Savvas Ioannides as Tale Collector

Savvas Ioannides as Tale Collector Friday, June 16, 2023 In 1870, Savvas Ioannides (1829-1910) published a history of Trebizond and its surroundings. In it, he included eight folk narratives. He wasn't native to the Pontos, but grew up and was educated near Constantinople, and later went to study philology in Athens, graduating in 1854. He taught at various schools around Ottoman Asia Minor, and spent the years 1864 to 1876 teaching at the Frontistirion in Trebizond. In the summers between semesters, he explored the Pontic interior gathering historical and folkloric information (one of his discoveries was the medieval epic of Akritas!). He published his Istoria kai statistiki tis Trapezountas in Constantinople in 1870, and included the first eight Pontic tales to be set down in print.  Early examples of collections of Pontic traditional verse can be found in Legrand, Recueil de Chansons Populaires Grecques (1874): 76ff; Passow, Popularia Carmina Graeciae Recentioris (1860): 147f; Triantafyllides, Éóôïñßá êáé ÓôáôéóôéêÞ; and Marcellus, Chants du Peuple en Grèce (1851): 94ff.    The tales Ioannides collected comprise five animal tales and three mythoi, none of them more than a few paragraphs long.  His sons grew up in Trebizond and one of them, Vasileios (1865-1936), became the President of the National Assembly of Pontos, which in 1919 advocated in Paris for independent statehood for the region.    (Many thanks to the Enkyklopaideia tou Pontiakou Ellinismou for this background information.)