Rembetiko - Ta Paidia Tis Amynas

Artist: Stavros Xarchakos Recording: 1983 Performer: Stavros Xarchakos Collection: Rembetiko 1983 Tags: Rembetiko , Film Performed for the 1983 film Rembetiko

Μια μέρα θα το γράψει η ιστορία
που έδιωξε απ' την Αθήνα τα θηρία
που έδιωξε βασιλείς και βουλευτάδες
τους ψευταράδες και τους μασκαράδες

Και στην άμυνα εκεί όλοι οι αξιωματικοί
πολεμάει κι ο Βενιζέλος
που αυτός θα φέρει τέλος
και ο κάθε πατριώτης θα μας φέρουν την ισότης

Η Παναγιά που στέκει στο πλευρό μας
δείχνει το δρόμο στο νέο στρατηγό μας
τον ήρωα της εθνικής αμύνης
που πολεμάει και διώχνει τους εχθρούς

Της αμύνης τα παιδιά διώξανε το βασιλιά
και του δώσαν τα βρακιά του
για να πάει στη δουλειά του
τον περίδρομο να τρώει με το ξένο του το σόι
 
Έλα να δεις σπαθιά και γιαταγάνια
που βγάζουν φλόγες και φτάνουν στα ουράνια
εκεί ψηλά ψηλά στα σύνορά μας
τρέχει ποτάμι το αίμα του εχθρού

Της αμύνης τα παιδιά διώξανε το βασιλιά
της αμύνης το καπέλο έφερε το Βενιζέλο
της αμύνης το σκουφάκι
έφερε το Λευτεράκη

One day history will write
of the one who drove the beasts from Athens,
who drove out kings and members of parliament,
the liars and the masqueraders.

And in the Defense, all the officers,
and Venizelos too is fighting,
for he will bring it to an end,
and every patriot — they'll bring us equality.

The Virgin Mary who stands at our side
shows the path to our new general,
the hero of the National Defense,
who fights and drives out the enemies.

The boys of the Defense chased out the king
and sent him packing with his britches
to go about his business,
to stuff his face with his foreign kin.

Come and see the swords and yatagans
spitting flames that reach the heavens,
up there, high up at our borders,
the enemy's blood runs like a river.

The boys of the Defense chased out the king,
the Defense's cap brought us Venizelos,
the Defense's little bonnet
brought us little Lefteris.

Historical context

This is a soldier’s song from the National Defense movement (Κίνημα Εθνικής Αμύνης) of 1916 — one of the most divisive episodes of modern Greek history, known as the Εθνικός Διχασμός (“National Schism”).

At the outbreak of WWI, Greece was split between two camps:

• King Constantine I, brother-in-law of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who insisted on Greek neutrality (read as pro-German by his opponents).
• Eleftherios Venizelos, the liberal prime minister, who wanted Greece to join the Entente.

In August 1916, Venizelist officers in Thessaloniki launched the National Defense movement and established a rival government there. By June 1917 the Allies had forced King Constantine into exile, the two governments merged, and Greece entered the war on the Allied side.

In the 1983 Ferris film Rembetiko, the song anchors the story in this moment of national rupture, before the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922 that drives the rest of the film’s arc.

Reading

The song lives entirely inside the Venizelist worldview. The king and his royalist parliament are not opponents but θηρία — wild beasts. The deposed politicians are not just defeated, they are ψευταράδες και μασκαράδες, liars wearing masks. Their removal is therefore not a political event but a moral cleansing of Athens.

The replacement is sanctified: the Virgin Mary herself stands at the side of the new general (Venizelos), showing him the path. Equality (ισότης, in the older liberal-democratic register) follows wherever the patriot walks. The framing is consciously crusader-like — the Defense fighters carry not just rifles but γιαταγάνια, the curved sabers of an older armed-uprising tradition, and they reach all the way to the heavens.

The mockery is targeted and specific. The king is sent packing with his trousers — the folk image of an eviction so abrupt the victim has to grab his clothes on the way — and dispatched to stuff his face with his foreign kin. “Foreign kin” is the song’s sharpest line: a direct jab at the Glücksburg dynasty’s German roots, at Queen Sophia of Prussia, at the cousins in Berlin.

The closing chant collapses person and symbol: the cap is Venizelos, the little bonnet is little Lefteris. The Defense’s headwear and the Defense’s leader are one and the same, and the affectionate diminutive (Lefterakis instead of Venizelos) shows the warmth in which the song’s audience held him — leader, brother, ours.

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