- East Meets West in the Cyprus Folktale "O Mavris" (The Black Man):Three Diverse Myths within the Myth
Cyprus is situated at the cross point between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Throughout history the island has been visited, inhabited, colonized, and conquered by different ethnic and religious groups. These groups brought with them their traditions and folktales, which blended with the Greek traditional stories—the dominant culture and language on the island having been Greek ever since the second millennium BCE. For this reason, Cypriot folktales, some of them originally created in the Greek-Cypriot dialect and others adapted from Greek to the Greek-Cypriot dialect, underwent many additions and adjustments by storytellers, reaching us today in interesting variations that incorporate narrative elements from diverse cultures. A fascinating example of this meeting between East and West civilizations is the Greek-Cypriot folktale "O Mavris" (The Black Man), which integrates within its storyline three different legends from the Arabic-Islamic, Greek-Orthodox, and Russian-Jewish traditions. "The Black Man" is one of several traditional stories collected from diverse European countries for the purposes of the EU-funded project European Mobility Folktales (EUMOF). I have created the illustrations that accompany the collection.
The story is a living specimen of cultures interweaving to create a fusion and carry humanity's collective knowledge and wisdom. All three myths within the story originate from different backgrounds and places: An Islamic legend inspired by the Arabic-Islamic raids of 649 CE and created around 1760 CE, a Greek folk poem created around the tenth century and revived in the early eighteenth century, and a Hasidic-Jewish traditional story created in the late seventeenth century. The historic events and dates discussed reveal and verify the existence of these populations and their cultures in Cyprus and their influence on local storytelling.
The Greek civilization was developed in Cyprus after the Bronze Age, carrying with it the first myths of Greek mythology: it was believed that Aphrodite was born in Pafos, Cyprus. Under Byzantine rule, the Hellenistic-Christian culture was central for the Greek-Cypriot community, which still upholds this character. Many folktales travelled from Greece to Cyprus and were adapted to the Greek-Cypriot dialect or reformed to fit the traditions and historical experiences of the island. "The Black Man," for instance, is considered a Cypriot folktale, but variations of the story can also be found in Thessaly (a region of Greece) and Imbros (a Turkish island in the [End Page 78] Aegean Sea, with a population of Greek origins up until the 1920s).
The story negotiates racism, faith in God, God's will, and destiny. A white king has a daughter who is growing up with her best friend, a black boy who lives in the palace. An oracle says that the princess' fate is to marry the black boy, something that the King does not accept because the boy is dark-skinned, poor, and uneducated. So the King sends him away to perform three impossible tasks, hoping the young man will never return. The main character seems to internalize the King's racial bias as he goes on his quest, striving at the same time to become white. After a series of events, the hero achieves the impossible tasks and becomes wise, rich, and white—with a black mark on his belly, as evidence of his true identity. He returns to marry the beautiful princess. The story ends with the moral that you cannot change or avoid destiny: whatever will be will be. The Thessaly version ends with the phrase, "Whatever destiny writes cannot be unwritten"; the Imbros variation mentions that "Black can become white, but what is written by fate cannot be undone"; and the Cypriot story ends with, "Your fortune has been written, no one can rise above it."
All versions have the same basic storyline but differ in some specific elements of the narration. This is only to be expected as folktales travel through time and space from mouth to mouth, their evolvement depending on many factors, such as the storytellers'memory, vocabulary, experiences, creativity, and imagination. With number three being the most common number used in folktales around the world...