We are generally accustomed to consider mythology as a bygone episode
of _juventus mundi_; it may seem at first sight strange to realize that
what we have read of in Homer exists to-day. But so it is, and the
following facts collected during lengthened tours in remote corners of
Greece will prove, I hope, that the mystic beings of classical Greece
are present now, when the world is supposed to be growing old. All
my instances are from the islands of the Ægean Sea, the Cyclades and
the Sporades, where communication with the outer world has never been
great, and over which the various waves of Goths, Italians, Turks,
which in a measure destroyed the identity of continental Greece, had,
comparatively speaking, slight influence, and that only in the towns
near the coast, whereas up in the mountains of Naxos, Amorgos, &c.,
pure Greek blood still flows.
Here the mythology of their ancestors is deeply ingrained in the
inhabitants, both in the ritual of their Church, and in their manners
and customs; the ritual, indeed, of the Eastern Church is but an
intellectual adaptation under Christian guidance of the problems
propounded by the later philosophers to the popular doctrines of
polytheism.
I was in the island of Keos, or Zia, one of the Cyclades, when the idea
of forming this collection struck me, and it was on the occasion of
being told that here St. Artemidos is considered as the patron saint of
weakly children. The church dedicated to this saint is some little way
from the town on the hill slopes; thither a mother will take a child
afflicted by any mysterious wasting, “struck by the Nereids,” as they
say; she then strips off its clothes, and puts on new ones blessed by
the priest, leaving the old ones as a perquisite for the church; and
then if perchance the child grows strong, she will thank St. Artemidos
for the blessing vouchsafed, unconscious that she is perpetuating the
archaic worship of Artemis. The Ionian idea of the fructifying and
nourishing properties of the Ephesian Artemis has been transferred to
her Christian namesake.
About these Nereids, too, we hear much in modern Greece, and they have
the properties of many of our mythological friends, those of Keos, for
example, are supposed to live on cliffs and in trees; if a man sleeps
under the shadow of a cliff or tree, and is taken with a cold sweat,
they say “the goddess of the tree has injured him,” and accordingly
to appease her they spread on the place a clean white cloth, and put
on it new-made bread, a plate with honey, another with sweetmeats, a
bottle of good wine, a knife and fork and an empty glass, an unburnt
candle, and an incense pot; an old woman utters some mystic words, and
then all go away, “that the Nereids may eat and the sufferer regain his
health.” We have here a ceremony very like that anciently performed at
Athens to appease the Eumenides when a banquet was laid near the caves
they were supposed to haunt, of which honey and milk were the necessary
ingredients.
The Nereids in many cases correspond to the nymphs of antiquity; they
preside over healing streams, and they wash in them at night when the
waters sleep, and no one at that time dares to approach for fear of
becoming frenzied (νυμφόληπτος).
The cloak of Phœbus Apollo has fallen on the prophet Elias. As of
old temples on all the highest hills of the islands are dedicated to
the sun-god; the reason is obvious. Ἡλιος, the sun deity
(the _h_ not being aspirated), at once suggested Elias to the easily
accommodating divines, and to all intents and purposes the prophet
supplies the place of the sun-god of antiquity. Prophet Elias has power
over rain; in times of drought people assemble in crowds in his church
to pray for rain, and in this he has the attribute of ὄμβριος
or ὑέτιος Ζεῦς. When it thunders they say the prophet is
driving in his chariot in pursuit of demons.
To pass on to another analogy. There is a curious parallel between St.
Anarguris, the patron saint in some parts of flocks and herds, and
the god Pan of ancient days. On the island of Thermià (Κύθνος) I saw a
church dedicated to St. Anarguris built over the mouth of a cavern, as
the protecting saint of the place, instead of Pan, the ancient god of
grottos. But a still more marked instance of the continuation of Pan
worship occurs to-day on Keos at the little church of St. Anarguris,
at a remote hamlet called 'στὸ μακρινὸ. Whenever an ox is ailing they
take it to this church and pray for its recovery; if the cock crows
when they start, or they hear the voice of a man or the grunt of a pig,
there is every hope that the animal will be cured; but on the contrary,
if they hear a cat, a dog, or a woman, it is looked upon as an evil
omen. When at the church of St. Anarguris they solemnly register a vow
that if the ox recovers they will present it to the saint when its days
of work are over; accordingly, every year on the 1st of July, the day
on which they celebrate the feast of St. Anarguris, numbers of aged
oxen may be seen on the road to this church, where they are slaughtered
on the threshold and the flesh distributed amongst the poor.
St. Nicholas, again, is the lineal descendant of Poseidon; he is the
sailor’s god. Wherever in ancient times there existed a temple to the
honor of Poseidon we now find an insignificant white-washed edifice
dedicated to St. Nicholas. This is especially noticeable at Tenos,
where was in antiquity the famous shrine and feast of Poseidon. On this
island the chief town is now called St. Nicholas, and hither yearly
assemble to worship thousands of Greeks from all parts of the world
before a miracle-working shrine. Modern priestcraft, in short, has
cleverly arranged that Tenos should be the modern Delos where the topic
of independent panhellenism can be freely discussed.
Everything nautical has to do with St. Nicholas; in Mykenos a little
church built on a rock out in the harbor is dedicated to him; another
on the sea shore at Paros is dedicated to Ἅγιος Νικόλαος Θαλασσίτης;
his picture, or εἰκὼν is painted on the inside of crabs’ backs, which
are gilded outside and worshipped. In nautical songs St. Nicholas is
always alluded to as the inventor of the rudder, and is represented
as seated at the helm, whilst Christ sits at the prow and the Virgin
in the middle. In a storm sailors call on him for assistance, as the
ancients did on the Dioscouri, whom they thought to have power to allay
storms direct from Poseidon himself.
We always find St. Dionysius as the successor of Dionysos in the
Christian ritual. The island of Naxos was a chief centre of the worship
of the wine-loving god in antiquity; and a fable about St. Dionysius,
still told in the islands and on the mainland, clearly points to the
continuity of the myth. It is as follows:—
St. Dionysius was on his way one day from his monastery on Mount
Olympus to Naxos, and he sat down to rest during the heat of the day.
Close to him he saw a pretty plant which he wished to take with him,
and, lest it should wither by the way, he put it into the leg bone of
a bird, and to his surprise at his next halting-place he found it had
sprouted; so, accordingly, he put it into the leg bone of a lion, and
the same thing occurred; finally, he put it into the leg of an ass, and
in reaching Naxos he found the plant so rooted in the bones that he
planted them altogether. And up came a vine, from the fruit of which he
made the first wine, a little of which made the saint sing like a bird,
a little more made him strong as a lion, and yet a little more made him
as foolish as an ass.
At Melos they have a curious feast which recalls a Bacchic revelry.
Every landowner who wishes to plant a vineyard calls together, on
a certain day, fifty or more men, when church is over; to these he
gives a spade apiece, and slaughters some goats and fills skins with
wine. Then they all start off together to their work, preceded by a
standard-bearer holding a white banner. In the field they eat the food,
drink the wine, and plant the vineyard, all in the space of one day,
and return home again, most of them in a decided state of intoxication.
This is followed by a dance and further revelry in front of the church,
which doubtless the village priest will hallow with his presence. The
Greeks, taken as a whole, are a sober race, but on certain occasions
and festivals it is almost a religious duty to drink heavily. In the
island of Paros there actually exists a church dedicated to the
drunken St. George, whose feast-day is on the 3rd of November. The
priest thereof, in answer to my inquiries about this strange name,
remarked that the 3rd of November is the anniversary of St. George’s
burial, and then the inhabitants usually tap their new-made wine and
get drunk; but why they should on such a solemn occasion speak of Ἅγιος
ΓἍοργιος μεθύστης I could not divine, unless we take into account the
hereditary tendency of the Greeks to deify passions.
A curious instance of the survival of the mythical Titans I met at
Chios, at the southern point of which island exists a colossal white
rock; this the natives told me was a stone which Samson had once hurled
against God, and it had fallen here. But of all the myths of antiquity
which exist to-day none is more marked than the belief in Charon, the
Styx, and Hades. In Thermià they believe that in Charon’s infernal
kingdom are lamps which represent the life of men, and when each man’s
lamp is extinguished for want of oil he will die.
A Greek peasant looks upon death quite differently from what a peasant
of the western world is taught to believe. To him it is the end of all
joy and gladness; the songs over his body (myriologues) speak of the
black earth, the end of light and brilliancy. A popular Klephtic song
on the death of Zedros, when read by the side of Sophocles’ description
of the death of Ajax, shows how curiously alike are the ideas of
death as painted in the two poems. Charon is still believed to be a
white-haired old man with long and fearful nails, and in myriologues or
lamentations, which are still of every-day occurrence in the islands,
you actually hear of Charon’s caïque. He is now spoken of as Charos.
I had been told that, in some parts of Greece they still put money on
the mouth of a deceased person to pay the passage (ναὗλον). I sought in
vain for instances of it in the islands; but one day, whilst attending
a child’s funeral in a mountain village of Naxos, I saw a wax cross put
on the childs’ mouth by the priest, and on inquiry I was told it was
the ναὗλον, _i.e._, freight money—so completely has the Eastern Church
incorporated into itself the ancient ideas.
In a popular song I have heard Charon spoken of as a “bird like unto
a black swallow,” which compares curiously with the passage in the
twenty-second _Odyssey_, where Athena is represented as sitting on the
roof of the palace at Ithaca like a swallow, on the day of vengeance
for Penelope’s suitors.
It will be apparent from the above remarks that at the time of the
change of religion from paganism to Christianity, names were given
to saints to supply wants felt by the abandonment of polytheism.
There are many instances of this. For example, St. Eleutherius is
the saint called upon by women in childbirth to deliver them; deaf
people are recommended to consult St. Jacob (Ἄκουφος as he is called,
κουφος—deaf), and in Lesbos I was told that St. Therapon could heal all
manner of diseases. In the same way young married people who wish for a
numerous progeny chose St. Polycarp as their patron saint, so that they
may have many teeth in their house, as the saying goes (πολὺ 'δοντια
'στὸ σπίτι).
St. Charalambos is, however, the Æsculapius of modern days. He used
to hold jurisdiction over the plague, and is represented as a hideous
wizard, trampling under foot a serpent with smoke issuing out of its
mouth; and in fever-stricken, marshy districts St. Charalambos still
reigns supreme. In many places it is the custom on the outbreak of
a pestilence for forty women to make a garment in one day, which is
hung up in the saint’s church. For instance, at Zephyria, the mediæval
capital of the island of Melos, which was abandoned altogether about
twenty years ago as unfit to live in, I visited the ruins, and in the
centre of them saw still standing the church of St. Charalambos, and
an old man, who happened to be picking his olives there at the time,
told me the history of the desolation, and the methods they used to
resort to when he was young to rid the place of disease; how they used
to bury heifers whole; and how they used to fasten up illnesses in
a cauldron—that is to say, they wrote down the names of the various
maladies on paper, and boiled them in a cauldron with some money and
a cock in front of the shrine of the modern Æsculapius. But in vain;
the town had to be abandoned, for it had been cursed by a priest, and
never could hope to recover salubrity.
It is a very common custom for Greek peasants to pass the night in a
church of St. Charalambos with a view to cure an ailment; at festivals
too, near miraculous _eikons_, such as the one at Tenos, the invalids
pass whole nights in the church, reminding one forcibly of that
ridiculous scene in Aristophanes (Plut. vv. 655) when the priests
stole the food from the invalids who were asleep in the temple of
Æsculapius, and we can easily see in this custom a mild form of the
ancient ἐγκοίμησις when the sick folks lay down in the skin of a newly
killed ram in the churches, and in this luxurious couch awaited the
inspiration of the divinity.
The quackeries and incantations common in Greece to-day as specifics
for certain diseases are many of them very quaint, being long rhymes
and formulas mixing up Christ, the Virgin, and saints with magic words
and signs which savour of heathendom. It is the old women only who are
supposed to know them, and they are very shy of producing them before
a foreign unbeliever. They are just like those women who in ancient
Athens practised quackery and secret cures, which were zealously
guarded and kept up as specialities in families. Curiously enough these
old women in Greece who profess to cure diseases will tell you, arguing
from the analogy of plants, that all diseases are worms, which consume
the body, and that they are generated by the wrath of the gods. They
have arrived at the bacillus theory by much straighter reckoning than
our physicians.
On the day of the commemoration of the dead I was in a small village
in Amorgos, and there witnessed the quaint ceremony of κόλλυβα. Every
house on this occasion sends to the church a plate of boiled corn;
tottering old women with one foot in the grave generally bring it,
and pour the contents into a large basket placed before the high
altar whilst the service is going on, and then into the mass of corn
they stick a candle, and if the family is especially grand they have
separate plates with sesame seeds, or adorned with patterns of raisins
and almonds. After the service is over the boiled corn and other
delicacies are distributed amongst the poor outside the church. These
offerings are very suggestive of the ancient idea of Demeter and her
daughter.
We will now consider another branch of mythology—the fickle goddesses,
the Fates (Μοῖρα), whose workings in modern Greece are looked upon with
as much superstition as of old. On the island of Sikinos I attended
an interesting ceremony called the μοίρισμα of a child, which happens
a year after its birth. All the friends and relatives are gathered
together to a feast. A tray is brought out, and on it are put various
objects—a pen, money, tools, an egg, &c., and whichever the infant
first touches with its hands is held to be the indication of the μοῖρα
as to the most suitable career to be chosen for it. The meaning of the
first-mentioned articles is obvious. The demarch of Sikinos told me
that his son had touched a pen, consequently he had been sent to the
university at Athens, and had there distinguished himself, but the
meaning of the egg is not quite so clear, and the egg is the horror
of all parents, for if the child touches it he will be fitted for no
calling in life—he will be a good-for-nothing, a mere duck’s egg, so to
speak, in society.
Some ceremony such as this must have been the one alluded to by
Apollodorus when he tells us that seven days after the birth of
Meleager the Fates told the horologue of the child, and the torch was
lighted on the hearth. In some places still the seventh day is chosen
as the one for this important ceremony, and it is called ἑφτὰ. When
it is dark and the lamps lighted a table is put in the middle of the
house, a basin full of honey in the centre of the table, and all round
quantities of food. Numerous oil lamps are then lighted; one dedicated
to Christ, another to the Virgin, another to the Baptist, and so forth.
A symbol of faith is then read and deep silence prevails, and the saint
whose lamp is first extinguished is chosen as the protector of the
infant. At this moment they say the Fates come in and “κάλομοιραζουσι”
the child, and take some of the food from the table.
The Fates are in some places supposed to write on the forehead of a
man his destiny. Pimples on the nose and forehead are called γραψίματα
τῶν Μοίρων. The decrees of the Fates are unalterable. According to
various legends, attempts have been made to change them, but without
avail. Only once, a girl of Naxos, so I was told, up in a mountain
village, who was excessively ugly, managed to learn from a magician
where the Fates lived, and that if she could get them to eat salt they
would go blind and change her fate. She contrived to bring this about,
and became lovely, married a prince, but had no children; “showing,”
continued the legend by way of moral, “that the Fates never consent to
a person being altogether happy.”
This changing from ugliness to beauty is a common subject for legends
and beliefs. The first woman to see a child after birth must be
lovely, so as to impart to it her beauty, and the first man must be of
great strength, so as to impart his vigor. This reminds one of one of
Herodotus’s stories (vi. 61), when he seriously tells us of the change
of an ugly child into the fairest woman of Sparta by her nurse taking
her daily to the temple of the heroine Helen to pray. One day the
heroine met the nurse and predicted that the child would become fair,
which accordingly, says Herodotus, came to pass.
In Melos the Fates are greatly consulted in matrimonial concerns. The
25th of November, St. Catharine’s day, is considered the most suitable,
and St. Catharine is accordingly prayed to by unmarried maidens to
intercede on their behalf. On the vigil of her feast they make cakes
with a good deal of salt in, which they eat before going to bed. As
a natural result of eating so much salt and thinking about matrimony
their dreams often take the turn of water and a kindly man offering
them to drink. If this is so they are sure to marry that man.
Many of our mythological personages and legends have their parallel
to-day. There are the Lamiæ, for instance, evil-working women who
live in desert places, ill-formed like their ancestors, daughters of
Belus and Sibyl; utterly unfit are they for household duties, for
they cannot sweep, so an untidy woman to-day is said to have made the
sweepings of a Lamia (Τῆς Λαμίας τὰ σαρώματα); they cannot bake, for
they put bread into the oven before heating it; they have dogs and
horses, but give bones to their horses and straw to their dogs. They
are very gluttonous, so much so that in Byzantine and modern Greek
the verb λαμιώνω is used to express over-eating. They have a special
predilection for baby’s flesh, and a Greek mother of to-day will
frighten her child by saying that a Lamia will come if it is naughty,
just as was said to naughty children in ancient days; for the legend
used to run that Zeus loved Lamia too well, untidy though she was,
and Hera, out of jealousy, killed her children, whereat Lamia was so
grieved that she took to eating the children of others. Some Lamiæ
are like the Sirens, and by taking the form of lovely nymphs, beguile
luckless men to their destruction; for example, an ecclesiastical
legend, savoring strongly of Boccaccio, tells us how a Lamia charmed a
monk as he sat by the side of a lake one evening; dawn came, and the
monk was seen no more, but some children swore to having seen his hoary
beard floating on the waters of the lake.
Dragons are common now in every weird place, especially where those
large stoned Hellenic walls are standing, and stories like those of
Perseus, the Centaurs, the Cyclops, &c., are common among the peasants
who speak of these old remains as Τοῦ Δράκου τὸ σπίτι, the Dragon’s
house. In one fable we have the exact story of Ulysses and Polyphemus.
One Spanos is the traveller, ὁ Δράκος is Polyphemus, and the facts are
the same.
The witches (στρίγλαι) of modern folk-lore are supposed to be over a
hundred, and to be able to turn into birds at will like the harpies
of old; they love the flesh of unbaptised babies, and for this reason
children wear charms, as they do also against the evil eye (βασκανεῖα).
My host on the island of Pholygandros most solemnly told me how a
person with the evil eye could wither a fruit-tree by admiring it, and
on my looking sceptical, he quoted several instances which had come
under his immediate notice. This is the ὀφθαλμὸς βάσκανος of antiquity,
the god Fascinus of Latin mythology, whom Pliny tells us was worshipped
so strangely by the Vestal Virgins.
I witnessed a very sad case on the island of Kimolos of a sailor who,
in a storm, as he rounded the dreaded Cape Malea on his return home,
had been struck, as they told me, by that mysterious ghost-demon the
Τελώνια; he was kept in the village church all day, and had been in
there all night, whilst his relatives were praying vehemently around
him for the return of his shattered intellect. This τελώνια is a
species of electricity, and appears during storms on the mastheads,
which the Greek sailors personify as birds of evil omen, which settle
on the masts with a view to destroy the ship and drown the sailors.
They have words expressly for exorcising this phantom, and sometimes
they try to drive it away by beating brass or shooting. In Italy this
is called the fire of St. Elmo, and is evidently the same idea which in
ancient times was connected with the Dioscouri.
From these points it will be easily seen how much that is old lives
to-day. In manners and customs and daily life the peasant Greeks
reproduce even more that can be identified as ancient, but this is
apart from my present subject.—_Macmillan’s Magazine._