Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/379

 COLLECTANEA.

Cretan Folklore Notes. (With Plate VI.)

Binding Churches. — The photographs (Plate VI.) represent two churches at the little village of Evgenike (Ei'yeruc/)), a drive of two hours south of Candia. It is a common practice throughout Greece, when a village is devastated by an epidemic, to vow a binding of the church or churches with wax candles. The thin wax caudles are knotted together and tied round the church as in the photographs. For any serious epidemic spiritual help may be invoked in this way ; the most frequent plague, and consequently the most frequent cause of binding the church, is meningitis. But there is no special connection between that particular disease and the custom. Further, no reason is assigned, so far as I could learn, for the binding of the church. All the persons of whom I inquired informed me simply that the candles were offered as a gift (Swpoi/) to the Virgm or the Saint to whom the church belonged. The act of binding seems to have lost any significance it may once have had.

The following items I gatliered chiefly round our camj) fire on Mount Ida when we were excavating the Kamares cave. The greatest of practical archaeologists, the Cypriote foreman, Grig6ri Antonion, supplied n)ost of the information.

Fumigating against Evil. — One evening he produced from his luggage some laurel and a packet of olive leaves, both of which he had brought from Cyprus. The former he presented to us for seasoning the cooking ; with the latter he fumigated us to ward off evil influences (5id tIiv ocfjOuXixov, " for the eye "). He explained