The 24th of June is one of the biggest summer festivals of Greek tradition, celebrating the feast of “Klidonas” and St. John. It is accompanied by the traditional custom of burning the flower wreaths of May and jumping over the fires. Klidonas finishes with a large festival where men and women recite bold lyrics mainly about the relationship between them. Men and women talk freely about sex in a humorous way without insulting each other.

The book is divided into three parts:

In the first part, based on the existing bibliography, the rich archive of Vassos Bombas as well as the oral interviews, Kapsala and Klidonas in Lesbos are presented, i.e. how the ritual of these two customs used to be done in Mytilini and in many villages of Lesbos. The two folklore collections of Vasos Bombas and Akindynos Skoptikos are also presented, and their content is commented on and evaluated.

In the second part, the reader will find eight prose pieces and an excerpt from a play by well-known Lesbian writers, who return to their childhood and the customs that were indelibly etched in their memory, giving us beautiful stories. Here folklore meets literature and theater.

The third part lists the songs of Klidonas, as recorded by Vasos Bombas and Akindynos Skoptikos. They were recited at the Klidonas in Mytilene in a time span that extends from the 1940s to the 1980s. Thematically they belong to what we call "shameless", obscene, open-mouthed, shameless.

The book includes a CD with excerpts from the introductory text and about ninety quatrains of the Klidonas in the Lesbian dialect, which are spoken by a group of five women and men.

Writer: Panagiotis S. Skordas