Image: PNT-00270, Corridor at a Farmhouse at Pyla, Engraving, 1879.
Hamilton Lang, the British manager of the Ottoman Bank in Cyprus, had a farm in Pyla.
He observed the villagers in the area and in 1870 noticed that a large portion of these people lived mainly on roots, dug up from the fields.
He noted it was sad to see the long lines of these poor people, arriving daily at the marketplaces with their trinkets and copper household vessels for sale, only to carry back with them a little flour for their famished families.
And yet there was no bitterness in their heart, no cursing of their sad fate.
The exclamation which you heard from the lips of many men during those weary months of hardship, was no other than “o Theos na mas libithi”, may God have mercy on us.
© Costas and Rita Severis Foundation
The ‘Did You Know’ series is made possible with the support of OPAP (Cyprus).
