Sappho Loved And Sang

Lesbos: Where Burning Sappho Loved And Sang

Poets have been singing praises to the isles of Greece since BC but few modern writers have written so pleasantly about them as Betty Roland (“ Lesbos—The Pagan Island,” fust published ).

AFTER eight years’ radio free lancing in London, Mrs. Row land tossed a coin to see whether she should return to Australia or spend a year in Greece. The coin said Australia but she went to Greece just the same—more specifically to the comparatively unknown island of Lesbos.

Lesbos is the third largest of the Aegean Islands, tucked in close to Turkey, and one of the last to be freed from the Turks. It is where Sappho, 600 years or so before Christ, according to Byron, “loved and sang”—and through her own sex aberrations gave the world the word “Lesbian”.

However, although Betty Rowland found the people still bore the old Heroic names (Hercules and Theseus sold the fish; Jason the groceries; Themistocles was the landlord; and cleaning maids could be Aphrodites or Terpsichores), her story is one of living amongst the modern Greeks and not an excuse for an excursion into the ancient myths.

Charming Island

To her the island was charming; the people lovable, infuriating and unpredictable; by turns dour, with drawn, as only Greeks can be; yet, in another mood, hospitable and friendly.

The business of living amongst them became a practical adventure of food, housing and eccentric land lords, against a background of 3,000 years of history and the author manages to recount it all with humour, down-to-earth Australian realism and just the correct amount of sentiment to carry the armchair adventurer along with her into the realms of romance.

During her year on Lesbos she made one peculiarly Australian pil grimage— to Gallipoli on Anzac Day.

It is a journey few ever undertake, on Anzac Day or any other, and with the exception of the caretakers of the War Graves Commission, she had it to herself. She spent the day re-living the Australasian epic and scrambling around the barren

slopes where Empire troops had fought and died 46 years before.

As she sat alone, with the cliffs towering up around her, out of breath and exhausted, the mood of the moment intensified by the com plete silence, she heard a faint tap ping from the ground not far away, as though someone beneath were trying to attract attention.

Her flesh began to creep and panic urged her to leave the ghostly thing to tap its message undisturbed. But this, she told herself, was ridiculous.

There must be something there, and she was going to look.

At last she was rewarded by a faint rustle and what had seemed mysterious “became sheer farce . .

“A pair of tortoises, a female, large, elderly and no doubt disillusioned, and a male not more than quarter her size, were squatting on the ground, the latter driven to the point of desperation by his amorous de sires. She, however, would have none of him and had tucked herself inside her shell, leaving him to vainly scramble up her scaly sides, only to slither off again panting and dis traught with love.

“Defeated, he then tried another method of approach by bracing him self on his short, unsteady legs and banging himself against her unre sponsive side.

“Here, of course, was the origin of the mysterious knock-knock-knock ing I had heard ... I felt that the little comedy was something that the Anzacs would have relished greatly and could almost hear their ribald voices cheering the little fellow on, giving sound advice, reviling the churlish female for her bad behavi

our.”

JT.

(LESBOS —The Pagan Island. Pub lished by F. W. Cheshire. 36/-.)