen has practically become a folk song in Macedonia, at least judging by the number and variety of its renditions available on Youtube.

The language of the poem, although obviously archaized for the effect, is, generally, quite easy to understand based on the modern Macedonian plus some knowledge of Church Slavonic. There is, however, one unusual word in it. In the first sentence of the poem, "a salaor arrived to Ohrid from Constantinople" (В Охрида од Цариграда дошел Салаор). The salaor then stood in front of the Patrik of Orhid (literally, "Patriarch", but in the Macedonian context, the Archbishop of Orhid - the spiritual leader of the Balkan Slavs), and delivered to him the Sultan's order, dismissing the Patrik and abolishing his office.

Now, who is a salaor? The word salaor (салаор) does not look like a typical Slavic word, so, considering the context, it can be a Turkish loanword. However, it does not appear in standard Bulgarian or Macedonian dictionaries or texts (other than Prlichev's poem). Now, one of characteristic features of Macedonian (in fact, one of its main differences from standard Bulgarian) is that Macedonian often drops the consonant h or, in intervocalic position, v, where it appears in Bulgarian. So one also needs to check salahor (салахор) and salavor (салавор) - which, however, don't appear in Bulgarian or Macedonian (or even Turkish) dictionaries or texts either. It does appear as a surname, however - Salahor in Canada and the US, Salavor in Ukraine... and Salahor is apparently attested as a Romanian word. But what does (did) it mean in Bulgarian?

The Bulgarian etymological dictionary to the rescue! (Macedonian, from the Bulgarian scholar's point of view - rarely shared by anyone outside of Bulgaria - is merely a dialect of Bulgarian, so any Bulgarian dictionary striving to comprehensively cover dialect words should include most of Macedonian words as well). The BER volumes have been appearing at the average rate of two per decade since 1971; presently, its authors have reached letter T (volume 7, 2010). And yes, volume 6 (published 2002) has a detailed article (page 443) on salahor (салахор), with spelling varieties salaor and salavor. This, indeed, is an obsolete word; its main meaning being given as "people driven ''en masse'' to do unpaid labor" (хора, карани вкупом на безплатна работа), i.e. corvée workers. Additional meanings attested in certain dialect are "laborers" (трудоваци) and "a wanderer" (скитник). The indicated etymology, however, indicates a rather different original meaning: Turkish salahor, from Turkish Turkish silâhşor, "an armed fighter; a musketeer", which itself is a loanword from Persian (selāḥšūr, which in its turn is constructed from Arabic roots.

According to the same dictionary, the same Turkish word, besides Bulgarian, entered other Balkan languages as well. Indeed, a Romanian dictionary explains salahór as an "unskilled day laborer, esp. on road or building construction projects", or (historically) "a peasant who, instead of paying taxes, would have to work on fortress repair, road maintenance and other heavy work". In Serbo-Croatian, where the word could be variously spelled as salahor, sarahor, saraor, seraor, the purported meaning would be that of a soldier whose duties involve guarding a fortress (rather than, say, going on field campaigns); it also exists there as more authentically Turkish silahšor, and refers to a member of the palace guard of the Ottoman Sultan.

A slight variation on the duties of a Salahor at the Sultan's court appears in a 19th century source, Travels in Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in 1809 & 1810 by Rt. Hon. Lord Broughton (page 239), where "Squires of the Stable" (Salahor) are listed among the officials handling Sultan's horses.

To conclude, after reading all these definitions, we still don't know whom exactly Prlichev had in mind when he was writing about a salaor. Simply a "traveler" (скитник) would not make to much sense to refer to a person who has brought the official Sultan's order, and presumably was a person in a position of some responsibility. But a "day laborer" would make even less sense. A fortress guard, or even a "squire of the stable", is not the same as an imperial courier either; perhaps there was another shift in meaning somewhere... We do, however, now have a better idea of where and how the surname Salahor (or Salavor / Salaor) originated.

Chinese New Year and Mardi Gras

Both the Chinese calendar and the Christian calendar (as far as the Easter-based moveable feasts are concerned) are lunisolar, which means that the dates of the Chinese New Year and Easter are determined by rules that are based on the timing of the new (or full) moons with respect to the winter solstice (or spring equinox). Of course, the existence of the 7-day week enters yet additional rule into the Paschal computations, which don't exist in the rules for the Chinese New Year. (The 7-day week cycle is a comparatively recent development in Chinese history, and the Chinese New Year may fall on any day of the week).

So what is the exact correspondence between the dates of the holidays of the two traditions?

The Chinese New Year is the beginning of the first month (农历正月) of the Chinese year, and as such has to fall on a new moon, or more precisely, "dark moon" - i.e. the day when moon is in front of the sun; this, incidentally, means that solar eclipses can only happen on the first or last day of a Chinese month, and lunar eclipses, only around the middle of a Chinese month). The idea of choosing the first month of the year is, basically, to do it so that the New Year Day is as close to the half-way point between the winter solstice (which in the traditional scheme of solar terms is viewed as the mid-winter point) and the spring equinox (which, in China is, notionally, the middle of the spring). In other words, the Chinese New Year day should be chosen as the new moon day closest to the first day of the lichun 立春 ("Start of spring") solar term (around Feb 4). Thus the Chinese New Year Day festivities are referred to as the Spring Festival (春节, chunjie). In other words, the Chinese New Year Day (the first day of the Chinese Year, or [农历]年初一 [Nongli] Nian Chuyi) has to be the first new moon on or after Jan 21.

In a similarly "lunisolar" way, the Easter is determined, more or less, as the sunday on or after the first full moon (the Paschal Moon) after the spring equinox. With some simplification, the Easter of the Catholic Church, and most other Western churches, happens on the first Sunday on or after the first full moon on or after March 22.

Since the full moon is always in the middle of the Chinese calendar month, we see that the Paschal Moon has to occur around the middle of the 2nd or 3rd month of the Chinese calendar (农历二月15日 or 农历三月15日). The former takes place in case of a "late New Year" (i.e., the Chinese New Year happens after the first day of Lichun), and the latter, if the Chinese New Year occurs early (before Lichun). The (Western) Easter would be celebrated, respectively, on the 1st Sunday after the middle of the 2nd or 3rd Lunar month.

Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lent in the Western tradition, is 46 days before Easter. The last day before the Lent begins (the Shrove Tuesday, celebrated as Mardi Gras - the Fat Tuesday - in Latin Countries) is 47 days before Easter. Assuming 29 to 30 days in a lunar month, Mardi Gras should typically fall on the first Tuesday within the 7-day window that begins either 2-3 days before the Chinese New Year Day (in case of a "late New Year"), or 2-3 days before the end of the first month of the Chinese calendar (i.e. around 农历正月28日 - 农历二月5日) (in case of an "early New Year").

In other words, if the Chinese New Year Day comes during the Lichun term (on or after Feb 4), then the Mardi Gras will most likely fall on the Tuesday before or after the Chinese New Year Day. If the Chinese New Year Day occurs before Lichun (i.e., during the Xiaohan 小寒 term, before Feb 4), then Mardi Gras will be on a Tuesday a month after the Chinese New Year Day. Over a long period, both situations are approximately equally likely (since, by definition, Lichun is right in the middle of the period when the Chinese New Year Day may occur).

The Orthodox version

How will this work for those of the Eastern Orthodox persuasion? Both the Old Style and New Style Orthodox churches agree that Easter ought to be celebrated on the first Sunday on or after the first full moon (the [Orthodox] Paschal Moon) on or after March 22 of the Julian calendar - i.e. April 4 on the Gregorian calendar. Which means that in almost all years the Orthodox Easter (or Pascha - 巴斯克节 - as it is called in most Orthodox communities worldwide) has to occur on Sunday right around (or a few days after) the middle of the 3rd Lunar month (农历三月15日). The Orthodox equivalent of Mardi Gras is the "Butter Week" (Maslenitsa in Russian); this pre-Lent celebration ends on the Sunday 49 days before the Orthodox Easter, i.e. in most years, on the last Sunday of the first Lunar month or the first Sunday of the second Lunar Month.

In other words, the Maslenitsa Sunday and the Clean Monday are typically a month after the Chinese New Year, and 2 weeks after the Lantern Festival (元宵节 Yuan Xiao Jie). On rare occasions, when the Chinese New Year occurs very late (e.g., 2007-02-18, 2015-02-19), the full moon in the middle of the 2nd lunar month is late enough to be the [Orthodox] Paschal Moon; in these years the Butter Week happens right around the Chinese New Year. In the 22nd century the Julian calendar will fall back by one more day, so such situations will be even more rare.

Not enough exorcists

Via LiveJournal: A Russian TV program (and the bishops they have interviewed) complains that the nation's Orthodox Church does not have enough trained exorcists. According to them, we are not doing enough to catch up with the competition: this spiritual "service" is supposedly much more widely available in Catholic countries.

St Melangell, the holy patron of rabbits

It's nice to know that rabbits and hares have a heavenly patron too: Virgin Saint Melangell, Abbess in Wales. As she lived long before the Great Schism, she is venerated not only by Catholics and Anglicans, but also by the Orthodox! Icons of her have been painted as well.

P.S. More details on St Melangell, including a troparion to her, here.

The bells are ringing

Bloomington's All Saints Orthodox Church now has its bells. They are called Cyrus, John, Zenaida, and Philonela. Today the bells have been blessed (with a full ritual, including a good sprinkling with holy water) and "officially" rung the first time, first by the priest himself (Fr. Peter) and other clergy, then by a girl who's been specially trained to do so.

Blessing of the Bells

Although ornately decorated inside, boasting of its own miraculous icon (or icons?), and blessed with a wonderful choir, the Bloomington's All Saints' Orthodox Church presently looks from outside more like a small office building than a traditional Orthodox Christian "Temple of God". In Russian, it can be described it as ni kupolov, ni kolokolov: "No dome, and no bells!".

The congregation's hope is that some day the existing church building (constructed in the early 2000s) will will indeed become its office/classroom space, while the divine worship will move to a beautiful new neo-Byzantine building (yes, complete with a dome!). But that's a long way off.

On the other hand, the church is getting its bells! They have already arrived and are to be mounted on what the church proudly calls its "bell tower" (actually, just a simple wooden stand). They will be officially "blessed" on Sunday, November 14, right after the Divine Liturgy (which starts at 10:00, and typically runs for around 1.5 hours). See allsaintsbloomington.org for the schedule of services.

All Saints' is quite a remarkable church, with its roots more American than "ethnic". Although part of the Patriarchate of Antioch, it owes its existence, it seems, more to the turning of some American Protestants to the Orthodox way of worship rather than to any large-scale migration of Middle Eastern Christians to South Central Indiana.

A self-described "Pan-Orthodox" congregation, All Saints' can be fairly described as a truly "American Orthodox" church:

• the service is all in English (except for a few obligatory Kirie eleison and Gospodi pomilui
• the "New" (Gregorian) Calendar is used, same as what Catholics and most Protestants use these days
• the Royal doors in the center of the iconostasis are, in fact a permanent opening, without actual doors! Which means that you can actually see the priest(s) and deacons(s) throughout the service, and not just hear them. (And to hear them better, there is a PA system as well...)
• quite a few saints featured in their icons have lived in the United States (or what's today the United States), and at least a couple actually were US citizens
• there are seats for everyone in the audience (not that you get to sit much, of course, this being an Orthodox Temple, after all!)
• they have mixed seating (or, well, standing), and the women in the audience are mostly bareheaded

St George: the horse, the dragon, and a teapot-wielding assistant

Who does not know what the traditional iconographic image of St George look like? A horse, a spear, a dragon. And... a small fellow with a teapot (or something like that). At least at this particular painting in Sozopol, Bulgaria - and I think I've seen the teapot guy elsewhere as well. Any ideas? The teapots (or pitchers of similar kind, if you wish) are of some importance in some Islamic cultures: e.g., you can see them outside of many Muslim restaurants in China (for hand-washing), or - in great abundance - in some Chinese mosque's "ablution blocks". But I doubt there is any connection here... Some Russian folk tales, I think, mention the character using some kind of magic water when fighting Zmey Gorynych (a multi-headed dragon of sorts) to prevent the creature from growing new heads to replace the ones he's lost. But I doubt this is relevant here either.

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P.S. Thanks to Wikipedia user Cam, here's an article that devotes several pages to the discussion of exactly this motif: Suzanne Macalister, "From the hero with a thousand names to Perseus, Bellerophon, Demetrius, George -- as Media", published in the ''Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora''. According to her, there is no official explanation (i.e., an inscription on the icons themselves, or a discussion in canonical literature). The most common word-of-mouth explanation is that the boy is a person rescued by the saint from the Turks (or, with an earlier Byzantine reference, from the Bulgarians, with whom the Byzantines often fought). The "teapot" becomes a winecup in one iconographic version, where the boy captured by Turks had been serving a cup of wine to his master at the moment when St George responded to the boy's mother's prayer and miraculously rescued the captive. In another version it is not a boy but a princess, who got a ride with St George to get water from a well that had been invaded by the dragon (whom the saint was to slay). folk legend. Yet another legend, from Crete, says that the small person worked at a coffee shop, where the saint was drinking coffee at the time when the message came that the dragon was located and needs to be slain; ever-helpful, the coffee guy accompanied his customer to the battle, with the coffee pot ready for action. There are other versions as well.