PART 4 – Ch

PART 4 – Ch.XXVI.12

Prehistoric monuments of metallurgic art in Dacia

(Chryseion Koas – The Golden Fleece)

XXVI.12. Helle’s legend in the Romanian version.

The Greek legend says only very little about Helle.

There is only a simple mention that the young princess, trying to escape together with her brother Phrixus from the persecution of her step-mother Ino, had fallen from the ram with the golden fleece, above the strait between the Aegean and Marmara seas, which, following this misfortune, had received the name Hellespontus, namely the Sea of Helle. Helle has no role in the Argonautic legend, but she must have been nevertheless a very interesting popular figure, as, according to mythology, she gave her name to a sea.

In the historical songs of the Romanian people, we have even today a tradition about a virgin called Ilena, who throws herself into the sea. But here the heroine’s fate moves the heart deeper than the Greek legend does.

Ilena is the ideal beauty for the Romanian singers and she distinguishes herself also with a noble and ethical character (Marienescu, Teodorescu, Catana, Alexici, Iarnik-Barseanu, Marianu, Bibicescu, Tocilescu, Bugnariu, Popp).

The contents of the Romanian version are the following:

Ilena (Ilinca, Lenca, Lina), daughter of Sandu (Sandru) and niece of a king, was beautiful to look at like the sun, no flower on the plain was more beautiful than she. The renown of her charming beauty had spread far, over seas and countries, and her face had pierced many hearts. On a Thursday morning, the black eyed young maid goes with her pails to the Danube, and looking towards east she sees with dread, coming up on the river, a kayak, covered in red cloth, adorned with carpets, gilded on the outside and shining with weapons. They were Turks from Tarigrad, accompanying the son of the emperor. They were coming to abduct her. In the beginning, Ilena, the renowned beauty, does not know if what she saw on the bank of the Danube were poppies in bloom, or Turks concealed, covered with red cloth. Then, frightened, she throws the pails to the ground and running to her parents she tells them, crying and sobbing “Mother, my mother, hide me somewhere, the Turks are coming to take me!” The Turks arrive, go straight to the handsome houses of Sandu and find young Ilincuta hidden in the little garden, under a little chamomile bush. They wrest her from her parents, put her in the kayak and depart with her down on the waters of the Danube. Desperate because of such a violent separation from her mother, and of the fate awaiting her in the house of her abductor, the noble girl hurls herself in the Danube, or according to other versions, into the sea, because “better food for fish, and rust for stones, than slave to the Turks and queen of the heathens”.

The true country of this beautiful heroine was, according to most Romanian versions, near the Danube, at the place where the famous kayak arrives, and the courts of Sandru courts, seem to have been at Tirighina. The locality Filesci, where can still be seen the ruins of this rich prehistoric acropolis, bear even today the old name of Sandreni.

This interesting rhapsody from the Lower Istru was also known in antiquity.

Like Ovid, who had introduced in the legend of Medeea the most beautiful verses of the folk songs about Nedea, the famous singer, the epic poet Valerius Flaccus had done the same, reproducing in his Argonautica (V. v. 342 seqq) whole episodes from the traditional poem about beautiful Ilena from the Istru. Iason, as he tells us, arriving with his ship to the mouths of the river Phasis, orders the Argonaut heroes to take up weapons, and the following morning, together with nine of his companions, leaves the ship in order to go to Aietes’ city. The same morning, while the sun was rising, Medea goes to the shore of the river Phasis and, looking in the distance, sees them coming up slowly along the shore. She stops. Then, saddened and frightened, says to her nurse: what people are these, mother? Surely they come to ask for my hand, I’ve never seen before weapons, or clothes, like these men have, please, let’s run, to hide somewhere, in the bushes, so they won’t find us. And old Henioche replies: don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, they are not enemies, to threaten you, or to harm you; I see that they have clothes as red as flames, bear ribbons and olive leaves, they are Greeks, resembling Phrixus in everything, he who had also come from Greece.

It is true that the legend of beautiful, but unlucky Ilena, from the Lower Istru, presents in its first part a great similarity with the epic legend of Medeea. Even more, she is a heroine from the same prehistoric fortress from which Medeea also hailed [1].

[1. According to another version, Ilena, beautiful like none other in the world, agrees to be kidnapped, because her mother had died and her father had grown old, and badly mistreats her. We have here the same legendary tradition, like that about Nephele and Athamas.

The hero who kidnaps Ilena, lifts her on the horse and, exactly like Phrixus had done with his sister Helle, he runs so fast, that he doesn’t touch the ground: And they passed over mountain… and they passed over waters, to escape from her father…

(Marienescu, Balade, I. p. 8)].

In any case though, Ilena, the one “without peer in the world”, Sandu’s daughter, celebrated in the Romanian folk songs, is not Medea, the famous enchantress of antiquity. We have here a different type, and a different epic cycle, which appears in Greek legends only in a fragmentary form, under the name of Helle. It is probable that in the most ancient Greek versions, Helle did not even figure as Phrixus’ sister. This is also confirmed by the painting on the vase, where only Phrixus appears, without having Helle by his side.

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