Shadow of a Hero

LEGEND

The Riddle

NOW THAT THE five Pashas were slain, the Turks were afraid to face the Varinians in battle. But Selim was Pasha of Virnu, across the river, and he was subtlest of all the Turks.¹ He said in his heart, ‘I will send spies against this Restaur Vax, Greeks and Bulgarians and Croats, who yet speak the language of these dogs and may pass themselves off as true Varinians, and so join his bands, and be trusted until they are permitted to stand by his side, and then they will strike him down. Moreover, to give them courage, I will put a price on his head of seventeen thousand kronin. Very likely these spies will be found out, but that too is good, for Restaur Vax will see that he cannot any longer know which volunteers he can trust.’

Then one came to Restaur Vax saying that he was a Varinian from beyond the river, and talking good Field. Restaur Vax questioned him closely, and he answered well, but in the middle of questioning him Restaur Vax cast his glance down by the man’s feet and cried ‘Phidi!’ which is the Greek word for a viper. At that the man leaped clear even before he cast his own glance to the ground, and by this he was seen to be a Greek. So they took him away and slew him.

Restaur Vax said, ‘This is Selim’s doing.’

His chieftains answered, ‘We must therefore trust no new recruits.’

Restaur Vax took thought and said, ‘Not so. We will test all who come to us with a riddle. We will say to each man, “What were you? What are you? What will you be? Answer us now with the words that you learned in your mother’s arms.”’

So it was agreed. Seventy-seven spies came, speaking good Field, pretending to be true Varinians, and saying they wished to fight the Turk. But not one of them could answer the riddle, nor did they return alive to their own pastures. But of all the many Varinians who came, none failed the test. Had they not learnt the answer in their mothers’ arms?²

¹ Selim Pasha (1712–1777) was not a contemporary of Restaur Vax. Pasha of the Western Province from the early age of twenty-six until his death, he earned a justifiable reputation for both efficiency and ferocity, and continues until the present day to be a general bogeyman of Varinian folklore.

² ‘The Lame Girl’s Lullaby’ has the refrain Tutunatu tunutotu tutunistu, which is popularly explained to be in Old Varinian and to mean ‘Asleep you were. Asleep you are. Asleep you will be.’ That is to say, before birth, in the cradle, and in the grave. The point of the story is that an impostor would be unlikely to know the nonsense refrain of a cradle song.

Old Varinian was the literary language developed by the troubadours in the Middle Ages from the even older language of which modern Field is a simplification. Almost all traces of Old Varinian were effectively destroyed by the Phanariotes, Greek Orthodox officials of the Turkish Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Modern Formal was developed in the period leading up to the War of Independence in an attempt to create a literary language to replace the lost Old Varinian. It is, however, unlikely that the refrain of the song was ever more than nonsense.