στιγκάρω: furl the sails
We encounter the word in Tountas’s song “The Little Fish of the Grigri” (1931), in the version performed by Papasideris:
She’ll tell you, “Get up, pretty girl, let’s haul them in,”
she’ll tell you, “Get up, pretty girl, let’s haul them in,”
and the nets are full, so let’s furl the sails,”
and the nets are full, so let’s furl the sails.”
Where does the idea that stigkáro means “gather the sails” come from? I’m asking because, as far as I know, when a fishing caique under sail weighs anchor, the next step is to hoist its sails (= raise them), not gather them. Then it sets off back towards shore, its nets full.
I don’t know the word stiggáro.
Entry “systéllo”
(Ipítou, Greek–French and French–Greek Dictionary, 1910)
Segditsas, Nautical Terms, etc., entry “stiggáro”
So, could it be that the song describes a process incorrectly (using the right words)? Or did he just throw in that rare word (for most people) at random?
Even I, who am not a sailor, understand that when you raise the anchor, you set sail to leave—you don’t gather the sails in. But I only understood it because Nikos explained it, writing in ordinary rather than specialist nautical language. The way the song puts it, I wouldn’t even have noticed whether I was making sense, or whether that meaning was logical.
Of course it makes no sense to furl and stow the sails once I’ve set out on the voyage; that only happens when I return to port. Conclusion: what Pericles says in his #4 is indeed happening here: an incorrect description of the procedure. It’s neither the first nor the second time this has happened in an interwar song. As if anyone’s going to put Tountas up against a wall — “But how can you drop anchor after weighing anchor? Are you trying to drive us mad?” Quite simply, Tountas wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it: the rhyme “weigh anchor — drop anchor” occurred to him, and that was that — the line was made! And Tountas got away scot-free, despite never having had anything to do with the sea, neither in Smyrna nor in Alexandria.
purse seine: an encircling net whose lower part is closed using a wire rope (στίγκος or στίγκα) that runs through a series of rings; pursing = closing the net
Quite right: we haul in the nets! Makes sense, since they’ve filled up (with fish). And now that we’ve also learnt that the stígka / stígko is the wire we pull to haul them in, we stíngar.
(What we do with the sails is a completely different matter…)
