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I’ve name-checked the Mass of the Beardless Man (Spanos) in Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is the dirtiest work of Modern Greek literature? I have been asked to provide a sample, and herewith I oblige.

Spanos was written around 1500, in Northern Greece or Constantinople; I’ve noted the speculation by Tassos Karanastassis, that it was millenarian panic in reaction to the arrival of Sephardic Jews in 1492. Spanos was first published in Venice in 1553, and was a popular publication; it is also attested in two manuscript versions from around the same time, which are if anything even filthier.

The scholarly edition of Spanos is: Spanos, ed. Hans Eideneier, 1977. Berlin: De Gruyter. The popular edition of Spanos is: Σπανός, ed. Hans Eideneier, Athens: Ερμής, in the pocket Νέα Ελληνική Βιβλιοθήκη series. And God bless him, Eideneier has actually used red letters for the headings, capitals, and tunes, just as Greek missals do.

I’m going to post small excerpts of the work here, to give you a flavour of it. If you are likely to take offence at scatological parodies of the Greek Orthodox Mass, and particularly the Epitaphios (liturgical), the Lamentation of Good Friday, you will take offence. Don’t read further.

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Much of Spanos is a word-perfect parody of sections of the Orthodox Mass, and it will make more sense to people familiar with it than those not. Given that most Greeks know the Lamentation of Good Friday, they’re going to recognise a fair bit. Line numbers from the scholarly edition.

Sunday Vespers (lines 9–41)

Στιχηρά. Ἦχος πλάγιος δʹ, πρὸς τὸ Ὢ τοῦ παραδόξου θαύματος.

στίχ. Ἐκ βαθέων ἐκέκραξας τοῦ δοθῆναί σοι γένειον καὶ οὐκ εἰσηκούσθης.

Ὢ τοῦ παραδόξου θαύματος, ἂν ἀπαντήσῃς σπανόν, τὸ μουστάκιν του κλάσε το, ἔκβαλε τὸ γένιν του καὶ κλότσον τὸν εὐεργέτησε τὸν οὔριόν τε καὶ τὸν ἐξούριον. Καὶ ταῦτα λέγε πρὸς τὸν παγκάκιστον· ὦ ξυλογούργουρε καὶ ἀγριομούστακε, κακὲ σπανέ, ἄπιθι, κρημνίσθητι, ζῶον παγκάκιστον.

στίχ. Γενηθήτω τὰ ὦτά σου προσέχοντα εἰς τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ ὑβρίζοντός σε.

Ὢ τοῦ παραδόξου θαύματος, ἂν ἀπαντήσῃς σπανὸν καὶ ἱδρώνῃ τὸ γένιν του, χαῖρε, τράγε, λέγε του, καὶ βοθρακοῦ ἀποσκέλλωμα, γραίας μὲν αἴγας ἀνακακάρωμα. Καὶ κράξας μέγα πρὸς αὐτὸν βόησον· ὦ σπιθαμόστομε καὶ μυρμηγκοσφόνδυλε, κακὲ σπανέ, ἅλας εἰς τὰ μάτια σου, κόπρος στὰ γένια σου.

Sticheron hymns. 4th Plagal Mode, to the tune of “O Strange Marvel”.

Verse: From the depths hast thou cried out, that thou mayst be granted a beard; and thy prayer was granted not.

O strange marvel, if you should meet a beardless man, fart on his moustache, pluck his beard, and favour him with a kick, that sconehead and skinhead. And say thus to him, most evil: O thou wood-throat and savage-moustache, evil beardless man, be gone, be crushed, most evil beast.

Verse: Be thine ears be as one noting the voice of him who insults thee.

O strange marvel, if you should meet a beardless man and his goatee sweats, “Hail, Goat,” say unto him, “and Desiccation Of A Toad, and also Reskulling Of An Old Goat.” And shouting mightily cry unto him: O thou with a cubit-sized mouth and an ant’s spine, evil beardless man, salt unto thine eyes, and dung unto thy goatee.”

…

And then the Readings (94–102)

Προφητείας μυοβατράχου τὸ ἀνάκλασμα.

Τάδε λέγει βάτραχος ταῖς χελώναις, ὅτι ἔρχεται ἄνθρωπος πολλὰ ἐφύβριστος καὶ ἐὰν φανῇ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἠξεύρετε ὅτι ἔναι φάντασμα, διότι δὲν θέλει ἔχει γένια, καὶ ἔναι σημεῖον, ἐπειδὴ οὐδὲ ἄνδρας ἔναι οὐδὲ γυναίκα, καὶ ἔχει διπλῆν τὴν φύσιν ὥσπερ τὰ μουλάρια. Καὶ ἂν πολλάκις καὶ ἐβγάλῃ γένια, εἶναι ὥσπερ τράγου ἐξ ὄρους. Καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς κοίτης αὐτοῦ τὰ ὄρνεα κοιτασθήσονται. Καὶ ἡ κεφαλὴ αὐτοῦ ὁμοία τράγου. Καὶ ὀνειδισθήσεται καὶ γέλιον φανήσεται ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ κόσμῳ.

The reeking of the Prophecy of the Mouse And Frog

Thus saith the frog unto the turtles: that a man cometh who is much to be sworn at, and if he should appear unto people, know that he is a ghost, for he will have no beard, and it is a portent, for he is neither man nor woman, and he has a double nature like mules. And if he manages to have a beard, it is like a goat’s from the mountain. And the vultures shall sleep on his bed. And his head is like unto a goat’s. And he shall be mocked and regarded as a laughing-stock unto the whole world.

Here endeth the reeking.

…

Sunday Matins (211–248)

Μετὰ τὴν αʹ Στιχολογίαν, Κάθισμα καὶ παλούκιν εἰς τὸν κῶλον σου.

Πρὸς Τὴν σοφίαν τοῦ λόγου.

Τὸν σπανὸν τὸν τριγένη, τὸν ταπεινόν, τὸν ἀντζάτον, κωλάτον καὶ μιαρὸν ἐλθόντες ὑβρίσωμεν, τὴν πανάσχημον θέαν του. Καὶ γὰρ ὁμοιάζει τράγου καὶ ὄνου ὁ ἄθλιος. Ἔχει καὶ γνώμην λύκου καὶ δόλον ἀλώπεκος. Ὅθεν διὰ τοῦτο ὀνειδίζουσι πάντες αὐτὸν τὸν τρισάθλιον καὶ βοῶσιν οἱ πάντες αὐτῷ· Φεῦγε, σπανέ, ἀπ’ ἐμπρός μας, πέσε εἰς βάραθρον. Καὶ γὰρ ἔχεις δαιμόνων ἐπίσκεψιν.

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν βʹ Στιχολογίαν, Κάθισμα καὶ ’πιθετὸν εἰς τὸν κῶλον σου.

Πρὸς τὸ Κατεπλάγη.

Κατεπλάγησαν ὁμοῦ ἄνδρες, γυναῖκες καὶ παιδιά, θεωρῶντα τὸν σπανὸν τὸν τραγογένην, τὸν τρελόν, πῶς τρίχας ὅλως οὐκ ἔχει εἰς τὸ πιγούνιν· μόνας δὲ τὰς τρεῖς καὶ αὐτὲς παράσημες. Καὶ τράγον ἂν ἰδῇς ὅπως ὁμοιάζει του. Καὶ γὰρ οἱ πάντες γελοῦσι τον καὶ ὑβρίζουν, ὅσοι ἔχουν γένια, ὡς κλέπτην, ψεύτην καὶ κάκιστον ἄνθρωπον.

After the first sticheron, a Kathisma, and a pole up your arse.

To the tune of “The Wisdom of Thy Word”

The beardless man with three chin hairs, lowly, big-thighed, big-arsed and unclean, come let us swear at his most ugly aspect. For miserable as he is, he looks like unto a goat and a donkey. He hath also the mind of a wolf and the cunning of a fox. Hence let all insult him, thrice miserable, and let all shout unto him: Be gone, beardless man, from before us, fall into a pit. For thou art in the company of demons.

After the second sticheron, a Kathisma, and a compress up your arse.

To the tune of “He Was Astonished”

They were astonished, men, women and children together, seeing the beardless man as one with a goat’s goatee, one who is mad, that his chin has no hairs at all, but three alone, and those malformed. And if you see a goat, you shall see how he resembles him. For all mock him and insult him, who have beards, as a thief, a liar, and a truly evil man.

…

The Canon of the Most Evil Beardless Man (296–315)

Τοὺς Εἱρμοὺς ἀνὰ βʹ καὶ τὰ τροπάρια ἀνὰ βʹ.

Ἦχος δʹ. Ὠιδὴ αʹ. Πρὸς τὸ Ἀνοίξω τὸ στόμα μου.

Ἀνοίξω τὸ στόμα σου καὶ βάλω τρία δαμάσκατα καὶ προῦνον καὶ βάτσινον καὶ ἀγελάδας πορδήν. Καὶ ὀφθήσομαι μαδεῖν τὴν σὴν μουστάκαν, τὴν ἀγριωμένην τε καὶ κοπρομούσουδον.

στίχ. Κύριος συντρίβων τοὺς σπανοὺς καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν δύναμιν αὐτῶν ἔρριψεν εἰς Τάρταρον.

Ἀνοίξῃ ἡ κοιλία σου καὶ τὰ πλευρά σου ῥαΐσουσι καὶ πέσῃ ἡ μύτη σου καὶ τὰ νεφρά σου σαποῦν· καὶ τὰ πόδια σου κομμάτια νὰ γενοῦσι καὶ ξερὰ τὰ χέρια σου, σπανὲ παγκάκιστε.

Each Irmos to be chanted twice, and each Troparion twice.

4th mode. Ode 1. To the tune of “I shall open my mouth”.

I shall open thy mouth and place three plums, a prune, a blackberry, and a cow fart. And I shall see thy moustache plucked, which has grown wild and dung-snouted.

Verse: The Lord has crushed the beardless men and has cast all their might into Hades.

Thy belly shall open up, and thy ribs shall crack, and thy noise shall drop off, and thy kidneys rot; and thy feet shall be crushed to pieces, and thy hands dry up, most evil beardless man.

…

The Life (Synaxarium) of the Unblessed Beardless Man (541–562)

Σπανοῦ γέννησις, καὶ τίς ἂν γένοιτο πρῶτος πρὸς τὴν διήγησιν; Διήγησις δὲ μεγάλων ἔργων καὶ θαυμασίων κακῶν, καὶ πολὺν τὸν γέλωτα τοῖς ἀκροωμένοις ἐμποιεῖν δύναται, οὐ μόνον ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ζώων ἀλόγων, καὶ ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν, καὶ πάντων τῶν κτηνῶν.

Γεννᾶται μὲν οὗτος οὔτε ἐπὶ ἡμέραν οὔτε ἐπὶ νύκτα, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀωρίᾳ. Ἤστραπτε μὲν κατὰ ἀνατολάς, κατὰ δὲ δύσιν ὀγκηθμὸς ἦν οὐκ ὀλίγος. Πᾶσα μὲν ἀνθρώπων φύσις σύντρομος γέγονε, πᾶσα δὲ ζώων καὶ πετεινῶν καὶ κτηνῶν. Καὶ πολλῶν ἡμιθνήτων γεγονότων ἐκ τῆς ταραχῆς καὶ τοῦ φόβου, μία ὄνος ἔγκυος οὖσα ἀπέρριψεν οὐ μετ’ ὀλίγης βίας ἔκπτυστόν τι καὶ πονηρότατον γένος τουτὶ τῶν σπανῶν.

Καὶ γεννηθέντων ἀπέδοτο αὐτοὺς διδασκάλῳ τινὶ τῶν δαιμόνων εἰς αὔξησιν καὶ παίδευσιν. Αὐξηνθέντων δὲ καὶ εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας φθασάντων συνέδριον ἐποίησαν, ἵνα πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἀφίξωνται, ἵνα πρῶτόν τινα ἑαυτῶν ποιήσωσι βασιλέα. Καὶ τοῦτο ποιήσαντες ἐποίησαν βασιλέα παγκάκιστον οὔριόν τινα ἢ μᾶλλον εἰπεῖν ἐξούριον, οὐ μὴν δὲ ἀλλὰ καὶ ξυγγόκωλον καί, συνελόντι φάναι, σκατοπρόσωπον, ἔτι δὲ ἀντζάτον, κωλάτον, βιλλάτον, χεσάτον, φασάτον, ἀναχεσομούσουδον καὶ φασκελάτον. Καὶ ποιήσαντες αὐτὸν βασιλέα ἔθεσαν ἐπάνω σούβλας ὡς ἐπὶ θρόνου ὑψηλοῦ καὶ ἐπηρμένου. Ὁ δὲ ἐλθὼν ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ ἤρξατο λέγειν πρὸς τοὺς ὑπ’ αὐτὸν σπανούς· ἐλθεῖν ὑμᾶς βούλομαι, σπανοί, πρός με τοῦ δοῦναι τέλος βαρὺ τῶν τριῶν ἐτῶν, ὧνπερ ὑπῆρχεν ἔγκυος ἡ ὑμῶν μήτηρ ὄνος, ἡ κοντόκερκος καὶ μονόφθαλμος.

The birth of the beardless man; and who shall be the first to tell its tale? For it is a narration of great works and wondrous evils, and it can cause much laughter to those who hear it, not only people, but unreasoning beasts too, and all animals.

For he was born not during the day nor yet during the night, but in timelessness. There was lightning in the east, and no small famine in the west. And the nature of humanity entire did tremble, and of all animals and birds and living things. And many were half-way dead from fear and tumult, and one pregnant donkey did miscarry, with no small violence, this despicable and most evil race of beardless men.

And when they were born, they were led to a certain teacher from the demons, that they may be reared and educated. And when they grew and came to the fullness of age they made a council, that they should go out to men, so that one of their number should be made their king. And doing so, they made their king a most evil, sconehead or rather skinhead, and also fat-arsed, and in sum, shit-faced, moreover big-thighed, big-arsed, big-dicked, shitty, spitty, cack-re-besnouted and be-mountza’d. And making him their king they seated him on pikes, as if they were a proud and high throne. And when he became king, he started to say to the beardless men in his service: I wish you to come to mine aid, O beardless men, that I may put a heavy end after the three years that your mother the short-tailed and one-eyed donkey carried you in her belly.

…

The Polyeleos [“Much-Merciful”: festive portion of the Matins on feast days] and Lauds (918–925)

Καί, εἰ μὲν βούλει, τὸν μολυνέλεον καὶ βρομιέλεον τοῦ ἀνοσίου σπανοῦ λέγε οὕτως·

Μισεῖτε τὸ ὄνομα τῶν σπανῶν καὶ μισεῖτε αὐτούς, ὅτι καλόν.

Ὅτι τὸν σπανὸν ἐξελέξαντο ἄνθρωποι εἰς ὀνειδισμόν, ὅτι καλόν, εἰς περιουσιασμὸν τοῦ γέλωτος αὐτοῦ, ὅτι καλόν, ὅτι εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.

Ὅτι ἐγὼ ἔγνωκα, ὅτι μέγας πονηρὸς οὗτος παρὰ πάντας τοὺς σπανούς.

Ὅτι πάντες οἱ σπανοὶ γέλως εἰσὶν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὁ δὲ σπανὸς τὸ πονηρὸν ἐποίησεν, ὅτι εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ὁ γέλως αὐτοῦ.

And then, at will, chant the Much-Worse-iful and Much-Curse-iful of the Unblessed beardless man thus:

Hate ye the name of beardless men, and hate them as well; for it is good.

For the beardless man has been chosen by mankind for mockery, for it is good, for common ownership of laughter against him, for it is good, even unto the ages.

For I have known that this man is of great evil exceeding all other beardless men.

For all beardless men are a laughing-stock of humanity, and the beardless man has done evil, for laughter against him shall there be even unto the ages.

…

The Epitaphios Lamentation of the Beadless Man

First Stasis (1049–1076)

Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ψάλλομεν τὸν ἐπιτάφιον τοῦ σπανοῦ· εἰσὶ δὲ μαγαρισνάρια λεγόμενα εἰς τὸν ἐνταφιασμὸν τοῦ κοπρογένη σπανοῦ.

Μετὰ τὴν συνήθη στιχολογία καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, ἀρχόμεθα τοῦ ἀνόμου ψάλλοντες τὰ τροπάρια ἐκ δευτέρου, εἰς Ἦχον πλάγιον αʹ.

<Στάσις πρώτη>

Μαγαρίζομέν σε, κλανογένη σπανέ, καὶ τσιρλοῦμεν τὴν χεσάδα πατσάδα σου ὡς ἀντίτυπον τοῦ κώλου μας μορφήν.

στίχ. Μαγάριοι οἱ ἄνομοι σπανοί, ἐν ὁδῷ οἱ σπανοὶ ἀπολοῦνται, καὶ μακάριοι οἱ ἐξερευνῶντες τὰς πράξεις αὐτῶν, καὶ ἀπέχουσιν ἀπ’ αὐτούς.

Μαγαρίζομέν σε, κακογένη σπανέ, καὶ ὑβρίζομεν τὴν ἄσχημον θέαν σου ὡς ἀντίτυπον τοῦ δαίμονος μορφήν.

στίχ. Καὶ γὰρ οἱ ἐργαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν οὐκ ἔχουν γένια, καὶ ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς τοῦ σπανοῦ ἐπορεύθησαν.

Μαγαρίζομέν σε, τραγογένη σπανέ, καὶ γελοῦμεν τὴν πομπὴν τῶν γενείων σου ὡς ἀντίτυπον γαϊδάρου τὴν οὐράν.

στίχ. Τότε οὐ μὴ αἰσχυνθῶ ἐν τῷ βλέπειν τοὺς σπανοὺς εἰς τὸ σκότος τὸ ἐξώτερον.

Μαγαρίζομέν σε, ἀρτζιβούρτση σπανέ, καὶ κοπρίζομεν τὴν ἄτσαλον θέαν σου ὡς ἀντίτυπον τοῦ χοίρου μας μορφήν.

After this we chant the epitaphios of the beardless man; these are the befoulitions chanted over the burial of the dungbearded beardless man.

After the usual sticherons and so forth, we being chanting the troparia twice, in the 1st plagal mode.

We befoul thee, fart-bearded beardless man, and we get the squirts all over thy shitsome beard, as a true copy of the shape of our rear end.

Verse: Bursted be the lawless beardless men, the beardless men perish in the road, and blessed are those who discover their actions, and keep their distance from them.

We befoul thee, ill-bearded beardless man, and we insult thine ugly visage, as a true copy of the shape of a demon.

Verse: For those who work for lawlessness have no beard, and they have walked the path of the beardless man.

We befoul thee, goat-bearded beardless man, and we laugh at the ridicule of thy beard, as a true copy of a donkey’s tail.

Verse: Then I shall not be ashamed to see the beardless men cast out to the furthermost darkness.

We befoul thee, thou Armenian holiday of a beardless man, and we defecate upon thy topsy-turvy visage, as a true copy of our pig’s form.

…

Second Stasis (1221–1238)

Ἄξιόν ἐστιν. Δίς.

Ἄξιόν ἐστι τοῦ ὑβρίζειν σε τὸν τραγογένη, τὸν ἐν τοῖς γαϊδάροις πρωτεύοντα, καὶ τὸν ἐν τοῖς τράγοις τερατουργόν.

στίχ. Αἱ χεῖρες σου ἐποίησαν πονηρὰ καὶ ἔπραξαν κακά, ἐγὼ δὲ μαθήσομαι τὰς πονηρίας σου.

Ἄξιόν ἐστι τοῦ κλοτσίζειν σε ὀμπρὸς κι ὀπίσω καὶ ξυλίζειν πάντα τὴν ῥάχιν σου μετὰ ῥάβδων καὶ ματσούκων, μιαρέ.

στίχ. Οἱ φοβούμενοί σε ὄψονταί σε καὶ καταγελάσουσιν, ὅτι ἐπὶ ταῖς κακίαις σου ἤλπισας.

Ἄξιόν ἐστι μαγαρίζειν ἐν τῷ σῷ γενείῳ καὶ τὰ ζαρωμένα τὰ μάγουλα, ὦ παγκάκιστε, τριγένη, ταπεινέ.

“It is meet”. Twice.

It is meet to insult thee, goat-bearded, who hast primacy among the donkeys, and who workest monstrosities among goats.

Verse: Thy hands have done cunning and have worked evil, but I shall learn thy wrongdoings.

It is meet to kick thee front-side and back-side, and to keep beating thy back with rods and canes, O unclean.

Verse: Those who fear thee shall see thee and laugh in mockery, for thou hast hoped in thine evil.

It is meet to befoul thee in they beard, and in thy wrinkled cheeks, O most evil, three-hair–chinned beardless man.

…

Third Stasis (1389–1399)

Αἱ γενεαὶ πᾶσαι.

Αἱ γενεαὶ πᾶσαι μαγαρίζομέν σε, κακὲ σπανέ, τριγένη.

στίχ. Ἐπίβλεψον ἐπ’ ἐμὲ τὸν ὑβρίζοντά σε κατὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἀδικιῶν σου.

Αἱ γενεαὶ πᾶσαι ἀφορίζομέν σε, σπανὲ κατηραμένε.

στίχ. Λύτρωσαί με, κύριε, ἐκ τῆς πονηρίας τῶν κακίστων σπανῶν.

Αἱ γενεαὶ πᾶσαι φεύγουν ἀπὸ σένα, τρισάθλιε σπανέα.

To the tune “All generations”

All generations befoul thee, evil beardless man with three hairs.

Verse: Look thou upon me, who insults thee according to the multitude of thine unjust deeds.

All generations excommunicate thee, accursed beardless man.

Verse: Save me, Lord, from the cunning of the most evil beardless men.

All generations flee thee, thrice miserable beardless man.

[Greeks at this point will be disappointed: no direct parody of Ὦ γλυκύ μου ἔαρ “O my sweet springtime”]

…

The Beat-him-tudes of the Beardless Man (1595–1609)

Εἰς δὲ τὴν Λιμουργίαν οἱ Μαγαρισμοί.

Ἱστῶμεν στίχους ηʹ. Ἦχος αʹ. Πρὸς τὸ Διὰ βρώσεως.

Ἐν τῇ ἀτυχίᾳ σου μνήσθητι ἡμῶν, σπανέ.

στίχ. Μαγάριοι οἱ σπανοί, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν γερανῶν.

στίχ. Μαγάριοι οἱ σπανοί, ὅτι πενθοῦντες οὐ παρακληθήσονται.

στίχ. Μαγάριοι οἱ σπανοί, ὅτι πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες οὐ χορτασθήσονται.

στίχ. Μαγάριοι οἱ σπανοὶ οἱ ἀνελεήμονες, ὅτι οὐκ ἐλεηθήσονται.

Ἐνεκρώθης, πονηρότατε, καὶ ἐν μνημείῳ κατεχώθης, σπανέ, ἀλλὰ σ’ ἐδέχθηκεν κακῶς, φεῦ, ὁ Χάρος μὲ τὸ δρέπανον κ’ εἰς τὸν Ἅιδην σ’ ἔρριψεν, κ’ ἐκρημνίσθης ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ του.

After the Leak-turd-gy, the Beat-him-tudes.

We stand upright for 8 verses. 1st mode. To the tune of “For food”.

In thy misfortune, remember us, O beardless man.

Verse: Blistered be the beardless men, for theirs is the kingdom of the cranes.

Verse: Blistered be the beardless men, for they shall not be consoled in mourning.

Verse: Blistered be the beardless men, for their hunger and thirst shall not be sated.

Verse: Blistered be the unmerciful beardless men, for they shall find no mercy.

Thou art dead, most evil, and art concealed in a tomb, O beardless man, but alas, Death hath given thee a poor reception with his scythe, and has cast thee into Hades, and thou hast tumbled in his kingdom.

…

Refectory Chant (1663–1674)

Εἰς δὲ τὴν τράπεζαν ἐσθίετε ἀντίδια χεσμένα καὶ σκαταφάτα διάφορα καὶ ἀνήθιν, κλανήθιν κακολογοῦντες τὸν σπανόν.

Ἐν δὲ τῇ τραπέζῃ ψάλλει ὁ πρωτοψάλτης τὸ παρὸν κακοφωνικὸν τοῦ σπανοῦ, ποίημα κυροῦ Μαγκλαβᾶ τοῦ Μπορδηλέτου εἰς ἦχον πλαΐου βαρύ, μετὰ μέλους εὐφώνως.

Α ν ανε τρα γε αν ανε τρ α γε αν α νε τρ α γε ρ ου τε
 ρου τε ρου τε ρε ρε ρε ρε ρε ψεις ψεις ρι ρι ρουτε ρι
 ρι ρου τε α γρε α γρε αγρε κα κα κο κο τρα γε και
 α γριο τρ α γε ο θε ε ε ος μου μου πα πα πα τα
 ξη ξη ξη σε τε τε τε τε τε το το το το το τι
 τι τι τι ξης αμην η η ν αμην αμην

At the table, eat ye endives shat upon, and sundry shitteries, and dill and farting-ill, cursing the beardless man.

At the table, the first cantor chants the following cacophony on the beardless man, a poem of Master Bastinado Fartiletto, in the Plagal Heavy mode [which does not exist], with a melody and in loud voice.

Ananes [intonation tone: cf. Reciting tone] Thou go-o-at a-na-nes thou go-o-at durr goat durr goat durr goat-durrrd dee-duuurd go-o-duurd e-e-e-vile vi-i-le goat and wi-i-ld goat may my my my Go-o-o-o-o-od stri- stri- stri-ke thee-e-e-e-e-e-e thy-y-y-y-y-y tho-o-ough thumb thumb thumb A-a-a-a-a-a-me-e-e-n Amen Amen

The Dowry Contract of the Beardless Man (1675–1689)

Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα λέγομεν τὴν προικοδοσίαν τοῦ κακοῦ σπανοῦ, ἥτις λέγεται ὑπὸ ἰδιώτου, ἡμῶν δὲ πάντων ἀκροωμένων μετὰ σιγῆς καὶ εὐλαβείας πολλῆς.

Ἡμεῖς, ὅ τε παπὰ–Φιλίσκος ἀπὸ τοὺς Φιλίππους ἔτι δὲ καὶ <ἡ> κυρὰ Κουμμερτικίνα ἡ Κατσικοπορδοὺ ἀπὸ τὴν Ἀσφάμιαν, παπαδία του, παραδίδομεν εἰς τὸν γαμβρὸν ἡμῶν κὺρ Λέοντα τὸν Κατσαρέλην ἀπὸ τὴν Πέργαμον τὴν γνήσιαν ἡμῶν καὶ φιλτάτην θυγατέρα ὀνόματι Φακλάνα. Ἐν πρώτοις δίδομεν τὴν εὐχὴν τοῦ γαϊδάρου μας, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τὰ κάτωθεν γεγραμμένα, ἤγουν κουκουμάριν ψύλλων ἕν, ματσούκες ἀγνὲς κηντηνάρια βʹ, ὑποκάμισον τούρτουρον αʹ καὶ ἕτερα ὑποκάμισα ἐξηστρεπτὰ βʹ, βρακίον μὲ δεμάτιον κόνιδας αʹ, σκούφιαν μὲ δεμάτιον ψεῖρες αʹ, ὑποδήματα ψεύτικα ζευγάρια βʹ καὶ ἕτερα ξυλοποδήματα ζευγάρια τρία, διὰ νὰ χέζεται στεκόμενος ὥσπερ λέφας καὶ νὰ τσιρλᾷ τὲς ἀρίδες του· τσάγγρας μὲν ρʹ φουλαδίτικας, βερτούνια λουκανίτικα ὀκτὼ καὶ μίαν βουβάλαν μὲ τὰ ποδόλουρα.

After that we recite the dowry contract of the evil beardless man, which is read by a layman, with all of us listening in silence and great devotion.

We, Father Filisco of Philippi, and Lady Commerticina Goatfart from Asphamia, his wife, give over to our son-in-law Master Leo Cazzareli from Pergamum our genuine and most beloved daughter Eatshittia. First of all, we give them the blessing of our donkey, and then the following items as written down: to wit, i pot of fleas, ii hundredweights of pure two-by-fours, i shirt for shivering and ii other shirts turned inside-out, i cap with a package of lice, ii pairs of fake shoes, and iii other pairs of clogs, for him to shit standing up like an elephant and soil his legs; and c boots made of foullest Venetian wind, viii arrows from Lucania, and i female buffalo with its shoelaces.

…

Medical Remedy (1726–1739)

Ποιήσαντες τοὺς γάμους καὶ φαγόντων πάντων καὶ εὐφρανθέντων, ἐκοίμισαν τὸν γαμπρὸν μετὰ τῆς νύφης. Περὶ δὲ τὸ μεσονύκτιον ἠρώτησεν ὁ γαμπρὸς τὴν νύφην· ὧ παμφιλτάτη γυνή, πῶς λέγουν τὸ ὄνομά σου; Ἡ δὲ εἶπεν· ἐγὼ μὲν ὄνομα ἓν οὐκ ἔχω, εἰ μὴ δώδεκα ἥμισυ· τὸ δὲ ἥμισύ ἐστι Πανταπού. Φοβηθεὶς οὖν ὁ γαμπρὸς μήπως πνίξῃ αὐτόν, ἔπεσεν ἐν δεινῇ ἀσθενείᾳ καὶ μεγίστῃ.

Τὸ δὲ πρωὶ ἤφεραν ἰατρόν τινα μουσουλμάνον καὶ τὸν γέροντα τὸν λεγόμενον Μητισοράμας καὶ ἐπίασαν τὸν σφυγμόν του ἀπὸ τὴν ἄντζαν καὶ ἔκριναν ὅτι χορδιτικὴν φλεβοτομίαν θέλει μὲ λεπτότατον ξιφάριν ἐκ τοῦ ἀφεδρῶνος· καὶ νὰ θέσουν ἐπάνωθεν κοιλίαν λεγομένην σύσκατην ὡς ἔμπλαστρον· ἔπειτα λάβωσιν ἀνήθιν, κλανήθιν καὶ πορδὴν λεγομένην ῥούφα την, εὐνούχου ὀρχίδια διὰ πύρας, γραίας βιλλήθρα διὰ ’πιθετὰ καὶ ὁμοῦ πάντα ἑνώσωσι καὶ θέσωσιν ἐπάνω ἐν τῷ ἀφεδρῶνι ὡς ἔμπλαστρον.

When they celebrated the wedding, and all ate and were merry, they sent the groom to sleep with his bride. Around midnight, the groom asked his bride: O dearest woman, what is your name, anyway? And she said: I don’t have one name, but I do have twelve and a half; and the half name is Everywho. So the groom grew afraid that she might strangle him, and he fell into a fearsome, great illness.

In the morning they brought to him a certain Muslim doctor and the old man known as Haveyouseenme, and they read his pulse from the thigh, and they determined that he required a intestinal phlebotomy with an extremely thin sword from the anal passage; and they should place on it a belly with all the shit in it, so to speak, as a bandage; then they should take dill, farting-ill, and a fart of the kind known as “smell this”, a eunuch’s testicles heated up, an old woman’s cock-socket as a compress, and all these should be brought together and placed upon his anal passage as a bandage.

….

Iambic and Political Verses on the Tomb of the Beardless Man (1796–1801, 1820)

Ἐνθάδε κεῖται ὁ σπανὸς ὁ τριγένης,
Ὁ παράσημος καὶ μέγας τραγογένης,
 Ὃς οὐδέποτε ἐκλείπει τοῦ συρράπτειν
 Δόλους, μηχανὰς εἰς ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους.
 Καὶ γὰρ οἱ γινώσκοντες αὐτοῦ τὰς πράξεις
 Ἀναθέματι καταβάλετε τοῦτον.

…

Ἐτελειώθη ὁ μιαρὸς σπανὸς ἔτει ͵αψρθʹ μηνὶ Μπαμπούλα λεʹ.

Here lies the three-haired beardless man,
misshapen and great goat-bearded man,
who never omitted to connive
designs and plots against all people.
And those who know of his deeds
send upon him anathema.

…

The filthy beardless man passed in the year of our Lord MDCCLXXXXXIX, on the thirty-fifth day of the month Bogeyman.

I have created yet another blog, for my posts about various aspects of Modern Greek culture. I have forwarded relevant posts from this blog there.

Hellenica

Well have both Yiannis Papadopoulos’ answer and Konstantinos Konstantinides’ answer put it. Upvote them.

Some further supplemental detail, expressed linguisticiously:

Salonica Standard Greek is pretty much Athens Standard Greek with a few shibboleths; it’s a situation comparable to Scottish Standard English (such as you’ll hear in Edinburgh)—you’ll hear wee a lot more, and you’ll hear construction like I’ve not seen it, but it is not really Scots.

Here’s a map of key isoglosses of Greek ca. 1900, from Wikipedia:

Salonica is in the purple zone, which means it is meant to drop all its unstressed /i, u/ and raise its unstressed /e, o/ to /i, u/: /skiˈli/ is meant to be pronounced [scʎi]. But it’s a northern version of Standard Greek, so it doesn’t.

The velar /l/ of Salonica is the main phonetic shibboleth, as Yannis pointed out.

Thessaloniki: The only city in the world that is spelled with two ‘s’ and pronounced with two ‘l’

• Standard Greek: θesaloˈnici
• Salonica Greek: θesaɫoˈnici
• Macedonian Greek: θisaɫuˈnic

The main grammatical shibboleth, which Kostas points out, is that indirect objects for pronouns (and nouns more rarely) are in the accusative in the north, and in the genitive in the south, because Greek doesn’t have a dative any more. The isogloss for that takes in Thessaly and Macedonia. (It also includes the Greek of Istanbul.)

The accusative is of course ambiguous between direct and indirect object; hence,

Mom, are you going to make me into meatballs today

Kostas has gone into some of the lexical peculiarities of Salonica. One further peculiarity is that Athens Standard Greek differentiates kato ‘down’ from xamo ~ xamu ‘on the ground’; Salonica refers to both as kato. As a result, Salonicans refer to Athenians (and Southerners in general) as xamudziðes, xamo-guys. They may actually thing they’re saying ‘Down [South] guys’. They would be wrong, because they can’t tell the difference between xamo and kato: they’re actually calling Athenians ‘crawling on the ground guys’.

On second thought, maybe they know exactly what they’re doing.

One of the denizens of SLANG.gr has just published a book of lexical differences between the two, Μπαγιάτηδες και χαμουτζήδες, ‘The mouldy [nickname for old Thessalonians] and the xamo-guys’: Μπαγιάτηδες και χαμουτζήδες. And the fact that SLANG.gr can produce something like this, and its English counterpart is… Urban Dictionary, tells you all you need to know about why the Greeks are a Great People.

Oh I mentioned Slang.gr. Contractual obligation: Hi Melinda! 🙂

Changes to further emphasize canonical questions by Sumi Kim on Quora Product Updates

We do want to preserve one aspect of question details that we believe offers critical context for the question: the ability to include a link. With this change, we are introducing question sources, which makes it easy to attach a link to a question:

https://insurgency.quora.com/Wha…

Ryan Q.Y. See: and, ironically, apparently linking that answer (the Mills Baker one: Mills Baker’s answer to Why should designers work at Quora?) shows up as an “invalid link” when putting it as a source as a question.

https://productupdates.quora.com…

Achilleas Vortselas: Hahahah, oh the irony, I am trying to link this post into a new question and it says that it isn’t a valid link.

So you can’t put details on questions any more, but you can put a link—as long as that link is not on Quora itself.

https://productupdates.quora.com…

Konstantinos Konstantinides [in response to Achilleas Vortselas]: It seems the the Quora Question bot tries to add links to questions it edited and those links are wrong (loop back to the same question)

I know of three contenders; and having rebrowsed through one, I’m eliminating it from contention. I am, by the way, extending the definition back to 1000 AD.

The contender I have not read (yet) is the only contender from the past century: The Great Eastern, by Greek surrealist Andreas Embirikos. It’s an encyclopaedia of all kinds known of sexual activity, ranging from wet dreams to coprophagia, and from missionary to incest. It’s pretty much 120 Days of Sodom on a boat, except it’s supposed to be liberating and utopian instead of nasty and dystopian. And eccentrically for 20th century literature, it is in Puristic Greek, which is meant to give it a Cavafy-esque detachment. (The two tiny excerpts on Wikipedia, which are clean, make it sound more like a 19th century romance novel, but that’s not what I should be judging it from.)

The contender I’ve just re-read is the poetry of Stephanos Sachlikis, written ca 1370 in Crete. I’ve written a little on him already at Ooh! He Said ‘Fuck’! He must be a revolutionary! by Nick Nicholas on Opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr In Exile. This question was inspired by the late editor Nikos Panagiotakis’ prefatory comment, that his poetry is the dirtiest work of Greek literature up until The Great Eastern.

… I don’t think Panagiotakis, God rest him, got out much. No. It isn’t. Sure, Sachlikis says “fuck” a lot, when talking about the prostitutes of Candia. That’s the extent of it. It’s not like he enumerates positions or perversions; “friar-fucked” (φραρογαμημένη) is as colourful as he gets.

Being misogynistic about prostitutes (but then again, Sachlikis hates everybody, including himself), blaming the widow Koutayotaina for his downfall, and conjuring up a fanciful jousting match between prostitutes competing for working space in Candia—these may count as historically and psychologically informative material, and it may be a rollicking good read. (Greeks are constantly astonished at how easily they understand Sachlikis, even if there are archaic and dialectal bits there.) But dirty? Maybe in Panagiotakis’ generation; not in mine.

The prize, as far as I’m concerned, still goes to the work that Panagiotakis knew full well about, and it was special pleading for him to pretend he didn’t when he lectured on Sachlikis. It’s Spanos, the Mass of the Beardless Man.

There’s a dearth of information online about Spanos, which is a shame. Spanos is a parody of the Greek Orthodox Mass, targeting a hapless, unnamed victim who is himself spanos. Spanos means “beardless”. The late lexicographer Tassos Karanastassis argued in his PhD that Spanos is a piece of millenarian panic, written about the arrival of the Jews from Spain (Hi-spanos) in 1492 (the year 7000 by Byzantine reckoning); I didn’t find his arguments overwhelmingly convincing, but he did tap into an underexplored current of folk culture when researching it.

Spanos is relentless. Spanos is filthy. Spanos heaps obscenity upon obscenity upon its victim, whatever his origin and provenance; beatings, excrement, impalement, nothing is too brutal for him. And it does it all with note-perfect parodies of the Orthodox liturgy—including several highlights of the Good Friday Mass. As its editor Hans Eideneier notes, the spontaneous reaction of Greek cantors confronted with it is (after recovering from the shock) to start chanting along. (Karanastassis unearthed evidence that bits of Spanos were still being chanted by cantors as entertainment centuries later, in the writings of Alexandros Papadiamantis.) In fact, Spanos is so relentless, it overflows the liturgical genre, and throws in Saint’s Lives, dowry contracts and medical remedies for good measure. Kind of like a scatological Ulysses (although Ulysses is already scatological).

And it includes the very first instance of Byzantine musical notation in print.

Greece’s poet laureate Giorgos Seferis was a pretty astute critic, and he said something very perceptive about Spanos once. He liked it, because it was one of the very few instances Greek has to show of nonsense poetry. Spanos is closer in spirit to the usual exemplar of the limerick than to Edward Lear’s gentle variants of the form. But it’s just as silly, for all its viciousness, and Greek literature doesn’t really do silly all that often.

The Mass of the Beardless Man by Nick Nicholas on Hellenica

There has been an unusually high amount of push back for the rollout of removing question details, even by Quora standards. The discussion about what has been going on has been wide-ranging, and it has crystallized something for me.

I have been frequently repeating a comment I made a few days ago:

We obviously aren’t going to convert Quora to our mindset. All we can do is use Quora for our own ends; we ignore Quora’s ends where they diverge from ours, and we resist, as much as we can, Quora getting in the way of our ends.

What is clear is that Quora is getting in the way of many of us meeting our ends. Deliberately. And this makes the experience of Quora quite atypical for online fora. Time and again, in aspect after aspect, Quora the company obtrudes into the user’s experience of Quora the forum. Time and again, it gets in the way. Time and again, Quora the company is in conflict with its users.

Hanlon’s Razor dictates that this is likely not out of any malice, but rather mere neglect. The company just doesn’t care about its users, as they are product and not customers. And I’m not saying this as a protest any more; it’s merely an observation. In comparison with its peers, Quora is a presence obtruding over all components of our experience here.

Quora obtrudes in its Design. Its navigation is chronically counter-intuitive. It changes core functionality with startling rapidity, and with little explanation. This site is deluged with questions about how to use the site itself. Bug? or Feature? is not just a joke on this site: users are genuinely confused as to whether new functionality is intentional or not, and become paranoid about how to interpret it. Inasmuch as there is a discernible trend to the changes, it is to force the users to do what the company wants, rather than what the users prefer to do.

Quora obtrudes in its Engineering. Uses perpetually have to deal with refresh timeouts, perpetual scrolling, lost drafts, frequent downtime, and poor search. The gears and cranks are far more noticeable on this site than on its peers in recent memory: what other sites do you know of nowadays, that force you to do three refreshes a minute to get anything done?

Quora obtrudes in its Moderation. The policing of moderation is heavy handed, by common internet norms, and selective. The rules are vague and under-documented. Because of the studious lack of onboarding, users are always surprised on their first encounter with moderation, and they are almost always left at guessing as to what the nature of their infraction was. As a result, users are paranoid that they will be the next to be randomly picked out for sanction.

Quora obtrudes in its Incentivisation. The Top Writer program set up an arbitrary division between haves and have-nots, with no clarity about what it takes to move across. Many Top Writers perpetuate the notion that only they as a group are worth reading. (Two instances that I found particularily offensive occurred in comments to the details removal announcement.) Quora outreach, limited as it is, is restricted to Top Writers. Far from acting as an incentive, the Quill has been a source of resentment, and there are now a non-negligible number of users who have indicated they have no interest in pursuing it. (See responses to What do very popular non-Top Writers think they’d need to change in order to become Top Writers? I am far from the only one.)

Quora obtrudes in its Mission. Quora’s mission, it now seems, is to get clickbait answers to canonical questions. Its users’ sundry missions are to help querents, to share knowledge, and to form communities. Quora doesn’t tolerate this as an outgrowth of its mission; it actively hammers the UX to bring users back into line. And with its opaqueness and reluctance to communicate, Quora does little to encourage writers to buy in to its mission. (Short of the early adopters, I guess.)

The retort whenever anyone complains about Quora is, it’s a private company. Of course it is. No one put a gun to my head, to make me contribute my content, to the greater profit of Quora’s eventual shareholders. If I don’t like it, I can leave.

And eventually, I surmise, I will. I definitely will, if comments or blogs are taken away. And I’ll be taking my content with me: if I decide I can’t stay, I don’t see why my content should continue enriching Quora’s eventual shareholders. Mercifully, the Python Downloader more or less works still, nothwithstanding the constant tweaks in Quora HTML that frustrate it.

In the meanwhile, I seek to be aware of what’s happening, and to help others be aware. Not particularly to protest it, certainly not to change it, but because awareness is always a good thing. It’s why this blog exists, after all.

I have a question incidentally, which I would pose on the site, but the removal of Question Details has made me reluctant to. Are there other comparable sites, where the vision of the owners obtrudes as consistently on the user’s experience, as it does here?

Feature Releases by Rob Lion was about the silent release of the Ask Followup feature.

Quora as Eternal Recurrence: The history of the first iteration of Follow-Up Questions by Nick Nicholas was about how bizarre it was that a feature abandoned in 2010 was revived; there was a jest about how it was like a recently thawed mammoth.

I thank Dot McHale for joining the dots in https://bugorfeature.quora.com/B…

By removing details, and forcing us to ask only “canonical” questions, Quora is making it harder for querents to get questions that actually help them.

By enabling follow ups, I guess, Quora is trying to make it easier for those querents to refine the question first asked, so that they can get the information they want.

I don’t think for a second that’s actually going to work out, but it does make sense. And if that wasn’t what was going on in their heads, well, Quora UX does encourage a fair amount of paranoia…

Viktor T. Toth is a well-regarded contributor to Quora, who happens to have disabled comments.

Which is his right, and let’s not reprosecute that debate.

Viktor is one of the myriads to have commented negatively on Changes to further emphasize canonical questions by Sumi Kim on Quora Product Updates.

And I noticed something surprising:

https://productupdates.quora.com…

(I’m just surprised I can comment on you in a blog, but not in an answer. Don’t know if that’s a bug or a feature…)

… I can comment in a blog, on a user who blocks comments.

It’s not hard to work out why that’s happened; but still…

Now, the notion that karpouzi ‘watermelon’ would derive from karpos ‘fruit’ is so preposterous, the only mentions of it you’ll see online are in a comment on a Greek blog article on karpouzi ( Το ελληνικό πεπόνι με τα πολλά ονόματα : “Is it out of the question that karpouzi should be a Rückwanderer? Just putting it out there”), and in a mock etymology over at Καινούργιες λέξεις ΙΙΙ . Karpouzi is so obviously Turkish in origin, it hurts.

In fact, I embarked on this question-and-answer, because I pointed out in a comment:

https://www.quora.com/What-kind-…

Sometimes linguists get their predictions wrong.

Νικόλαος Κονεμένος was one of the many scholars who weighed in on the Greek Language Question. (At least, I hope it was him that said this, and not Ελισαίος Γιαννίδης.) He confidently predicted that, in line with the mass extirpation of Turkish words from Greek that was underway, karpouzi would be replaced by the Corfiot word χειμωνικό, ‘winter plant’.

… That has not happened to my knowledge.

To which Ali Berat replied:

Karpuz itself isn’t Greek? I checked the etymological dictionary and

karpóō καρπόω. “To fruit, to crop” in old Greek.

… And that sent me on some searches, including

• karpuz (Nişanyan Etymological Dictionary of Turkish),
• karpuz – Wiktionary ,
• Paul Horn: Grundriss der Neupersischen Etymologie
• خربزه – Wiktionary ,
• Watermelon (from the Polyglot Vegetarian—a blog I commend to you all)

It was a fun voyage, and now you get to go along with me.

First of all, what’s a Rückwanderer? A Rückwanderer is a term in historical linguistics, for a word that gets borrowed from language A to language B, evolves, and then gets borrowed back from B to A. Like much in Historical Linguistics, it’s a German word. Wikipedia in English lists it under the more boring heading Reborrowing.

There aren’t that many instances of Rückwanderers back into English; anime < Japanese anime < animation is probably the best known one, and Japanese is going to be the source for most of them. But Rückwanderers are of immense interest to Greeks, and Greek has its own, rather elegant name for them: αντιδάνειο, “counter-loan”. Greeks like Rückwanderers, because they show that some of those horrid foreign words that Greek has been deluged with are originally Greek after all.

So as you’d expect, Greek linguists have invested a lot of effort in identifying Rückwanderers in Greek. But I hadn’t noticed karpouzi as one of them. Nor do Greek etymological dictionaries bother going any further back than “Turkish karpuz”.

So what’s going on?

The etymological dictionary Ali consulted, I’m assuming, is the Nişanyan: karpuz, which gives Persian xarbūz ~ Greek karpos. The dictionary online is abridged, but you can see what looks to be its echo in karpuz – Wiktionary, the Turkish etymology there:

From Ottoman Turkish قارپوز‏ (karpuz, “melon”), from Persian خربز‏ (xarboz, “melon”) and likely influenced by Greek καρπός (karpós, “fruit, grain”), both from Ancient Greek καρπός (karpós, “fruit, grain, produce”), from Proto-Indo-European *kerp– (“pluck, harvest”), from *(s)ker– (“to cut”). Cognate with English harvest.

If you’re wondering, btw, karpos has also ended up in English, as carpal, the adjective for wrists (e.g. carpal tunnel syndrome). The wrist in Greek is called the “fruit” of the hand.

The etymology seems to be saying that xarboz is from Greek karpos, that xarboz was borrowed into Turkish as karpuz, and that the initial k is because it was re-influenced by Greek karpos.

Well, that’s one theory. It pays to click the links in Wiktionary: the Persian entry for xarboz says something quite different.

خربزه – Wiktionary

The Persian word may refer to ‘melon’ now rather than ‘watermelon’; watermelon in Persian is hindewāne “Indian fruit”, from Pashto, or battīx indi “Indian melon”. (And inevitably, there’s a petition online to replace the word hindwana in Pashto with islamnama: islamise the language of pushto and replace the word “hindwana” by “islamnama” ).

But the word xarboz has spread very far indeed from Persia: as Wiktionary lists, it is used in East Slavic, Georgian, Middle Armenian, Turkic, and all languages of the Balkans, all meaning ‘watermelon’ (except in Ukrainian, where it means ‘pumpkin’). It has also spread to Arabic, Sanskrit, and Marathi, where it means ‘melon’. So the word shows up from Latvian to Marathi, and from Greek to Kazakh.

Now, where does xarboz come from?

I’m not sure, but like I said, I assume Sevan Nişanyan thinks it comes from Greek. (This is unrelated to astonishing news I’ve just found out from Wikipedia, that Nişanyan has just escaped prison and is seeking asylum in Athens: Detained author in Turkey escapes from prison and tweets: ‘The.)

Nişanyan rejects the account that Persianists have given: Paul Horn’s Etymological Dictionary of Modern Persian https://archive.org/stream/grund… . Horn derives it from the Persian for “donkey-cucumber”, meaning “ginormous cucumber”. Horn gives xarbōǰīnā, which is the missing link, as a Pahlavi form: the Pahlavi-Pazand Glossary he cites has melon as khar-buzak, but cucumber as bōǰīnā.

Nişanyan rejects this account as a folk etymology: that would mean that Persians heard a foreign term, like, oh, Greek karpos, tried to make sense of it, and came up with “donkey-cucumber”.

And of course, anything is possible. But for that to happen, Persians would have had to find out about melons from Greeks. Hold that thought.

The third account is neither of the above: Paul Pelliot, Wiktionary goes on to say, claimed that the form is to be explained as Sanskrit trapusa, “the fruit of the colocynth” (Citrullus colocynthis), again with the form mangled into “donkey-cucumber” by popular etymology. And as it turns out, tarboze does mean “watermelon” in some Persian dialects; and the Marathi form given as derived from Sanskrit खर्बूज (kharbūja) is in fact टरबूज (ṭarbūj). In Pashto, tarbuja means watermelon, while xarbuja means musk-melon.

So. Three theories. Persian (Horn). Greek, with Persian folk etymology (Nişanyan). Sanskrit, with Persian folk etymology (Pelliot).

How can you tell which one’s right?

You tell which one’s right by tracing the history of the watermelon, and the melon.

The watermelon is native to southern Africa, and was known in Ancient Egypt from the 2nd millennium BC. Numbers 11:5 names them, אֲבַטִּיחִ ’ăḇaṭṭiḥ, as one of the fruit of Egypt that the Israelites miss in the desert. Citrullus colocynthis, the colocynth is a sister plant to the watermelon; the two diverged from a common ancestor.

(Remember Pashto battīx indi “Indian melon”? بطيخ baṭṭīḵ is Arabic for melon and watermelon, and related to Hebrew ăḇaṭṭiḥ. It’s also where the Cypriot Greek word for watermelon comes from: patixa.)

The colocynth is native to the Mediterranean and Asia, and it is the plant Pelliot appealed to in his etymology: it’s trapusa in Sanskrit.

Watermelons, as the English term shows, are regarded by people as a kind of melon. The Romans, for that matter, regarded melons and all cucurbitaceae as a kind of cucumber (cucumis); the Polyglot Vegetarian cites Pliny.

Watermelons are called Indian in Persia, which tells you that they came from the east to Persia. Watermelons were cultivated in India in the 7th century, and India was clearly one place that watermelons were disseminated from; Spanish and Galician sandía come from Arabic سِنْدِية sindiyyah, “from the Sindh”, and watermelons were cultivated in Cordoba in 961. But if Persia was the place that watermelons were disseminated from, and Persians used to also call them melons, then the Persian word for melon would have accompanied the watermelon in its travels from Persia to Russia and Turkey and Georgia.

Berthold Laufer, in https://archive.org/details/sino… p. 443ff, gives an account of the dissemination of the watermelon. “Indian Melon” tells him the watermelon is not indigenous to Persia; and he too suspects donkey-cucumber is a folk etymology. But he’s prepared to accept a migration of the fruit from Persia to Turkic to China. He thinks the t of tarbuz, which is present in Mongol and “Turki” (Turkmen?), seems to him to be a Turkic-specific dissimilation. (He presumably wrote this before Pelliot’s proposal.) From what he can tell, the words for watermelon in Sanskrit are all recent coinages.

The Chinese term 西瓜 xíguá for watermelon means “western melon”, and specifically, from Turkestan, as its mention in the New History of the Five Dynasties states. It had reached China by the 10th century.

One scholar has proposed that the Chinese word reflects Ancient Greek sikya “cucumber”, and Laufer laughs it off as a philological achievement. It’s not as absurd as it looks, though, given that the Romans conflated melons and cucumbers (and likely so did the Persians). Laufer is quite sure the watermelon was unknown to the ancient Greeks, though pepōn ‘ripe [cucumber]’ did become the word for melon, may have been used in that sense in Hippocrates — if it wasn’t referring to the gourd instead—and was certainly used in that sense in the Septuagint translation of Numbers 11:5. (In fact mēlopepōn ‘apple ripe [cucumber]’ is the origin of English melon.)

The dissemination path for the watermelon seems to be:

• Namibia > … > Egypt > Israel > … {Iran, India}
• Iran > India (Persian names, post-Sanskrit names)
• India > Iran (“Indian melon”)
• India > Andalus (“from the Sindh”)
• Iran > Armenia, Georgia, East Slavic
• Iran > Turkic > China, Ottoman Empire

So where does that leave us?

(See what I did there? Questions as subheadings.)

The least likely account is Nişanyan’s. There’s an off chance that the watermelon was known to Ancient Greeks, and it was likely known by Roman times. But Nişanyan requires not only that knowledge of the watermelon came from Greek-speakers, but that Greek speakers used a word as generic as karpos to refer to it. And karpos is as generic as it gets: it is fruit as in fruitful, and it doesn’t just refer to fruit from a tree: wheat is a karpos too, and so are nuts. Greek and Latin did have a generic word for Cucurbitaceae, which they would have applied to watermelon; that word was the word for cucumber. That’s not the word that made it into Persian (and it’s not plausible that it leaped from Greece straight to China).

(Oh, English has a generic word for Cucurbitaceae too. We call them gourds.)

The native Persian etymon, “donkey-cucumber”, is suspicious; not for the “cucumber” bit—it’s what people unfamiliar with melons call gourds; but for the Just-So nature of it: it’s the kind of word you would find as a folk etymology. On the other hand, Persia is closer to Egypt than India is; you’d expect they’d find out about it first. And Persian is the origin for the vastest dissemination of the word.

But the Indian proposed etymology makes more sense, if anything: the colocynth (trapusa) is the wild counterpart to the watermelon. And the watermelon clearly did travel from India to (back to?) Persia, as the “Indian melon”. It’s uneconomical, but certainly feasible that the watermelon bounced backwards and forwards between Iran and India in various cultivars.

So, weak vote in favour of the Sanskrit derivation.

Greeks should not be too dismayed that they cannot claim karpouzi as their own though. As a consolation:

Greece > Hungary: görögdinnye “Greek melon”.

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EDIT: Dimitra Triantafyllidou’s comment is worth appending in full:

Ok, I have a couple of thoughts and alternate scenarios in mind for the mythical journey of my favourite fruit.

First, National Geographic (The 5,000-Year Secret History of the Watermelon )says that the plant originated in NE Africa and was cultivated for its water, not its taste. Ancient water-melons were rather bitter, but in the dry desert they bitter watermelons would have tasted like honey. E.g. to the Israelite in the desert. But since neither Greece, nor Asia Minor are quite as water deprived as Egypt it would not have spread among Greeks to the point of acquiring a name.

No matter where it first grew, the fruit might have travelled overland from the horn of Africa or the Sina to the Arab peninsula and over to Persia and India (the way H. sapiens did).

Or, it might have travelled in a ship. At one point the Sultanate of Oman controlled all those lands.

What I mean to say is that there in the first case there are deserts and caravans and in the second there is sea commerce. People have been wandering to-and -from on those paths since forever. A water melon is easily transported clean water. Plus, you just spit the seed and a new one grows in every port.

Therefore, it might have ended up in India without staying overlong and making a name for itself in Persia. Up to Hellenistic times it was still more like a coolant and a diuretic (much like the bitter cucumber in Greek traditional medicine), than a dessert.

And then, suddenly in the 2nd c. AD they start to become dessert but up until the 5th c. they are orange, not red. Much like … melons. It could be that the Indian word coming to the East together with a new better (sweeter) and red variety simply took over one of the meanings of the cognates of Hebrew ăḇaṭṭiḥ, and now there were two words for melon and watermelon.

I’m pretty sure that the moment somebody grew the first sweet, red watermelons the plants would have spread almost instantaneously throughout the Middle East.

Since this spread was completed by the 10th c. (Spain to China), i.e. when there was still direct contact between Greek speakers and Persian speakers it could be that the Greeks adapted the name to something familiar to their ears. If the Mongols and Turkmen kept the original t- at the beginning, why would the Turks turn h- to k-. Makes no sense.

PS What a great subject for a plant genetics thesis.

Screenshot provided by Viola Yee

Welp, that didn’t take long…