la canción rodia de la golondrina y la cerámica de tera

The song of the Swallow, attested by Athenaeus, which Rhodian children sung while collecting from house to house, is important for Greek religion and poetry. It has a choral part and then another part sung by the exarchon, who is identified as the swallow. Probably the song is related to a ritual where the “swallow”, which arrives in Spring, unites in “hieros gramos” with a woman of the country. The song has preserved, in ludic from, elements of a song of “welcome” as well as of a “paraclausithyron”: its erotic charter is without any doubt. The song is compared with similar songs in Greece and the author proposes, for the fresco of the swallow and several vessels decorated with swallows found in Tera, a relation with a cult of the swallow, from which the song would proceed in last instauce.