'None but the brave deserve the fair': abduction, elopement, seduction and marriage in the Escorial Digenes Akrites and Modern Greek heroic songs

At the Byzantine Spring Symposium at Birmingham in March 1991 1 delivered a brief communication on the subject of bride-snatching in the romance of Digenes Akrites and in Cypriot heroic poetry (Mackridge 1992). There I argued that bridesnatching is the central theme of the romance of Digenes Akrites and of a number of modern Greek folk songs, chiefly from Cyprus. In the present article I propose both to summarize the arguments of my Birmingham communication and to amplify them with the use of further material.