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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.