Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Troupakis is now augmented by Mourtzinos, [4] another nickname, the dialect diminutive of mourgos , a bulldog; the complete name now meaning, roughly, Bullpup-in-the-Hole. The Bey’s son, Panayioti Mourtzinos, was Kapetan, or guerrilla leader, of Androuvitza; his son, Dionysios Mourtzinos, became war-minister of Greece in 1830. George Mourtzinos, the last of the descendants of Michael the Bey, died in 1848.
    By normal standards, this is, to say the least, a shaky pedigree; especially at the beginning: those three phantom Palaeologi.... But, just supposing they were verifiable, the rest, even allowing for the gap which seems to precede Michael the Bey, might be authentic. Not only were there no genealogists under the Turkish occupation, but no archives or records, not even a parish register of births and deaths, till a very late date. It is only in the Ionian islands, which were under the Venetians, andamong the Phanariot families that reigned in the Danubian Principalities, that Greek family records were kept; and, in those unchronicled centuries of oppression and turmoil and massacre and guerrilla warfare, oral tradition was the only link with time past. Fallible as it is, exposed to every rumour and misapprehension and post-facto accommodation, this is not always as unreliable as it might be supposed. There are many cases where, in the teeth of all likelihood and logical supposition, it has been proved right.
    But I knew nothing about the Mourtzini at the time; nothing beyond the tradition that the former inhabitants of the castellated dwelling, the founders of the church, were popularly supposed to have been direct descendants of the Palaeologi....
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    The quiet charm of Kardamyli grew with each passing hour. Most unexpectedly, we discovered a little hotel consisting of a few rooms over a grocer’s shop owned by Socrates Phaliréas, the cousin, it turned out, of a distinguished sculptor-friend in Athens. Equally unexpectedly, it was, in its unflamboyant way, very comfortable. No planks were spread here with hair-shirt blankets for a stylite’s penance, but springs and soft mattresses and a wicker chair or two waited for tired limbs in old and mellow rooms; and the kind, deep voice of the gigantic owner, a civilized and easy-going host, sitting down now and then for a chat, induced in all such a lack of hurry that the teeth of time and urgency and haste seemed all to have been drawn.
    The same leisurely spell pervades the whole of this far-away little town. Cooled in summer by the breeze from the gulf, the great screen of the Taygetus shuts out intruding winds from the north and the east; no tramontana can reach it. It is like those Elysian confines of the world where Homer says that life is easiest for men; where no snow falls, no strong winds blow norrain comes down, but the melodious west wind blows for ever from the sea to bring coolness to those who live there. I was very much tempted to become one of them, to settle in this small hotel for months with books and writing-paper; the thought has often recurred. The Guide Bleu only spares it half a line, mentioning little beyond the existence of its four hundred and ninety inhabitants. It is better so. It is too inaccessible and there is too little to do there, fortunately, for it ever to be seriously endangered by tourism. No wonder the nereids made it their home.
    Returning from a long bathe beyond the forest of reeds, we saw a boy carrying a large silver fish by the tail: a salpa . (I haven’t discovered its usual name.) I bought it, and, while it was being cooked, we sat under a mulberry tree, whose trunk was whitewashed right up to the start of the branches, on a terrace outside one of the few taverns. Like us, a few fishermen under their great hats were watching the sun sinking over the Messenian mountains, on the other side of which, sixteen leagues away, lay Pylos. A miniature mole ran out, and, alongside it, gently rocking with each sigh of