METELIN, the modern name of the island of Lesbos. See LESBOS and MITYLENE.
In the Irish Philosophical Transactions for 1789, we have a description of this island by the earl of Charlemont, in which he speaks with raptures of its beauties. "The mountains, whose rugged tops exhibit a pleasing interposition of rocks and fine groves, have their green sides, for many miles along the coast, covered with olives, whose leaves agreeable verdure is corrected, embellished, and brightened by a lively mixture of bays and laurels aspiring to the height of forest-trees, of myrtles and pomegranates, of arbutes rich at once in blossom and in berry, of mulberries growing wild and laden with fruit, &c. Winter is here unknown, the verdure is perpetual, and the frequency of evergreens gives to December the colour of June. The parching heat of summer is never felt; the thick shade of trees, and thousands of crystal springs which every where arise and form themselves into unnumbered rivulets, joined to the refreshing sea-breeze the constant corrective and companion of noon tide heat, qualify the burning air and render the year a never-ending May. The houses are constructed in such a manner as to have the best view of these natural beauties. Each is a square tower neatly built of hewn stone, so high as to overtop the trees, and to command a view of the sea and neighbouring islands. The lower stories are granaries and storehouses; and the habitable apartments are all at the top, to which you ascend by a stone stair, built for the most part on the outside, and surrounding the tower; so that from the apartment the trees are overlooked, and the whole country is seen, while the habitations themselves, which are very numerous, peering above the groves, add life and variety to the enchanting prospect, and give an air of human population to these woodlands, which might otherwise be supposed the region of Dryads, of Naiads, and of Satyrs."
The most remarkable thing, however, in this island is a custom by which the women have here openly usurped those rights of sovereignty which in other countries are supposed to belong essentially to the men. "Contrary (says his lordship) to the usage of all other countries, the eldest daughter here inherits; and the sons, like daughters every where else, are portioned off with small dowers, or, which is still worse, turned out penniless to seek their fortune. If a man has two daughters, the eldest, at her marriage, is intitled to all her mother's possessions, which are by far the greater part of the family estate, as the mother, keeping up her prerogative, never parts with the power over any portion of what she has brought into the family, until she is forced into it by the marriage of her daughter; and the father also is compelled to ruin himself by adding whatever he may have scraped
together by his industry. The second daughter inherits nothing, and is condemned to perpetual celibacy. She is styled a calogria, which signifies properly a religious woman or nun, and is in effect a menial servant to her sister, being employed by her in any office she may think fit to impose, frequently serving her as waiting-maid, as cook, and often in employments still more degrading. She wears a habit peculiar to her situation, which she can never change; a sort of monastic dress, coarse, and of a dark brown. One advantage, however, she enjoys over her sister, that whereas the elder, before marriage, is never allowed to go abroad, or to see any man, her nearest relations only excepted, the calogria, except when employed in domestic toil, is in this respect at perfect liberty. But when the sister is married, the situation of the poor calogria becomes desperate indeed, and is rendered still more humiliating by the comparison between her condition and that of her happy mistress. The married sister enjoys every sort of liberty; the whole family fortune is hers, and she spends it as she pleases; her husband is her obsequious servant, her father and mother are dependent upon her, she dresses in a most magnificent manner, covered all over, according to the fashion of the island, with pearls and with pieces of gold, which are commonly sequins; thus continually carrying about her the enviable marks of affluence and superiority, while the wretched calogria follows her as a servant, arrayed in simple homespun brown, and without the most distant hope of ever changing her condition. Such a disparity may seem intolerable, but what will not custom reconcile? Neither are the misfortunes of the family yet at an end. The father and mother, with what little is left them, contrive by their industry to accumulate a second little fortune; and this, if they should have a third daughter, they are obliged to give to her upon her marriage; and the fourth, if there should be one, becomes her calogria; and so on through all the daughters alternately. Whenever the daughter is marriageable, she can by custom compel the father to procure her a husband; and the mother, such is the power of habit, is foolish enough to join her in teasing him into an immediate compliance, though its consequences must be equally fatal and ruinous to both of them. From hence it happens, that nothing is more common than to see the old father and mother reduced to the utmost indigence, and even begging about the streets, while their unnatural daughters are in affluence; and we ourselves have frequently been shown the eldest daughter parading it through the town in the greatest splendor, while her mother and sister followed her as servants, and made a melancholy part of her attendant train.
"The sons, as soon as they are of an age to gain a livelihood, are turned out of the family, sometimes with a small present or portion, but more frequently without any thing to support them; and thus reduced, they either endeavour to live by their labour, or, which is more usual, go on board some trading vessel as sailors or as servants, remaining abroad till they have got together some competency, and then return home to marry and to be henpecked. Some few there are who, taking advantage of the Turkish law, break through this whimsical custom, who marry their calogrias, and
retain to themselves a competent provision: but these are accounted men of a singular and even criminal disposition, and are hated and despised as conformists to Turkish manners, and deserters of their native customs; so that we may suppose they are few indeed who have the boldness to depart from the manners of their country, to adopt the customs of their detested masters, and to brave the contempt, the derision, and the hatred, of their neighbours and fellow-citizens.
"Of all these extraordinary particulars I was informed by the French consul, a man of sense and of indisputable veracity, who had resided in this island for several years, and who solemnly assured me that every circumstance was true: but indeed our own observation left us without the least room for doubt, and the singular appearance and deportment of the ladies fully evinced the truth of our friend's relation. In walking through the town, it is easy to perceive, from the whimsical manners of the female passengers, that the women, according to the vulgar phrase, wear the breeches. They frequently stopped us in the streets, examined our dress, interrogated us with a bold and manly air, laughed at our foreign garb and appearance; and showed so little attention to that decent modesty which is or ought to be the true characteristic of the sex, that there is every reason to suppose they would, in spite of their haughtiness, be the kindest ladies upon earth, if they were not strictly watched by the Turks, who are here very numerous, and would be ready to punish any transgression of their ungallant laws with arbitrary fines. But nature and native manners will often baffle the efforts even of tyranny. In all their customs these manly ladies seem to have changed sexes with the men. The woman rides astride, the man fits sideways upon the horse; nay, I have been assured that the husband's distinguishing appellation is his wife's family name. The women have town and country houses, in the management of which the husband never dares interfere. Their gardens, their servants, are all their own; and the husband, from every circumstance of his behaviour, appears to be no other than his wife's first domestic, perpetually bound to her service, and slave to her caprice. Hence it is that a tradition obtains in the country, that this island was formerly inhabited by Amazons; a tradition, however, founded upon no ancient history that I know of. Sappho indeed, the most renowned female that this island has ever produced, is said to have had manly inclinations; in which, as Lucian informs us, she did but conform with the singular manners of her countrywomen: but I do not find that the mode in which she chose to show these inclinations is imitated by the present female inhabitants, who seem perfectly content with the dear prerogative of absolute sway, without endeavouring in any other particular to change the course of nature; yet will this circumstance serve to show, that the women of Lesbos had always something peculiar, and even peculiarly masculine, in their manners and propensities. But be this as it may, it is certain that no country whatsoever can afford a more perfect idea of an Amazonian commonwealth, or better serve to render probable those ancient relations which our manners would induce us to esteem incredible, than this island of Metelin. These lordly ladies are for the most part very handsome in spite of their
dress, which is singular and disadvantageous. Down to the girdle, which as in the old Grecian garb is raised far above what we usually call the waist, they wear nothing but a shift of thin and transparent gauze, red, green, or brown, through which every thing is visible, their breasts only excepted, which they cover with a sort of handkerchief; and this, as we were informed, the Turks have obliged them to wear, while they look upon it as an encumbrance, and as no inconsiderable portion of Turkish tyranny. Long sleeves of the same thin material perfectly show their arms even to the shoulder. Their principal ornaments are chains of pearl, to which they hang small pieces of gold coin. Their eyes are large and fine; and the nose, which we term Grecian, usually prevails among them, as it does indeed among the women of all these islands. Their complexions are naturally fine; but they spoil them by paint, of which they make abundant use; and they disguise their pretty faces by shaving the hinder part of the eyebrow, and replacing it with a straight line of hair neatly applied with some sort of gum, the brow being thus continued in a straight and narrow line till it joins the hair on each side of their face. They are well made, of the middle size, and for the most part plump; but they are distinguished by nothing so much and so universally as by a haughty, disdainful, and supercilious air, with which they seem to look down upon all mankind as creatures of an inferior nature, born for their service, and doomed to be their slaves; neither does this peculiarity of countenance in any degree diminish their natural beauty, but rather adds to it that sort of bewitching attraction which the French call piquant."
His lordship has been at great pains to investigate the origin of such a singular custom; but is unable to find any other example in history than that of the Lycians, who called themselves by the names of their mothers, and not of their fathers. When asked by their neighbours who they were? they described themselves by their maternal genealogy. If a gentlewoman should marry a slave, the children by that marriage were accounted noble; but should the first man among them marry a foreign woman, the children would be accounted ignoble. This custom is mentioned by several ancient authors. A difficulty of no little magnitude occurs, however, in accounting for the derivation of the inhabitants of Lesbos from the Lycians. This is solved in the following manner: In times of the most remote antiquity, the island of Lesbos was peopled by the Pelasgi, who, under their leader Xanthus, the son of Triopas king of Argos, first inhabited Lesbos: previous to that time they had dwelt in a certain part of Lycia which they had conquered; and in this country we may suppose they had learned the custom in question. But though this might readily be granted, as we know so little of the origin of ancient nations, yet the question still recurs. Whence did it originate among the Lycians? Here we are still more difficult than before; and the only thing we have to help us out is an obscure tradition concerning Bellerophon, viz. that the hero having destroyed a boar which wasted the territory of Xanthus a city of Lycia, the inhabitants were so ungrateful as to return him no thanks for so great a favour; upon which, by his prayers, he caused the curse of barrenness to fall upon them, but was at length
length prevailed upon, by the intreaties of the women, to intercede with his patron Neptune to pardon them. On this account it was decreed, that the people of Xanthus should be called by the names of their mothers and not of their fathers. Plutarch relates also, that Bellerophon not only freed the Lycians from an invasion of pirates but from the Amazons also, whom he drove out of their country; "so that there may be some reason (says his Lordship) to suppose, that the Lycian women, by an intercourse with the Amazons, who had, it should seem, dwelt among them, were already previously prepared for the introduction of those customs, which were finally established in consequence of their patriotic merit in deprecating the wrath of Bellerophon, and in averting its fatal consequences."
This is the substance of what his Lordship advances to the origin of this extraordinary custom. He owns, that the traces are very obscure; and though he is conscious that such a speculation may be liable to ridicule, and he is aware "of some objections not easy to be answered, the coincidence will notwithstanding be allowed to be curious and very remarkable. The well known pertinacious adherence to ancient manners among the eastern nations, may in some measure excuse our credulity; and we may still add to our authority, by supposing, that this same Xanthus may probably have given his name to the Lycian city of that denomination; and consequently must have inhabited that very part of Lycia where, according to Plutarch, he is supposed more immediately to have flourished."