Nigel Allenby Jaffé has taken thirteen years to research this book. Besides his frequent visits to Greece and Bulgaria, where he has witnessed many customs in their villages and small towns, he has visited Turkey for further background information. He has turned to prehistory and history, mythology, ethnology, anthropology, archaeology, and ethnography for supporting evidence, and, to be able to shine some new light on an otherwise murky topic, has dipped his toes into the equally opaque waters (to him) of genetics, linguistics, demography and palaeo-botany! Through his research into living rituals, the author questions some traditional explanations of ancient myths, and puts forward some of his own theories. He begins by examining in some detail a passage in Book VI of Homer's Iliad. The author believes that the rituals he has observed in many Balkan villages stand in a similar relationship to certain Greek myths, as children's nursery rhymes do on the politics of the day when they were written. Without studying their origins they make little sense; the same can be said of the myths which can still be seen being enacted in midwinter or pre-Lent in many a Balkan village. The author has quite a bit to say about what he calls "the ménage à trois" between Dionysos, Theseus and Ariadne; he believes that Zeus did not hurl his thunderbolts in anger; that blinding was not necessarily a punishment; and that rape was not what it seemed. He sees this ancient ritual as something unchanging much in a much changing world. The text is illustrated by over 250 photographs. Nigel Allenby Jaffé began his professional career as a concert pianist. However, a serious spinal problem forced him at an early stage to quit, though not before being awarded a Fellowship of Trinity College, London, and making his London debut at the Wigmore Hall. He now turned, by way of consolation, to history, gaining an Honours Degree in European and British Mediaeval and Modern History from London University. His wife's passion was (and still is) European folk dancing, and together they set out on what was to be a decade of travel (while the money lasted) visiting all corners of Europe and much of the centre too, armed with video and still cameras, recording equipment and notebooks, and assembling a vast collection of dances on video, and the results of the research of many experts in their own countries, so generously donated. Much of his findings he assembled in a book: "Folk Dance of Europe" (1990). He followed this two years later with "The World of English Folk Dance", part of a projected series on an international scale. He was awarded a Master's Degree for his work in the field of ethnographic research. He now took a "gap year" in which to have a nervous breakdown, before embarking on his most recent folly. This time, flying solo, he spent the following thirteen years, researching the Balkan custom which is the title of this book, carrying out fieldwork in Bulgaria and Greece, and, through the eyes and ears of others, Turkey, Romania, Crete, and Skyros He relates the living rituals to their origins in mythology.