Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/210

 1 82 Folklore from the Southern Sporades.

hears it, she generally throws the hen down the chimney upon the hearth ; if she be a virtuous woman, the hen is killed. The following plan tells the sex of a child which is to be born. A bone taken from the head of the fish called scar (cTKcipo^;, scarus creticus) is placed on the mother without her knowing: the child will be of the same sex as the next person she calls. One of these divining bones is here exhibited.^ Treasure trove will turn into charcoal {dvdpaKe<}) unless you kill a cock ; or, if no cock is at hand, you may cut your little finger and drop the blood on the treasure. An old woman once showed my informant a piece of charcoal which had been part of a treasure thus transformed. The legend of Fairy Gold is attested for ancient Greece by the proverb avdpaKe<i 6 drjaavpo'? fiov (see Folk-Lore, vol. viii, p. 379)- A quaint legend is told of the Lizard. The Holy Virgin, it is said, sighed so bitterly at the death of her son that her burning sighs set her robe afire. No one was at hand to quench it, but the Lizard poured water upon it from his mouth and saved the Virgin. Hence the Lizard is holy, and must not be killed.

It may be interesting to add, that a large kind of hawk is called in Cos a-)(€K.wvo<^a^, or the Tortoise-eater, because it catches a tortoise, carries it to a height, then drops it upon a rock and splits it, after which it eats the tortoise. It will be remembered that .^schylus is supposed to have been killed in Sicily by such a bird, which mistook his bald pate for a stone.

If one is cutting a fruit, or grinding coffee, or anything that smells, he who smells it must taste. Otherwise a man loses his sight, a woman with child miscarries. If you enter a room where this is going on, the cutter or grinder will always offer you a bit.

IV. — The Bridge of Antimachia. Antimachia was one of the cities of ancient Cos, and it still bears its old name, through the present site is not

' Presented by Mrs. Paton to the Society's Museum.