CHAPTER I.

Transcriber's Note

Superscript text is indicated by caret signs, e.g. M^t Pelion. The text

includes diacritics which may not display well in all software, e.g. the

inverted breve in ἀστροπελέκι̯α.

MODERN GREEK FOLKLORE

AND

ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

London: FETTER LANE, E.C.

C. F. CLAY, MANAGER

[Illustration]

Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET

Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.

Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS

New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

_All rights reserved_

MODERN GREEK FOLKLORE

AND

ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION

A STUDY IN SURVIVALS

BY

JOHN CUTHBERT LAWSON, M.A.

FELLOW AND LECTURER OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

FORMERLY CRAVEN STUDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY

Cambridge:

at the University Press

1910

Cambridge:

PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PIIS MANIBUS

ROBERTI ALEXANDRI NEIL

LABORUM ADHORTANTE IPSO SUSCEPTORUM

HUNC DEDICAVI FRUCTUM.

PREFACE.

This book is the outcome of work undertaken in Greece during my two

years’ tenure of the Craven Studentship from 1898 to 1900. It is

therefore my first duty gratefully to commemorate John, Lord Craven,

to whose benefactions of two and a half centuries ago I owed my

opportunity for research.

The scheme of work originally proposed was the investigation of the

customs and superstitions of modern Greece in their possible bearing

upon the life and thought of ancient Greece; and to the Managers of the

Craven Fund at that time, with whom was associated Mr R. A. Neil of

Pembroke College to whose memory I have dedicated this book, I render

hearty thanks for their willingness to encourage a venture new in

direction, vague in scope, and possibly void of result.

The course of research proposed was one which required as the first

condition of any success considerable readiness in speaking and

understanding the popular language, and to the attainment of this my

first few months were necessarily devoted. When once the ear has become

accustomed to the modern pronunciation, a knowledge of ancient Greek

makes for rapid progress; and some three or four months spent chiefly

in the _cafés_ of small provincial towns rendered me fairly proficient

in ordinary conversation. Subsequent practice enabled me also to follow

conversations not intended for my ear; and on more than one occasion

I obtained from the talk of peasants thus overheard information which

they might have been chary of imparting to a stranger.

The time at my disposal however, after I had sufficiently mastered

the language, would have been far too short to allow of any complete

enquiry into the beliefs and customs of the country, had it not been

for the existence of two books, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das

Hellenische Alterthum_ by Bernhard Schmidt, and Μελέτη ἐπὶ τοῦ βίου τῶν

νεωτέρων Ἑλλήνων by Professor Polites of Athens University, which at

once supplied me with a working knowledge of the subject which I was

studying and suggested certain directions in which further research

might profitably be pursued. My debt to these two books is repeatedly

acknowledged in the following pages; and if I have given references to

Schmidt’s work more frequently than to that of Polites, my reason is

not that I owe less to the latter, but merely that the former is more

generally accessible.

In pursuit of my task I followed no special system. I have known of

those who professed to obtain a complete knowledge of the folklore of

a given village in the course of a few hours’ visit, and whose method

was to provide themselves with an introduction to the schoolmaster,

who would generally be not even a native of the place, and to read

out to him a formidable _questionnaire_, in the charitable and

misplaced expectation that the answers given would be prompted not by

courtesy and loquacity, which are the attributes of most Greeks, but

by veracity, which is the attribute of few. The formal interview with

paper and pencil is in my opinion a mistake. The ‘educated’ Greek whose

pose is to despise the traditions of the common-folk will discourse

upon them no less tediously than inaccurately for the sake of having

his vapourings put on record; but the peasant who honestly believes the

superstitions and scrupulously observes the customs of which he may

happen to speak is silenced at once by the sight of a note-book. Apart

however from this objection to being interviewed, the countryfolk are

in general communicative enough. They do not indeed expect to be plied

with questions until their own curiosity concerning the new-comer has

been satisfied, and even then any questions on uncanny subjects must

be discreetly introduced. But it is no difficult matter to start some

suitable topic. A wedding, a funeral, or some local _fête_ perhaps

is in progress, and your host is eager to have the distinction of

escorting you to it and explaining all the customs appropriate to the

occasion. You have been taken to see the village-church, and some

offering there dedicated, to which you call attention, elicits the

story of some supernatural ‘seizure’ and miraculous cure. You express a

desire to visit some cave which you have observed in the mountain-side,

and the dissuasion and excuses which follow form the prelude to an

account of the fearful beings by whom it is haunted. Your guide crosses

himself or spits before fording a stream, and you enquire, once

safely across, what is the particular danger at this spot. Your mule

perhaps rolls with your baggage in the same stream, and the muleteer’s

imprecations suggest luridly novel conceptions of the future life.

Much also may be effected by playing upon patriotism or vanity or,

let it be confessed, love of lucre. You relate some story heard in

a neighbouring village or praise some custom there observed, and the

peasant’s parochial patriotism is up in arms to prove the superiority

of his native hamlet. You show perhaps some signs of incredulity (but

not until your informant is well launched upon his panegyric), and

his wounded pride bids him call in his neighbours to corroborate his

story. Or again you may hint at a little largesse, not of course for

your host--only witches and the professional reciters of folk-tales and

ballads are entitled to a fee--but on behalf of his children, and he

may pardon and satisfy what might otherwise have seemed too inquisitive

a curiosity.

Such are the folk to whom I am most beholden, and how shall I fitly

acknowledge my debt to them? Their very names maybe were unknown to me

even then, or at the most a ‘John’ or ‘George’ sufficed; and they in

turn knew not that I was in their debt. You, muleteers and boatmen,

who drove shrewd bargains for your services and gave unwittingly so

much beside, and you too, cottagers, who gave a night’s lodging to a

stranger and never guessed that your chatter was more prized than your

shelter, how shall I thank you? Not severally, for I cannot write nor

could you ever read the list of acknowledgements due; but to you all,

Georges and Johns, Demetris and Constantines, and rare anachronistic

Epaminondases, in memory of services rendered unawares, greeting from

afar and true gratitude!

Nor must I omit to mention the assistance which I have derived from

written sources. In recent times it has been a favourite amusement with

Greeks of some education to compile little histories of the particular

district or island in which they live, and many of these contain a

chapter devoted to the customs and superstitions of the locality. From

these, as also from the records of travel in Greece, particularly those

of French writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I have

culled much that is valuable.

Nearly ten years have passed since my return from Greece, and such

leisure as they have allowed has been devoted to co-ordinating the

piecemeal information which I personally obtained or have gathered

from the writings of others, and to examining its bearing upon the

life and thought of Ancient Greece. In the former half of this task

I have but followed in the steps of Bernhard Schmidt and of Polites,

who had already presented a coherent, if still incomplete, account of

the folklore of Modern Greece, and my work has been mainly to check,

to correct, and to amplify; but for the latter half I would ask the

indulgent consideration which may fairly be extended to a pioneer.

Analogies and coincidences in the beliefs and customs of modern and of

ancient Greece have indeed been pointed out by others; but no large

attempt has previously been made to trace the continuity of the life

and thought of the Greek people, and to exhibit modern Greek folklore

as an essential factor in the interpretation of ancient Greek religion.

It is my hope that this book will prove interesting not to Greek

scholars only, but to readers who have little or no acquaintance with

Greek. All quotations whether from the ancient or modern language

are translated, and references to ancient and modern writers are

distinguished by the use of the ordinary Latinised names and titles in

the case of the former, and the retention of the Greek character for

denoting the latter. As regards the transliteration of modern Greek

words, I have made no attempt to represent the exact sound, except to

indicate in some words the accented syllable and to make the obvious

substitution of the English _v_ for the Greek β; but to replace

γ by _gh_ and δ by _dh_, as is sometimes done, gives to words an

uncouth appearance without assisting the majority of readers in their

pronunciation.

It remains only to express my thanks to the reviser of my proofs, Mr

W. S. Hadley of Pembroke College, but these are the hardest to express

adequately. I was conscious of making no small demand on the kindness

of the Tutor of a large College when I asked him to do me this service;

and I am conscious now that any words in acknowledgement of his

kindness are a poor expression of my gratitude for the generous measure

of time and of trouble which he has expended on each page.

Lastly I would thank the Syndics of the University Press for their

willingness to undertake the publication of this book, and the staff of

the Press for their unfailing courtesy in the course of its preparation.

J. C. L.

PEMBROKE COLLEGE,

CAMBRIDGE,

_December 31, 1909_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE vii-x

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.

§ 1. Modern Folklore as a source for the study of

Ancient Religion 1-7

§ 2. The survival of Ancient Tradition 8-25

§ 3. The survival of Hellenic Tradition 25-36

§ 4. The survival of Pagan Tradition 36-64

CHAPTER II. THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN DEITIES.

§ 1. The Range of Modern Polytheism 65-71

§ 2. Zeus 72-74

§ 3. Poseidon 75-77

§ 4. Pan 77-79

§ 5. Demeter and Persephone 79-98

§ 6. Charon 98-117

§ 7. Aphrodite and Eros 117-120

§ 8. The Fates 121-130

§ 9. The Nymphs 130-162

§ 10. The Queens of the Nymphs 162-173

§ 11. Lamiae, Gelloudes, and Striges 173-184

§ 12. Gorgons 184-190

§ 13. The Centaurs 190-255

§ 14. Genii 255-291

CHAPTER III. THE COMMUNION OF GODS AND MEN. 292-360

CHAPTER IV. THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY.

§ 1. The Modern Greek Vampire 361-376

§ 2. The Composition of the Superstition: Slavonic,

Ecclesiastical, and Hellenic Contributions 376-412

§ 3. Revenants in Ancient Greece 412-434

§ 4. Revenants as Avengers of Blood 434-484

CHAPTER V. CREMATION AND INHUMATION 485-514

CHAPTER VI. THE BENEFIT OF DISSOLUTION 515-542

CHAPTER VII. THE UNION OF GODS AND MEN 543-606

GENERAL INDEX 607-617

INDEX OF GREEK WORDS AND PHRASES 618-620

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

§ 1. MODERN FOLKLORE AS A SOURCE FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT RELIGION.

The sources of information most obviously open to the student of

ancient Greek religion are the Art and the Literature of ancient

Greece; and the idea that modern Greece can have any teaching to impart

concerning the beliefs of more than two thousand years ago seems seldom

to have been entertained. Just as we speak of ancient Greek as a dead

language, and too often forget that many of the words and inflexions

in popular use at the present day are identical with those of the

classical period and even of the Homeric age, while many others, no

longer identical, have suffered only a slight modification, so are we

apt to think of Greek paganism as a dead religion, and do not enquire

whether the beliefs and customs of the modern peasant may not be a

direct heritage from his classical forefathers. And yet, if any such

heritage exist, there is clearly a fresh source of knowledge open to

us, from which to supplement and to correct the lessons of Art and

Literature.

Art, by its very nature, serves rather as illustration than as proof

of any theory of ancient religion. Sculpture has preserved to us the

old conceptions of the divine personalities. Vase-paintings record

many acts of ritual and scenes of worship. Architectural remains allow

us to restore in imagination the grandeur of holy places. But these

things are only the externals of religion: they need an interpreter,

if we would understand the spirit which informed them: and however

able the interpreter, the material with which he deals is so small

a remnant of the treasures of ancient art, that from day to day

some fresh discovery may subvert his precariously founded theories.

Though all would acknowledge how fruitful in religious suggestion the

evidence of art has proved when handled by competent critics, none

would claim that that evidence either in its scope, which the losses of

time have limited, or in its accuracy, which depends upon conjectural

interpretation, is a complete or infallible guide to the knowledge of

ancient religion.

From literature more might be expected, and more indeed is forthcoming,

though not perhaps where the modern mind, with its tendency to

methodical analysis, would look for it. If anyone should attempt to

classify ancient Greek literature in modern fashion, under the headings

of religion, science, history, drama, and so forth, he would remark one

apparent deficiency. While history, philosophy, and poetry of every

kind are amply represented and, however much has perished to be read no

more, the choicest blossoms and richest fruit of Greek toil in these

fields have been preserved to us, religion seems at first sight to have

been almost barren of literary produce. The department of religion

pure and simple would have little beyond an Hesiodic Theogony or some

Orphic Hymns to exhibit,--and even these have little enough bearing

upon real religion. In short, it is not on any special branch of Greek

literature, but rather upon the whole bulk thereof, that the student

of Greek religion must rely. He must recognize that a religious spirit

pervades the whole; that there is hardly a book in the language but has

some allusion to religious beliefs and customs, to cults and ceremonies

and divine personalities. And while recognizing this, he must still

admit the fact that nowhere is there found any definite exposition of

accepted beliefs as a whole, any statement of doctrine, any creed which

except a man believe he cannot be saved. How are we to reconcile these

two facts,--the constant presence of religion in all Greek literature,

and the almost total absence of any literature appertaining to religion

only? The answer to this question must be sought in the character of

the religion itself.

Greek religion differed from the chief now existing religions of the

world in its origin and development. It had no founder. Its sanction

was not the _ipse dixit_ of some inspired teacher. It possessed nothing

analogous to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or the Koran. It was a

free, autochthonous growth, evolved from the various hopes and fears

of a whole people. If we could catch a glimpse of it in its infancy,

we should probably deny to it the very name of religion, and call it

superstition or folklore. Great teachers indeed arose, like Orpheus,

advocating special doctrines and imposing upon their followers special

rules of life. Great centres of religious influence were developed,

such as Delphi, exercising a general control over rites and ceremonies.

But no single preacher, no priesthood, succeeded in dominating over

the free conscience of the people. Nothing was imposed by authority.

In belief and in worship each man was a law unto himself; and so far

as there were any accepted doctrines and established observances,

these were not the subtle inventions of professional theologians or

an interested priesthood, but were based upon the hereditary and

innate convictions of the whole Greek race. The individual was free to

believe what he would and what he could; it was the general, if vague,

consensus of the masses which constituted the real religion of Greece.

The _vox populi_ fully established itself as the _vox dei_.

Again in this popular religion, when it had emerged from its earliest

and crudest form and had reached the definitely anthropomorphic stage

in which we know it, we can discern no trace of any tendency towards

monotheism. The idea of a single supreme deity, personal or impersonal,

appealed only to some of the greatest thinkers: the mass of the people

remained frankly polytheistic. For this reason the development of

Greek religion proceeded on very different lines from that of Hebrew

religion. The earliest Jewish conception of a God ‘walking in the

garden in the cool of the day’ was certainly no less anthropomorphic

than the Homeric presentation of the Olympian deities: but the

subsequent growth of Judaism was like that of some tall straight palm

tree lifting its head to purer air than is breathed by men; whereas

Greek religion resembled rather the cedar spreading wide its branches

nearer the earth. The Jew, by concentrating in one unique being every

transcendent quality and function, exalted gradually his idea of

godhead far above the anthropomorphic plane: the Greek multiplied

his gods to be the several incarnations of passions and powers and

activities pertaining also, though in less fulness, to mankind.

It is obvious that in point of simplicity and consistency the

monotheistic system must prove superior. As the worshipper’s

intellectual and spiritual capacities develop, he discards the older

and cruder notions in favour of a more enlightened ideal. Abraham’s

crude conception of the deity as a being to whom even human sacrifice

would be acceptable was necessarily rejected by an humaner age to whom

was delivered the message ‘I will have mercy and not sacrifice.’ In the

growth of Greek polytheism, on the contrary, the new did not supersede

the old, but was superimposed upon it. Fresh conceptions were expressed

by the creation or acceptance of fresh gods, but the venerable

embodiments of more primitive beliefs were not necessarily displaced by

them. The development of humaner ideas in one cult was no bar to the

retention of barbarous rites by another. The same deity under different

titles of invocation (ἐπωνυμίαι) was invested with different and even

conflicting characters: and reversely the same religious idea found

several expressions in the cults of widely different deities. The forms

of worship, viewed in the mass, were of an inconsistent and chaotic

complexity. Human sacrifice, we may be sure, was a thing abhorrent to

the majority of the cults of Zeus: yet Lycaean Zeus continued to exact

his toll of human life down to the time of Pausanias[1]. The worship of

Dionysus embodied something of the same religious spirit which pervaded

the teachings of Orpheus and the mysteries of Demeter, and came to be

closely allied with them: yet neither the austerity of Orphism nor

the real spirituality of the Eleusinian cult succeeded in mitigating

the wild orgies of the Bacchant or in repressing the savage rite of

_omophagia_ in which drunken fanatics tore a bull to pieces with their

teeth. Aphrodite was worshipped under two incompatible titles: in the

_rôle_ of the ‘Heavenly’ (οὐρανία), says Artemidorus[2], she looks

favourably upon marriage and childbirth and the home life, while under

her title of ‘Popular’ (πάνδημος) she is hostile to the matron, and

patroness of laxer ties. It is needless to multiply illustrations. The

forms in which the religious spirit of Greece found embodiment are

beyond question confused and mutually inconsistent. The same religious

idea might be expressed in so great a variety of rites, and the same

divine personality might be associated with so great a variety of

ideas, that no formal exposition of Greek religion as a whole was

possible. The verbal limitations of a creed, a _summa theologiae_,

would have been too narrow for the free, imaginative faith of Greece.

It was a necessary condition of Hellenic polytheism that, as it came

into being without any personal founder, without any authoritative

sacred books, so in its development it should be hampered and confined

neither by priestcraft nor by any literature purely and distinctively

religious. The spirit which manifested itself in a myriad forms of

worship could not brook the restraint of any one form of words.

And not only would it have been difficult to give adequate expression

to the essential ideas of Greek religion, but there was no motive for

attempting the task. Those of the philosophers who dealt with religion

wrote and taught for the reason that they had some new idea, some fresh

doctrine, to advance. Plato certainly abounds in references to the

popular beliefs of his age: but his object is not to expound them for

their own sake: rather he utilizes them as illustration and ornament

of his own philosophical views: his treatment of them in the main is

artistic, not scientific. In fact there was no one interested in giving

to popular beliefs an authoritative and dogmatic expression. There

was no hierarchy concerned to arrest the free progress of thought or

to chain men’s minds to the faith of their forefathers. A summary of

popular doctrines, if it could have been written, would have had no

readers, for the simple reason that the people felt their religion

more truly and fully than the writer could express it: and few men

have the interests of posterity so largely at heart, as to write what

their own contemporaries will certainly not read. Thus it appears that

there was neither motive nor means for treating the popular religion

in literary form: to formulate the common-folk’s creed, to analyse the

common-folk’s religion, was a thing neither desired nor feasible.

But because we observe an almost total absence of distinctively

religious literature, we need not for that reason be surprised at the

constant presence of religious feeling in all that a Greek wrote or

sang. Rather it was consistent with that freedom and that absence of

all control and circumscription which we have noted, that religion

should pervade the whole life of the people, whose hearts were its

native soil, and should consequently pervade also the literature in

which their thoughts and doings are recorded. For religion with them

was not a single and separate department of their civilisation, not

an avocation from the ordinary pursuits of men, but rather a spirit

with which work and holiday, gaiety and gloom, were alike penetrated.

We should be misled by the modern devotion to dogma and definite

formulae of faith, were we to think that so vague a religion as Greek

polytheism was any the less an abiding force, any the less capable of

inspiring genuine enthusiasm and reverence. It is not hard to imagine

the worshipper animated for the time by one emotion only, his mind

void of all else and flooded with the one idea incarnate in the divine

being at whose altar he sat in supplication. It is impossible really

to misdoubt the strength and the depth of Greek religious sentiment,

however multifarious and even mutually contradictory its modes of

display. A nation who peopled sky and earth and sea with godlike forms;

who saw in every stream and glen and mountain-top its own haunting,

hallowing presence, and, ill-content that nature alone should do them

honour, sought out the loveliest hills and vales in all their lovely

land to dedicate there the choicest of their art; who consecrated with

lavish love bronze and marble, ivory and gold, all the best that wealth

could win and skill adorn, in honour of the beings that were above man

yet always with him, majestic as Zeus, joyous as Dionysus, grave as

Demeter, light as Aphrodite, yet all divine; such a nation, though it

knew nought of inspired books and formulated creeds, can be convicted

of no shortcoming in real piety and devotion.

Their gods were very near to those whom they favoured; no communion

or intercourse was beyond hope of attainment; gods fought in men’s

battles, guided men’s wanderings, dined at men’s boards, and took to

themselves mortal consorts; and when men grew degenerate and the race

of heroes was no more, gods still held speech with them in oracles.

Religious hopes, religious fears, were the dominant motive of the

people’s whole life. It was in religion that sculpture found its

inspiration, and its highest achievements were in pourtraying deities.

The theatre was a religious institution, and on the stage, without

detriment to reverence, figured the Eumenides themselves. Religious

duties were excuse enough for Sparta to hang back from defending the

freedom of Greece. Religious scruples set enlightened Athens in an

uproar, because a number of idols were decently mutilated. Religious

fears cost her the loss of the proudest armament that ever sailed from

her shores. A charge of irreligion was pretext enough for condemning

to death her noblest philosopher. In everything, great and small, the

pouring of libations at the feast, the taking of omens before battle,

the consulting of the Delphic oracle upon the most important or most

trivial of occasions, the same spirit is manifest. Religion used or

abused, piety or superstition, was to the Greeks an abiding motive and

influence in all the affairs of life.

It is chiefly of these definite doings and customs that literature

tells us, just as art depicts the _mise-en-scène_ of religion. Yet it

would be inconceivable that a people who displayed so strong and so

abundant a religious feeling in all the circumstances and tasks of

life, should not have pondered over the essential underlying questions

of all religion, the nature of the soul and the mystery of life and

death. Literature tells us that to their poets and philosophers these

problems did present themselves, and many were the solutions which

different thinkers propounded: but of the general sense of the people

in this respect, of the fundamental beliefs which guided their conduct

towards gods and men in this life and prompted their care for the dead,

literature furnishes no direct statement: its evidence is fragmentary,

casual, sporadic. Everywhere it displays the externals, but it leaves

the inner spirit veiled. Literature as well as art needs an interpreter.

It is precisely in this task of interpretation that the assistance

offered by the folklore of Modern Greece should be sought. It should

be remembered that there is still living a people who, as they have

inherited the land and the language, may also have inherited the

beliefs and customs, of those ancients whose mazes of religion are

bewildering without a guide who knows them. Among that still living

people it is possible not only to observe acts and usages, but

to enquire also their significance: and though some customs will

undoubtedly be found either to be mere survivals of which the meaning

has long been forgotten, or even to have been subjected to new and

false interpretations, yet others, still rooted in and nourished by an

intelligent belief, may be vital documents of ancient Greek life and

thought.

§ 2. THE SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT TRADITION.

There may perhaps be some few who, quite apart from the continuity of

the Hellenic race, a question with which I must deal later, would be

inclined to pronounce the quest of ancient religion in modern folklore

mere lost labour. The lapse, they may think, of all the centuries which

separate the present day from the age of Hellenic greatness would in

itself disfigure or altogether efface any tradition of genuine value.

Such a view, however, is opposed to all the lessons that have of late

years been gained from a more systematic study of the folklore of all

parts of the world. Certain principles of magic and certain tendencies

of superstition seem to obtain, in curiously similar form, among

peoples far removed both in racial type and in geographical position.

It is sometimes urged by way of explanation that the resources of the

primitive mind are necessarily so limited, that many coincidences in

belief and custom are only to be expected, and that therefore the

similarity of form presented by some superstitions of widely separated

peoples is no argument in favour of their common origin. But, for my

part, when I consider such a belief as that in the Evil Eye, which

possesses, I believe, an almost world-wide notoriety, I find it

more reasonable to suppose that it was a tenet in the creed of some

single primitive people, of whom many present races of the world are

offshoots, and from whom they have inherited the superstition, than

that scores or hundreds of peoples, who had long since diverged in

racial type and dwelling and language, should subsequently have hit

upon one uniform belief. Indeed it may be that in the future the study

of folklore will become a science of no less value than the study of

language, and that by a comparison of the superstitions still held by

various sections of the human race it will be possible to adumbrate

the beliefs of their remotest common ancestors as clearly as, by

a comparison of their various speeches, the outlines of a common

ancestral language have been, and are being, traced. The _data_ of

folklore are in the nature of things more difficult to collect, more

comprehensive in scope, and more liable to misinterpretation, than the

_data_ of linguistic study; but none the less, when once there are

labourers enough in the field, it is not beyond hope that the laws

which govern the tradition and modification of customs and beliefs may

be found to be hardly less definite than the laws of language.

But comparative folklore is outside my present purpose. I assume

only, without much fear of contradiction, that many of the popular

superstitions and customs and magical practices still prevalent in the

world date from a period far more remote than any age on which Greek

history or archaeology can throw even a glimmering of light. If then

I can show that among the Greek folk of to-day there still survive in

full vigour such examples of primaeval superstition as the belief in

‘the evil eye’ and the practice of magic, I shall have established at

least an antecedent probability that there may exist also vestiges of

the religious beliefs and practices of the historical era.

The fear of ‘the evil eye’ (τὸ κακὸ μάτι, or simply τὸ μάτι[3],) is

universal among the Greek peasantry, and fairly common though not so

frankly avowed among the more educated classes. The old words βασκαίνω

and βασκανία are still in use, but ματιάζω and μάτι̯αγμα[4], direct

formations from the word μάτι, are more frequently heard. It would be

difficult to say on what grounds this power of ‘overlooking,’ if I

may use a popular English equivalent, is usually imputed to anyone.

Old women are most generally credited with it, but not so much owing

to any menacing appearance as because they are the chief exponents of

witchcraft and it is only fitting that the wise woman of a village

should possess the power of exercising the evil eye at will. These form

therefore quite a distinct class from those persons whose eyes are

suspected of exerting naturally and involuntarily a baneful influence.

In the neighbourhood of Mount Hymettus it appears that blue eyes fall

most commonly under suspicion: and this is the more curious because in

Attica, with its large proportion of Albanian inhabitants, blue eyes

are by no means rare. Possibly, however, it was the native Greeks’

suspicion of the strangers who settled among them, which first caused

this particular development of the belief in this district. Myself

possessing eyes of the objectionable colour, I have more than once been

somewhat taken aback at having my ordinary salutation (’γει̯ά σου,

‘health to you,’) to some passing peasant answered only by the sign

of the Cross. Fortunately in other localities I never to my knowledge

inspired the same dread; had it been general, I should have been forced

to abandon my project of enquiring into Greek folklore; for the risk

of being ‘overlooked’ holds the Greek peasant, save for a few phrases

of aversion, in awe-stricken silence. My impression is that any eyes

which are peculiar in any way are apt to incur suspicion, and that in

different localities different qualities, colouring or brilliance or

prominence, excite special notice and, with notice, disfavour. The evil

eye, it would seem, is a regular attribute both of the Gorgon and of

the wolf; for both, by merely looking upon a man, are still believed to

inflict some grievous suffering,--dumbness, madness, or death; and yet

there is little in common between the narrow, crafty eye of the wolf

and either the prominent, glaring eyes in an ancient Medusa’s head or

the passionate, seductive eyes of the modern Gorgon, unless it be that

any fixed unflinching gaze is sufficient reason for alarm.

Some such explanation will best account for the strange vagary of

superstition which brings under the category of the evil eye two

classes of things which seemingly would have no connexion either with

it or with each other, looking-glasses and the stars.

To look at oneself in a mirror is, in some districts, regarded as a

dangerous operation, especially if it be prolonged. A bride, being

specially liable to all sinister influences, is wise to forego the

pleasure of seeing her own reflection in the glass; and a woman in

child-bed, who is no less liable, is deprived of all chance of seeing

herself by the removal of all mirrors from the room. The risk in

all cases is usually greatest at night, and in the town of Sinasos

in Cappadocia no prudent person would at that time incur it[5]. The

reflection, it would seem, of a man’s own image may put the evil eye

upon him by its steady gaze: and it was in fear of such an issue that

Damoetas, in the _Idylls_ of Theocritus, after criticizing his own

features reflected in some glassy pool, spat thrice into his bosom that

he might not suffer from the evil eye[6].

The belief in a certain magical property of the stars akin to that of

the evil eye is far more widely held. They are, as it were, the eyes

of night, and in the darkness ‘overlook’ men and their belongings as

disastrously as does the human eye in the day-time. Just as a woman

after confinement is peculiarly liable to the evil eye and must have

amulets hung about her and mirrors removed from her room, so must

particular care be taken to avoid exposure to stellar influence.

Sonnini de Magnoncourt, who had some medical experience in Greece,

speaks authoritatively on this subject. According to the popular view,

he says, she must not let herself be ‘seen by a star’; and if she

goes out before the prescribed time,--according to this authority,

only eight days, but now preferably forty days, from the birth of

the child,--she is careful to return home and to shut herself up in

her room by sunset, and after that hour to open neither door nor

window, for fear that a star may surprise her and cause the death of

both mother and child[7]. So too in the island of Chios, if there is

occasion to carry leaven from one house to another, it must be covered

up,--in the day-time ‘to prevent it from being seen by any strange

eye,’ at night ‘to prevent it from being seen by the stars’: for if it

were ‘overlooked’ by either, the bread made with it would not rise[8].

Such customs show clearly that the stars are held to exercise exactly

the same malign influence as the human eye: the same simple phrases

denote in Greek the operation of either, and the ‘overlooking’ of

either has the same blighting effect.

The range of this mischievous influence--for I now take it that the

evil eye and the stars are indistinguishable in their ill effects--is

very large. Human beings are perhaps most susceptible to it. In some

districts[9] indeed new-born infants up to the time of their baptism

are held to be immune; till then they are the children of darkness,

and the powers of darkness do not move against them. But in general

no one at any moment of his life is wholly secure. Amulets however

afford a reasonable safety at ordinary times; it is chiefly in the

critical hours of life, at marriage and at the birth of children, that

the fear of the evil eye is lively and the precautions against it more

elaborate. Animals also may be affected. Horses and mules are very

commonly protected by amulets hung round their necks, and this is the

original purpose of the strings of blue beads with which the cab-horses

of Athens are often decorated. The shepherd too has cause for anxiety

on behalf of his flock, and, when a bad season or disease diminishes

the number of his lambs, is apt to re-echo the pastoral complaint,

Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos[10].

‘Some jealous eye “o’erlooks” my tender lambs.’

And the pernicious influence makes itself felt in even a lower scale

of life. In the neighbourhood of Sparta, where there is a considerable

silk industry, the women believe that silk-worms are susceptible of

mischief from the evil eye; and the same superstition is recorded by de

Magnoncourt from Chios.

Of inanimate things, those most easily damaged in a similar way are

leaven, salt, and vinegar,--as being possessed of quickening or

preservative properties to which the blighting, destructive power of

the evil eye or of the stars is naturally opposed. The precautions

to be observed in carrying leaven from house to house have already

been noticed. Equal care is required in the making of the bread. It

often happens, so I have been told, that when a woman is kneading,

some malicious neighbour will come in, ostensibly for a chat, and put

the evil eye upon the leaven; and unless the woman perceives what is

going on and averts disaster by a special gesture which turns the evil

influence against the intruder, nothing to call bread will be baked

that day. Similarly it is unwise to borrow or to give away either salt

or vinegar at night[11]; but if it is necessary, it is prudent to

take precautions to prevent its exposure to the stars, which may even

be cheated of their prey by some such device as calling the vinegar

(ξεῖδι) ‘syrup’ (γλυκάδι) in asking for it[12]. Further, an object

which has been exposed to the stars may even carry the infection, as

it were, to those who afterwards use it. For this reason the linen and

clothes of a mother and her new-born infant must never be left out of

doors at night[13].

The precaution, as I have said, most commonly adopted is the wearing

of amulets. The articles which have the greatest intrinsic virtue for

this purpose are garlic, bits of blue stone or glass often in the form

of beads, old coins, salt, and charcoal: but many other things, by

their associations, may be rendered efficacious. The stump of a candle

burnt on some high religious festival, or a shred of the Holy Shroud

used on Good Friday, is by no means to be despised; and the bones of a

bat or a snake’s skin over which a witch has muttered her incantations

acquire thereby an equal merit. But such charms as these are _objets

de luxe_; the ordinary man contents himself with the commoner articles

whose virtue is in themselves. No midwife, I understand, would go about

her business without a plentiful supply of garlic. It is well that the

room should be redolent of it, and a few cloves must be fastened about

the baby’s neck either at birth or immediately after the baptism. Blue

beads are in general use for women, children, and animals. If men wear

them, they are usually concealed from view. But mothers value them

above all, because in virtue of their colour--γαλάζιος is modern Greek

for ‘blue’--they ensure an abundant supply of milk (γάλα) unaffected

by the evil eye or any other sinister potency. Salt and charcoal are

most conveniently carried in little bags with a string to go round the

neck. An effective charm consists of three grains of each material with

an old coin. But many other things are also used; when I have been

permitted to inspect the contents of such a bag, I have found strange

assortments of things, pebbles, pomegranate-seeds, bits of soap, leaves

of basil and other plants, often hard to recognize through age and dirt

and grease. One scientifically-minded man recommended me sulphate of

copper.

Special occasions also have special precautions proper to them. At

a wedding, the time of all others when envious eyes are most likely

to cause mischief, the bridegroom commonly carries a black-handled

knife slipped inside his belt[14], and the bride has an open pair of

scissors in her shoe or some convenient place, in order that any such

evil influence may be ‘cut off.’ But some of these magical safeguards

concern not only the evil eye, but ghostly perils in general, and will

claim notice in other connexions.

If, however, through lack of precautions or in spite of them, a man

suspects that he is being ‘overlooked,’ he must rely for protection

on the resources with which nature has provided him. The simplest

thing is to spit,--three times for choice, for that number has magical

value,--but on oneself, not at the suspected foe. Theocritus was

scrupulously correct, according to the modern view, in making his

shepherd spit thrice on his own bosom. Another expedient, though no

garlic be at hand to give effect to the words, is to ejaculate, σκόρδο

’στὰ μάτι̯α σου, ‘garlic in your eyes!’ Or use may be made of an

imprecation considered effective in many circumstances of danger, νὰ

φᾶς τὸ κεφάλι σου, ‘may you devour your own head!’ Lastly there is the

φάσκελον, a gesture of the hand,--first raised with the fist closed

and then suddenly advanced either with all the fingers open but bent,

or with the thumb and little finger alone extended,--which returns the

evil upon the offender’s own head with usury.

But, in spite of these manifold means of defence, the evil eye has

its victims; some malady seizes upon a man, for which no other cause

can be assigned; and the question of a cure arises. Here the Church

comes to the rescue, with special forms of prayer, commonly known as

βασκανισμοί, provided for the purpose. The person affected goes to the

church, or, if the case be serious, the priest comes to his house,

the prayers are recited, and the sufferer is fumigated with incense.

Also if there happens to be a sacred spring or well, ἅγι̯ασμα as it

is called, in the precincts of any church near,--and there are a fair

number of churches in Greece which derive both fame and emolument from

the possession of healing and miracle-working waters[15],--the victim

of the evil eye is well-advised to drink of them. There are some,

however, who rate the powers of a witch more highly than those of a

priest, and prefer her incantations to the prayers of the Church. She

knows, or is ready to improvise, forms of exorcism (ξόρκια, ξορκισμοί)

for all kinds of affliction. A typical example[16] begins, as do many

of the incantations of witchcraft, with an invocation of Christ and the

Virgin and the Trinity and the twelve Apostles; then comes a complaint

against the grievous illness which needs curing; next imprecations

upon the man or woman responsible for causing it; and finally an

adjuration of the evil eye to depart from the sufferer’s ‘head and

heart and finger-nails and toe-nails and the cockles of the heart,

and to begone to the hills and mountains[17]’ and so forth; after all

which the Lord’s prayer or any religious formula may be repeated _ad

libitum_. During the recitation of some such charm, the witch fumigates

her patient either with incense, or,--what is more effectual where a

guess can be made as to the identity of the envious enemy,--by burning

something belonging to the latter, a piece of his clothing or even a

handful of earth from his doorway[18]. Or again, if the patient is at a

loss to conjecture who it is that has harmed him, recourse may be had

to divination. A familiar method is to burn leaves or petals of certain

plants,--basil and gillyflower being of special repute[19],--mentioning

at the same time a number of names in succession. A loud pop or

crackling denotes that the name of the offender has been reached, and

the treatment can then proceed as described above.

* * * * *

No less widespread in Greece than the belief in the evil eye, and

equally primitive in character, is the practice of magic. Few

villages, I believe, even at the present day do not possess a wise

woman (μάγισσα). Often indeed, owing to the spread of education and

the desire to be thought ‘European’ and ‘civilised,’ the inhabitants

will indignantly deny her existence, and affect to speak of witches

as things of the past. But in times of illness or trouble they are

apt to forget their pretensions of superiority, and do not hesitate

to avail themselves of the lore inherited from their superstitious

forefathers. For the most part women are the depositaries of these

ancient secrets, and the knowledge of charms, incantations, and all

the rites and formularies of witchcraft is handed down from mother to

daughter. But men are not excluded from the profession. The functions

of the priest, for example, are not clearly distinguished from those of

the unconsecrated magician. At a baptism, which often takes place in

the house where the child is born and not at the church, the priest

opens the service by exorcising all evil spirits and influences from

the four corners of the room by swinging his censer, but the midwife,

who usually knows something of magic, or one of the god-parents,

accompanies him and makes assurance doubly sure by spitting in each

suspected nook. Moreover if a priest lead a notoriously evil life or

chance to be actually unfrocked, the devil invests him with a double

portion of magical power, which on any serious occasion is sure to be

in request. But, apart from the clergy who owe their powers to the use

or abuse of their office, there are other men too here and there who

deal in witchcraft. They are usually specialists in some one branch,

and professors of the white art rather than of the black,--one versed

in popular medicine and the incantations proper to it, another in

undoing mischievous spells, another in laying the restless dead. The

general practitioners, causing disease as often as curing it, binding

with curses as readily as loosing from them, are for the most part

women.

I shall not attempt to enumerate here all the petty uses of magic

of which I have heard or read: indeed an exhaustive treatment of

the subject, even for one who had devoted a lifetime to cultivating

an intimacy with Greek witches, would be hardly possible; for their

secrets are not lightly divulged, and new circumstances may at any

time require the invention of new methods. I propose only to describe

some of the best known and most widely spread practices, some

beneficent, others mischievous. Most of them will be seen to be based

on the primitive and worldwide principle of sympathetic magic,--the

principle that a relation, analogy, or sympathy existing, or being once

established, between two objects, that which the one does or suffers,

will be done or suffered also by the other.

If it be desired to cause physical injury or death to an enemy, the

simplest and surest method is to make an image of him in some malleable

material,--wax, lead, or clay,--and, if opportunity offer, to knead

into it or attach to it some trifle from the enemy’s person. Three

hairs from his head are a highly valuable acquisition, but parings

of his nails or a few shreds of his clothing will serve: or again

the image may be put in some place where his shadow will fall upon

it as he passes. These refinements of the practice, however, are not

indispensable; the image by itself will suffice. This being made, the

treatment of it varies according to the degree of suffering which it is

desired to inflict.

Acute pain may be caused to the man by driving into his image pins

or nails. This device is popularly known as κάρφωμα, ‘pinning’ or

‘nailing,’ and many variations of it are practised. One case recorded

in some detail was that of a priest’s wife who from her wedding-day

onward was a prey to various pains and ills. The priest tried in vain

to relieve them by prayer, and finally called in a witch to aid him.

After performing certain occult rites of divination, she informed him

that he must dig in the middle of his courtyard. There he found a tin,

which on being opened revealed an assortment of pernicious charms,--one

of his wife’s bridal shoes with a large nail through it, a dried-up bit

of soap (presumably from the bridal bath) stuck full of pins, a wisp

of hair (probably some of the bride’s combings) all in a tangle, and

lastly a padlock. The nail and pins were at once pulled out and the

hair carefully disentangled, with the result that the woman was freed

from her pains and her complicated ailments. But the padlock could not

be undone, and was thrown away into the sea, with the result that the

woman remained childless. The bride had been ‘nailed’ (καρφωμένη) by a

rival. In this case, it is true, no waxen or leaden image was used, but

the principle is the same. The use of an image is only preferable as

allowing the maker of it to select any part of the body which he wishes

to torture.

Another method of dealing with the image is to melt or wear it away

gradually; if it be of wax or lead, it may be seared with a red-hot

poker, or placed bodily in the fire; if it be of clay, it may be

scraped with a knife, or put into some stream which will gradually wash

it away. Accordingly as it is thus wasted away, slowly or rapidly, so

will the person whom it represents waste and die. This is in principle

the same system as that adopted by Simaetha in the Idyll of Theocritus

to win back the love of Delphis. ‘Even as I melt this wax,’ she cries,

‘with God’s help, so may the Myndian Delphis by love be straightway

molten[20]’; and she too used in her magic rites a fringe from Delphis’

cloak, to shred and to cast into the fierce flame.[21] Only, in her

case, the incantation turned what might have been a death-spell into a

love-charm.

Love and jealousy are still the passions which most frequently suggest

the use of magic. Occult methods are necessary to the girl whose

modesty prevents her from courting openly the man on whom her heart is

set, and not less so to her who would punish the faithlessness of a

former lover.

The following are some recorded recipes[22] for winning the love of an

apathetic swain.

Obtain some milk from the breasts of a mother and daughter who are both

nursing male infants at the same time, or, in default of that, from any

two women both nursing first-born male infants; mix it with wheat-flour

and leaven, and contrive that the man eat of it. Repeat therewith the

following incantation: ὅπως κλαῖνε καὶ λαχταρίζουν τώρα τὰ παιδία ποῦ

τοὺς λείπει τὸ γάλα τους, ἔτσι νὰ λαχταρίσῃ καὶ ὁ τάδε γι̯ὰ τὴν τάδε,

‘As the infants now cry and throb with desire for the milk which fails

them, so may N. throb with desire for M.’

Take a bat or three young swallows, and roast to cinders on a fire of

sticks gathered by a witch at midnight where cross-roads meet: at the

same time repeat the words, ὅπως στρηφογυρίζει, τρέμει, καὶ λαχταρίζει

ἡ νυχτερίδα ἔτσι νὰ γυρίζῃ ὁ τάδε, νὰ τρέμῃ καὶ νὰ λαχταρίζῃ ἡ καρδι̯ά

του γι̯ὰ τὴν τάδε, ‘As the bat writhes, quivers, and throbs, so may N.

turn, and his heart quiver and throb with desire for M.’ The ashes of

the bat are then to be put into the man’s drink.

Take a bat and bury it at cross-roads; burn incense over it for forty

days at midnight; dig it up and grind its spine to powder. Put the dust

in the man’s drink as before.

Such are some of the magic means of winning love; and the rites, while

involving as much cruelty to the bat as was suffered by the bird of

witchcraft, the ἴυγξ, in the ancient counterpart of these practices,

are at any rate, save for the ashes in the man’s liquor, innocuous

to him. But the weapon of witchcraft wherewith a jealous woman takes

vengeance upon a man who has forsaken her or who has never returned

her affection and takes to himself another for his bride, is truly

diabolical. This is known as the spell of ‘binding’ (δέσιμον or

ἀμπόδεμα[23]). Its purpose is to fetter the virility of the husband

and so to prevent the consummation of the marriage. The rite itself

is simple. Either the jealous girl herself or a witch employed by her

attends the wedding, taking with her a piece of thread or string in

which three loops have been loosely made. During the reading of the

gospel or the pronouncement of the blessing, she pulls the ends of

the string, forming thereby three knots in it, and at the same time

mutters the brief incantation, δένω τὸν τάδε καὶ τὴν τάδε, καὶ τὸ

διάβολο ’στὴ μέση, ‘I bind N. and M. and the Devil betwixt them.’ The

thread is subsequently buried or hidden, and unless it can be found

and either be burnt or have the knots untied, there is small hope for

the man to recover from his impotence. There is no doubt, I think,

that the extreme fear in which this spell is held has in some cases so

worked upon the bridegroom’s nerves as to render the ‘binding’ actually

effective, just as extreme faith in miraculous _icons_ occasionally

effects cures of nervous maladies[24]. Sonnini de Magnoncourt vouches

for a case, known to him personally, in which the effect of this

terror continued for several months, until finally the marriage was

dissolved on the ground of non-consummation, and the man afterwards

married another wife and regained his energy[25]. I myself have more

than once been told of similar cases, in which however divorce was not

sought (it is extremely rare in Greece) but the spell was broken by

the finding of the thread or by countervailing operations of magic. In

Aetolia, where this superstition is specially rife, I knew of a priest,

a son of Belial by all accounts, who made a speciality of loosing

these binding-spells. By his direction the afflicted man and his wife

would go at sunset to a lonely chapel on a mountain-side, taking

with them food and a liberal supply of wine, with which to regale

themselves and the priest till midnight. At that hour they undressed

and stood before the priest, who pronounced over them some form of

exorcism and benediction,--my informant could not give me the words.

They then retired to rest on some bedding provided by the priest on

the chapel-floor, while he recited more prayers and swung his censer

over them. I was assured that more than one couple in the small town

where I was staying confessed to having obtained release from the spell

by a night thus spent and with the extreme simplicity of the peasants

of that district thought no shame to confess it. And this is the more

easily intelligible, because, as we shall see later[26], the practice

of ἐγκοίμησις, sleeping in some holy place with a view to being cured

of any ailment, is as familiar to Christians of to-day as it was to

their pagan ancestors.

But pure magic too, no less than these quasi-Christian methods, may

effect the loosing of the bond, even without the discovery of the

knotted thread which is the source of the mischief. In a recent case

on record, a witch, having been consulted by a couple thus distressed,

took them to the sea-shore, bade them undress, bound them together with

a vine-shoot, and caused them to stand embracing one another in the

water until forty waves had beaten upon them[27]. On the significance

of the details of this charm no comment is made by the recorder of

it; but they deserve, I think, some notice. The vine-shoot, like the

olive-shoot, is a known instrument of purification, and is sometimes

laid on the bier beside the dead during the lying-in-state (πρόθεσις).

Salt is likewise possessed of magical powers to avert all evil

influences,--we have noticed the use of it in amulets to protect from

the evil eye,--and the sea is therefore more efficacious than a river

for mystic purposes. Forty is the number of purification; the churching

of women takes place on the fortieth day from the birth, whence the

Greek word for to ‘church’ is σαραντίζω,--from σαράντα, ‘forty.’ Lastly

the beating of the waves seems intended to drive out by physical

compulsion the devil or any power of evil by which husband and wife are

kept apart.

In view of this danger it is natural that ample precautions should

be taken at every wedding. During the dressing of the bride or the

bridegroom, it is customary to throw a handful of salt into a vessel

of water, saying, ὅπως λυώνει τὸ ἁλάτι, ἔτσι νὰ λυώσουν οἱ ὀχτροί

(ἐχθροί), ‘As the salt dissolves, so may all enemies dissolve.’ The

black-handled knife worn by the bridegroom in his belt, and the pair

of scissors put in the bride’s shoe or sometimes attached to her

girdle, both of which have been noticed as safeguards against the

evil eye, serve also to ‘cut’ this magic bond of impotence. Sometimes

too a pair of scissors and a piece of fisherman’s net are put in the

bridal bed. In Acarnania and Aetolia, and it may be elsewhere, a still

more primitive custom prevails; both bride and bridegroom wear an

old piece of fishing-net,--in which therefore resides the virtue of

salt water,--round the loins next to the body; and from these bits of

netting are afterwards made amulets to be worn by any children of the

marriage. Such customs are likely long to continue among the simpler

folk of modern Greece, who frankly and innocently wish the bride at her

wedding reception ‘seven sons and one daughter.’

But it is not only for ailments induced by malicious magic that magical

means of cure or aversion are used. The whole of popular medicine is

based upon the knowledge of charms and incantations. Many simples and

drugs are of course known and employed; but it is still generally

believed, as it was in old time, that ‘there would be no good in the

herb without the incantation[28].’ For the most ordinary diseases are

credited to supernatural causes, and there is no ill to which flesh is

heir,--from a headache to the plague,--without some demon responsible

for it. A nightmare and the sense of physical oppression which often

accompanies it are not traced to so vulgar a cause as a heavy supper,

but are dignified as the work of a malicious being named Βραχνᾶς[29],

who in the dead of night delights to seat himself on the chest of

some sleeper, and by his weight produces an unpleasant feeling of

congestion. Material for a similar personification has been found also

in the more terrible pestilences by which Greece has from time to time

been visited. It is still believed among the poorest folk of Athens

that in a cleft on the Hill of the Nymphs, undisturbed even by the

modern observatory on its summit, there lives a gruesome sisterhood,

a trinity of she-devils, Χολέρα, Βλογι̯ά, and Πανοῦκλα,--Cholera,

Smallpox, and Plague.

Granted then that illness in general is the malicious work of

supernatural beings, common reason recommends the employment of

supernatural means to defeat and expel them. Forms of exorcism have

in past times been provided by the Church and are still in vogue; but

here, as in other matters, the functions of the priest are shared

with the witch, and an old woman versed in the traditional lore of

popular medicine is as competent as any bishop to cast out the devils

of sickness. Nor do the popular incantations differ much in substance

from the ecclesiastical. The witch knows better than to try to cast

out devils in the Devil’s name, and her exorcisms contain invocations

of God and the saints of the same character as those sanctioned by

the Church; only in her accompanying rites and gestures there is a

picturesque variety which is lacking in the swinging of the priest’s

censer.

The details of the rites and the full forms of incantation are in

general extremely difficult to obtain. The witches themselves are

always reticent on such points, and I have known one plead, by way of

excuse for her apparent discourtesy in withholding information, that

the virtue of magic was diminished in proportion as the knowledge of

it was disseminated. One cure, however,--a cure for headache--will

sufficiently illustrate the principle on which the healing art among

the common-folk generally proceeds. This cure is based upon the

assumption that the tense and bruised feeling of a bad headache is

due to the presence of some demon within the skull, and that the

room which he occupies must have been provided by distention of the

head,--which will therefore measure more in circumference while it

aches than when the demon has been exorcised. This is demonstrated in

the course of the cure. The witch takes a handkerchief and measures

with it the patient’s head. Doubling back the six or eight inches of

the handkerchief that remain over, she puts in the fold three cloves of

garlic, three grains of salt, or some other article of magical virtue,

and ties a knot. Then waving the handkerchief about the patient’s head,

she recites her form of exorcism,--but usually in a tone so low and

mumbling that the bystanders cannot catch the words. The exorcism being

finished, she again measures the head, and this time the knot, which

marks the previous measurement, is found to overlap, by two or three

inches it may be, the other end of the kerchief,--a sure sign that the

intruding demon has been expelled and that the head having returned to

its natural dimensions will no longer ache[30]. The exact words of the

incantation which should accompany this rite I could not obtain; but

I make little doubt that in substance they would differ little from a

Macedonian formula recently published:--

‘For megrim and headache:

‘Write on a piece of paper:--God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of

Jacob, loose the demon of the megrim from the head of Thy servant. I

charge thee, unclean spirit which ever sittest in the head of man,

take thy pain and depart from the head: from half-head, membrane, and

vertebra, from the servant of God, So-and-so. Stand we fairly, stand we

with fear of God. Amen[31].’

In this instance we have the formula but not, it seems, the rite which

should accompany it; for the mere act of committing the words to paper

is hardly likely to be deemed sufficient. Probably the paper would be

laid under the pillow at night, or, as I have known in other cases,

would be burnt, and its ashes taken as a sedative powder.

The various charms which we have so far considered are directed towards

the hurt or the healing of man: but external nature is also responsive

to magic spells. It is rumoured that there are still witches who have

power to draw down the moon from the heavens by incantation; but a more

useful ceremony, designed to draw down the clouds upon a parched land,

may still be actually witnessed. The most recent case known to me was

in the April of 1899, when the rite was carried out some few days,

unfortunately, after I had left the district by the people of Larissa.

The custom is known all over the north of Greece--in Epirus[32],

Thessaly, and Macedonia,--and also it is said among some of the Turks,

Wallachs, and Servians; to the south of those regions and in the

islands of the Aegean I heard nothing of it. A boy (or sometimes, it

is said, a girl[33]) is stripped naked and then dressed up in wreaths

and festoons of leafage, grass, and flowers, and, escorted by a troop

of children of his own age, goes the round of the neighbourhood. He is

known as the περπερία, and his companions sing as they go,

Perpería goes his way

And to God above doth pray,

Rain, O God, a gentle rain,

Shed, O God, a gentle shower,

That the fields may give their grain,

And the vines may come to flower,

and so forth in such simple strain[34]. At each doorway and more

particularly at every spring and well, which it is the special duty of

the Perpería to visit, anyone who will may empty a vessel of water over

the boy, to whom some compensation for his drenching is usually made in

the form of sweetmeats or coppers.

The word περπερία has been the subject of considerable discussion.

By-forms περπερίτσα, περπεροῦνα, and παππαροῦνα also occur. The first

two are of the nature of diminutives; the last-named is a corrupt form

used only, so far as I know, in one district of Epirus, and means

a ‘garden-poppy.’ The perversion of the word has in this district

(Zagorion) affected the rite itself; for it is considered necessary

for this flower to be used largely in dressing up the chief actor in

the ceremony[35]. But the most general, and, as I think, most correct

form is περπερία (or περπερεία). With the ancient word περπερεία,

derived from the Latin _perperus_ and used in the sense of ‘boasting’

or ‘ostentation,’ it can, I feel, have no connexion; and I suggest that

it stands for περιπορεία, with the same abbreviation as in περπατῶ

for περιπατῶ, ‘walk,’ and subsequent assimilation of the first two

syllables. If my conjecture is right, the word originally meant nothing

more than a ‘procession round’ the village; next it became confined in

usage to a procession for the particular purpose of procuring rain;

and finally, the words πορεία[36] and πορεύομαι having been lost from

popular speech, it was taken to be the name of the boy who plays the

uncomfortable part of vegetation craving water. And indeed it would

seem likely that the song which forms part of the ceremony was actually

first composed at a time when περπερία was still understood in the

sense of ‘procession’: for in every recorded version known to me it

would be still possible to interpret the word in this meaning without

detriment to the context.

The rite itself as an example of sympathetic magic requires no

commentary: a simpler application of the principle that like produces

like could not be found.

* * * * *

Other examples of primitive customs and beliefs still prevalent

in Greece might easily be amassed: but I have preferred to select

these few for detailed treatment rather than to glance over a larger

number, in order that they may the more clearly be seen to belong to

certain types of superstition found the whole world over and therefore

presumably dating from prehistoric ages: for if the population of

Greece has proved a good vehicle for the transmission of superstitions

so primaeval, it will surely follow that there is nothing extravagant

in hoping to learn also from their traditions something of the religion

of historic Hellas.

§ 3. THE SURVIVAL OF HELLENIC TRADITION.

There may however be some who, while admitting that mere lapse of time

need not have extinguished ancient Hellenic ideas, will be disposed to

question the likelihood, even the possibility, of their transmission

on racial grounds. The belief in the evil eye and the practice of

sympathetic magic were once, they may say, the common property of the

whole uncivilised world; and though the inhabitants of modern Greece

have inherited these old superstitions and usages, there is nothing

to show from what ancestry they have received the inheritance. The

population, it may be urged, has changed; the Greeks of to-day are not

Hellenes; their blood has been contaminated by foreign admixture, and

with this admixture may have come external, non-Hellenic traditions;

has not Fallmerayer stoutly maintained that the modern inhabitants of

Greece have practically no claim to the name of Hellenes, but come of a

stock Slavonic in the main, though cross-bred with the offscourings of

many peoples?

The historical facts from which Fallmerayer argued are not to be

slighted. It is well established[37] that, from the middle of the sixth

century onwards, successive hordes of Slavonic invaders swept over

Greece, driving such of the native population as escaped destruction

into the more mountainous or remote districts; that in the middle of

the eighth century, when the numbers of the Greek population had been

further reduced by the great pestilence of 746, ‘the whole country,’

to use the exact phrase of Constantine Porphyrogenitus[38], ‘became

Slavonic and was occupied by foreigners’; that the Slavonic supremacy

lasted at least until the end of the tenth century; that thereafter

a gradual fusion of the remnants of the Greek population with their

conquerors began, but proceeded so slowly that at the beginning of the

thirteenth century the ‘Franks,’ as the warriors of Western Christendom

were popularly called, found Slavonic tribes in Elis and Laconia quite

detached from the rest of the population, acknowledging indeed the

supremacy of the Byzantine government, but still employing their own

language and their own laws; and finally that the amalgamation of the

two races was not complete even by the middle of the fifteenth century,

for the Turks at their conquest of Greece found several tribes of the

Peloponnese, especially in the neighbourhood of Mount Taygetus, still

speaking a Slavonic tongue.

If then, as is now generally admitted, Fallmerayer’s conclusions were

somewhat exaggerated, it remains none the less an historical fact that

there is a very large admixture of Slavonic blood in the veins of the

present inhabitants of Greece. The truth of this is moreover enforced

by the physical characteristics of the people as a whole. Travellers

conversant alike with Slavs and with modern Greeks have affirmed to me

their impression that there is a close physical resemblance between the

two races; and while I have not the experience of Slavonic races which

would permit me to judge of this resemblance for myself, it certainly

offers the best explanation of my own observations with regard to the

variations of physical type in different parts of the Greek world. In

the islands of the Aegean and in the promontory of Maina, to which the

Slavs never penetrated, the ancient Hellenic types are far commoner

than in the rest of the Peloponnese or in Northern Greece. Not a

little of the charm of Tenos or Myconos or Scyros lies in the fact

that the grand and impassive beauty of the earlier Greek sculpture may

still be seen in the living figures and faces of men and women: and if

anyone would see in the flesh the burly, black-bearded type idealised

in a Heracles, he need but go to the south of the Peloponnese, and

among the Maniotes he will soon be satisfied: for there he will find

not merely an occasional example, as of reversion to an ancestral type,

but a whole tribe of swarthy, stalwart warriors, whose aspect seems to

justify their claim that in proud, though poverty-stricken, isolation

they have kept their native peninsula free from alien aggression,

and the old Laconian blood still pure in their veins. The ordinary

Greek of the mainland, on the other hand, is usually of a mongrel and

unattractive appearance; and in view of the marked difference of the

type in regions untouched by the Slavs, I cannot but impute his lack of

beauty to his largely Slavonic ancestry.

Yet even in the centre of the Peloponnese where the Slavonic influence

has probably been strongest, the pure Greek type is not wholly extinct.

I remember a young man who acted as ostler and waiter and in all other

capacities at a small _khan_ on the road from Tripolitza to Sparta, who

would not have been despised as a model by Praxiteles; and elsewhere

too, now and again, I have seen statuesque forms and classic features,

less perfect indeed than his, but yet proclaiming beyond question an

Hellenic lineage; so that I should hesitate to say that in any part of

Greece the population is as purely Slavonic as in Maina or many of the

islands it is purely Greek.

But, as I think, the exact proportion of Slavonic and of Hellenic

blood in the veins of the modern Greeks is not a matter of supreme

importance. Even if their outward appearance were universally and

completely Slavonic, I would still maintain that they deserve the

name of Greeks. Though their lineage were wholly Slavonic, their

nationality, I claim, would still be Hellenic. For the nationality of

a people, like the personality of an individual, is something which

eludes definition but which embraces the mental and the moral as

well as the physical. A man’s personality is not to be determined by

knowledge of his family and his physiognomy alone; and similarly racial

descent and physical type are not the sole indices of nationality. Even

if a purely Slavonic ancestry had dowered the inhabitants of Greece

with a purely Slavonic appearance, yet, if their thoughts and speech

and acts were, as they are, Greek, I would still venture to call them

Greek in nationality. _Ce n’est que la peau dont l’Ethiope ne change

pas._

But the people of modern Greece do not actually present so extreme

a case of acquired nationality. They are partly Greek in race: and

if it should appear that they are wholly Greek in nationality, the

explanation must simply be that the character, no less than the

language, of their Hellenic ancestors was superior in vitality to that

of the Slavs who intermarried with them, and alone has been transmitted

to the modern Greek people.

What, then, is the national character at the present day?

The first feature of it which casual conversation with any Greek will

soon bring into view is that narrow patriotism which was so remarkable

a trait in the Greeks of old time. If he be asked what is his native

land (πατρίδα), his answer will be, not Greece nor any of the larger

divisions of it, but the particular town or hamlet in which he happened

to be born: and if in later life he change his place of abode, though

he live in his new home ten or twenty years, he will regard himself

and be regarded by the native-born inhabitants as a foreigner (ξένος).

Or again if a man obtain work for a short time in another part of

the country, or if a girl marry an inhabitant of a village half a

dozen miles from her own, the departure is mourned with some of those

plaintive songs of exile in which the popular muse delights. Nor are

there lacking historical cases in which this narrow love of country

has produced something more than fond lamentations; the boast of the

Maniotes that they have never acknowledged alien masters is in the

main a true boast, and it was pure patriotism which nerved them in

their long struggle with the Turks for the possession of their rugged,

barren, storm-lashed home. It was patriotism too, narrow and proud,

that both sustained the heroic outlaws of Souli in their defiance of

Ottoman armies, and also,--because they disdained alliance with their

Greek neighbours,--contributed to their final downfall.

But so tenacious and indomitable a courage is in modern, as it was in

ancient, Greece the exception rather than the rule. The men of Maina

and of Souli are comparable to the Spartans: but in no period of Greek

history has steadfast bravery been commonly displayed. Yet, in spite

of the humiliating experiences of the late Graeco-Turkish war, the

Greek people should not be judged devoid of courage. But theirs is a

courage which comes of impulse rather than of self-command; a courage

which might prompt a charge as brilliant as that of Marathon, but could

not cheerfully face the hardships of a campaign; a courage which might

turn a slight success into a victory, but could not save a retreat from

becoming a rout.

It must be acknowledged also that the rank and file are in general

more admirable than their officers. The bravery of the men, impulsive

and short-lived though it be, is inspired by a real devotion of

themselves to a cause; whereas among the officers self-seeking and even

self-saving are conspicuous faults. Even the really courageous leaders

seldom have a single eye to the success of their arms. Their plans are

marred by petty jealousies. The same rivalries for the supreme command

which embarrassed the Greeks of old in defending their liberty against

Persia, were repeated in the struggles of the last century to throw off

the Turkish yoke. And if in both cases the Greeks were successful, in

neither was victory due to the unity and harmony of their leaders, but

rather to that passionate hatred of the barbarians which stirred the

people as a whole.

Indeed, not only in war but in all conditions of life, any personal

eminence or distinction has been apt to turn the head of a Greek.

‘The abundant enjoyment of power or wealth,’ said the ancients not

without knowledge of the national character, ‘begets lawlessness and

arrogance’; and in humbler phrase the modern proverb sums up the same

qualities of the race,--καλὸς δοῦλος, κακὸς ἀφέντης, ‘a good servant

and a bad master.’ In all periods of Greek history there have been

few men who have attained to power without abusing it. The honour

of being returned to the Greek Parliament upsets the mental balance

of a large number of deputies. Without any more intimate knowledge

of politics than can be obtained from second-rate newspapers, they

believe themselves called and qualified to lead each his own party,

with the result--so it is commonly said--that no government since the

first institution of parliament has ever had an assured majority in

the House, and on an average there have been more than one dissolution

a year. The modern parliament is as unstable an institution as the

ancient ecclesia of Athens when there was no longer a Pericles to

control it, and its demagogues are as numerous.

Even the petty eminence of a village schoolmaster proves to be too

giddy a pinnacle for many. Such an one thinks it necessary to support

his position--which owing to the Greek love of education is more highly

respected perhaps than in other countries--by a pretence of universal

knowledge and a pedantry as lamentable as it is ludicrous. I remember

a gentleman who boasted the title of Professor of Ancient History in

the _gymnasium_ or secondary school of a certain town, who called to me

one day as I was passing a _café_ where he and some of his friends were

sitting, and said that they were having a pleasant little discussion

about the first Triumvirate, and had recalled the names of Cicero and

Caesar, but could not at the moment remember the third party. Could

I help them? I hesitated a moment, and then resolved to risk it and

suggest, what was at least alliterative if not accurate, the name of

Cato. ‘Of course,’ he answered, ‘how these things do slip one’s memory

sometimes!’ Yet this Professor posed as an authority on many subjects

outside his own province of learning, and frequently when I met him

would insist on talking dog-Latin with an Italian pronunciation, a

medium in which I found it difficult to converse.

In this readiness to discourse on any and every subject and to

display attainments in and out of season, he and the class of which

he is typical are the living images of the less respectable of the

ancient Sophists. And in pedantry of language too they fairly rival

their famous prototypes. The movement in favour of an artificial

revival of ancient Greek has already been of long duration, and has

had a detrimental effect upon the modern language. The vulgar tongue

has a melodious charm, while many classical words, in the modern

pronunciation, are extremely harsh and uncouth. The object of the

movement is to secure an uniform ‘pure’ speech, as they call it,

approximate to that of Plato or of Xenophon; and the method adopted is

to mix up Homeric and other words of antiquarian celebrity with literal

renderings of modern French idioms, inserting datives, infinitives,

and other obsolete forms at discretion. To aid in this movement is the

task and the delight of the schoolmasters: and such is their devotion

to this linguistic sophistry, that they are not dismayed even by the

ambiguity arising from the use of ancient forms indistinguishable in

modern speech. The two old words ἡμέτερος and ὑμέτερος have now no

difference in sound: yet the schoolmaster uses them and inculcates

the use of them, with the lamentable result that the children are not

taught to distinguish _meum_ and _tuum_ even in speech.

And here again the character of the modern Greek reflects that of his

ancestors. Honesty and truthfulness are not the national virtues. To

lie, or even to steal, is accounted morally venial and intellectually

admirable. It is a proof of superior mother-wit, than which no quality

is more valued in the business of everyday life. Almost the only

things in Greece which have fixed prices are tobacco, newspapers, and

railway-tickets. The hire of a mule, the cost of a bunch of grapes,

the price of meat, the remuneration for a vote at the elections,--such

matters as these are the subject of long and vivacious bargaining, and

if the money does not change hands on the spot, the bargain may be

smilingly repudiated and an attempt made, on any pretext which suggests

itself, to extort more. Yet there is a certain charm in all this; for,

if a man get his own price, it is not so much the amount of his profit

which pleases him as his success in winning it; and if he fail, he

takes a smaller sum with perfect good humour and increased respect for

the man who has outwitted him. Anyone may be honest; but to be ἔξυπνος,

as they say, shrewd, wide-awake,--this is Greek and admirable. The

contrast of an Aristides with a Themistocles is the natural expression

of Greek thought. Moral uprightness and mental brilliance are not to be

expected of one and the same man; and for the most part the Greeks now

as in old time praise others for their justice and pride themselves on

their cunning. The acme of cleverness is touched by him who can both

profit by dishonesty and maintain a reputation for sincerity.

But, while truthfulness and fair dealing are certainly rare, there

is one relation in which the most scrupulous fidelity is unfailingly

shown. The obligations of hospitality are everywhere sacred. The

security and the comfort of the guest are not in name only but in

actual fact the first consideration of his host. However unscrupulous

a Greek may be in his ordinary dealings, he never, I believe, harbours

for one moment the idea of making profit out of the stranger who

seeks the shelter of his roof. For hospitality in Greece, it must be

remembered, means not the entertainment of friends and acquaintances

who are welcome for their own sake or from whom a return in kind may

be expected, but real φιλοξενία, a generous and friendly welcome to

a stranger unknown yesterday and vanished again to-morrow. To each

unbidden chance-comer the door is always open. For lodging he may

chance to have an incense-reeking room where the family _icons_ hang,

or a corner of a cottage-floor barricaded against the poultry and

other inmates; for food, hot viands rich in circumambient oil, or

three-month-old rye-bread softened in a cup of water; but among rich

and poor alike he is certain of the best which there is to give. Even

where there are inns available, the stranger will constantly find

that the first native of the place to whom he puts the Aristophanic

enquiry ὅπου κόρεις ὀλίγιστοι[39]--which inn is of least entomological

interest--will constitute himself not guide but host and will place the

resources of his own house freely at the service of the chance-found

visitor.

The reception accorded by Eumaeus to Odysseus, in its revelation of

human--and also of canine--character, differs in no respect from

that which may await any traveller at the present day. As Odysseus

approached the swineherd’s hut, ‘suddenly the yelping dogs espied him,

and with loud barking rushed upon him, but Odysseus guilefully sat

down and let fall his staff from his hand[40].’ Such is the opening

of the scene; and many, I suppose, must have wondered, as they read

it, wherein consisted Odysseus’ guilefulness. A shepherd of Northern

Arcadia resolved me that riddle. I had been attacked on a mountain-path

by two or three of his dogs,--‘like unto wild beasts[41],’ as Homer

has it,--and the combat may have lasted some few minutes when the

shepherd thought fit to intervene. Sheep-dogs are of course valued in

proportion to their ferocity towards any person or animal approaching

the flock, and a taste of blood now and again is said to keep them

on their mettle. Fortunately matters had not reached that point; but

none the less I suggested to the man that he might have bestirred

himself sooner. ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘if you are really in difficulties,

you should sit down’; and when I showed some surprise, he explained

that anyone who is attacked by sheepdogs has only to sit down and let

go his walking-stick or gun or other offensive weapon, and the dogs,

understanding that a truce has been called, will sit down round him and

maintain, so to speak, a peaceful blockade[42]. On subsequent occasions

I tested the shepherd’s counsel, beginning prudently with one dog only

and, as I gained assurance, raising the number: it is uncomfortable[43]

to remain sitting with a bloodthirsty Molossian hound at one’s back,

ready to resume hostilities if any suspicious movement is made; but I

must own that, in my own fairly wide experience, Greek dogs, as they

are _sans peur_ in combat, are also _sans reproche_ in observing a

truce. The traveller may fare worse than by following the example of

guileful Odysseus.

But if the scene of the encounter be not a mountain-path but the

approach to some cottage, the dogs’ master will, like Eumaeus, hasten

to intervene, ‘chiding them and driving them this way and that with

a shower of stones[44],’--for the Greek dog does not heed mere

words,--and again like Eumaeus will assure his visitor that he himself

would have been ‘covered with shame[45]’ if the dogs had done his guest

any hurt. Then he will conduct his guest into his cottage and bid him

take his fill of bread and wine before he tells whence he is come

and how he has fared[46]: for Greek hospitality spares the guest the

fatigue of talking until he is refreshed. The visitor therefore sits

at his ease, silent and patient, while his host catches and kills such

beast or fowl as he may possess, cuts up the flesh in small pieces,

threads these on a spit, and holds them over the embers of his fire

till they are ready to serve up[47]: similarly, in Homeric fashion,

he mixes wine and water[48]; and then, all the preparations being now

complete, he urges his guest to the meal[49].

Thus the hospitality of to-day, in its details no less than in its

spirit, recalls the hospitality of the Homeric age. The supreme virtue

of the ancient Greek remains the supreme virtue of the modern, and a

familiarity with the manners of the present day alone might suffice

to explain why Paris who stole another man’s wife was execrable but

Admetus who let his own wife die for him could yet win admiration. The

one broke the laws of hospitality; the other, by hiding his loss and

entertaining his guest, upheld them.

A comparative estimate, such as I have essayed, of the characters of

Greeks of old and Greeks of to-day is perhaps evidence of a somewhat

intangible nature to those who are not personally intimate with the

people: but no foreigner, even though he were totally ignorant of the

modern language, could chance upon one of the many festivals of the

country without remarking that there, in humbler form, are re-enacted

many of the scenes of ancient days. The πανηγύρια, as they call these

festivals,--diminutives, both in name and in form, of the ancient

πανηγύρεις,--present the same medley of religion, art, trading,

athletics, and amusement which constituted the Olympian games. The

occasion is most commonly some saint’s-day, and a church or a sacred

spring (ἅγι̯ασμα) the centre of the gathering. Art is represented by

the contests of local poets or wits in improvising topical and other

verses, and occasionally there is present one of the old-fashioned

rhapsodes, whose number is fast diminishing, to recite to the

accompaniment of a stringed instrument still called the κιθάρα[50] the

glorious feats of some patriot-outlaw (κλέφτης) in defiance of the

Turks. Then there are the pedlars and hucksters strolling to and fro or

seated at their stalls, and ever crying their wares--fruit, sausages,

confectionery of strange hues and stranger taste, beads, knives, cheap

_icons_ ranging in subject from likenesses of patron-saints to gaudy

views of hell, and all manner of tin-foil trinkets representing ships,

cattle, and parts of the human body for dedication in the church. Then

in some open space there will be a gathering of young men, running,

wrestling, hurling the stone; yonder others, and with them the girls,

indulge in the favourite recreation of Greece, those graceful dances,

of which the best-known, the συρτός[51], and probably others too, are

a legacy from dancers of old time. It is impossible to be a spectator

of such scenes without recognising that here, in embryonic form, are

the festivals of which the famous gatherings of Olympia and Nemea,

Delphi and the Isthmus, were the full development.

And it may well happen too that the observant onlooker will descry

also the rudiments of ancient drama. Often, as is natural in so

mountainous and rugged a country, the only level dancing-place which

a village possesses is a stone-paved threshing-floor hewn out of the

hill-side. Hither on any festal occasion, be it a saint’s-day or one

of the celebrations which naturally follow the ingathering of harvest

or vintage, the dancers betake themselves. Here too a small booth

or tent, still called σκηνή, is often rigged up, to which they can

retire for rest or refreshment, while on the slopes above are ranged

the spectators. The circular threshing-floor is the _orchestra_,

the hill-side provides its tiers of seats, the dancers, who always

sing while they dance, are the chorus; add only the village musician

twanging a sorry lyre, and in the intervals of dancing an old-fashioned

rhapsode reciting some story of bygone days, or, it may be, two village

wits contending in improvised pleasantries, and the rudiments of

ancient Tragedy or Comedy are complete.

Other illustrations might easily be amassed. On March 1st the boys

of Greece still parade the village-streets with a painted wooden

swallow set on a flower-decked pole, and sing substantially the same

‘swallow-song’ (χελιδόνισμα)[52] as was sung in old time in Rhodes[53].

On May 1st the girls make wreaths of flowers and corn which, like the

ancient εἰρεσιώνη, must be left hanging over the door of the house till

next year’s wreaths take their place. The fisherman still ties his oar

to a single thole with a piece of rope or a thong of leather, as did

the mariners of Homer’s age[54]. The farmer still drives his furrows

with an Hesiodic plough.

Such are a few of the survivals which bear witness to the genuinely

Hellenic nationality of the inhabitants of modern Greece: and last,

but not least, there is the language, which, albeit no index of race,

is most cogent evidence of tradition. To the action of thought upon

language there corresponds a certain reaction of language upon thought:

it is impossible to speak a tongue which contains, let us say, the

word νεράϊδα (modern Greek for a ‘nymph’) without possessing also an

idea of the being whom that word denotes. Therefore even if the whole

population of Greece were demonstrably of Slavonic race, the fact that

it now speaks Greek would go far to support its claim to Hellenic

nationality: for its adoption of the Greek language would imply its

assimilation of Greek thought.