Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/106

 or of abhorrence. Thus in Egypt, the land from which the Pelasgians, if Herodotus might be believed, derived the worship of Demeter, it was held that the drinker of pig's milk incurred leprosy ; and we may reasonably suppose that the same punishment threatened those Egyptians who tasted of pig's flesh save at their one annual festival when this was enjoined. Now the Thesmophoria resembled this Egyptian festival in that it was an annual occasion for sacrificing pigs and for partaking therefore of their flesh; if then the worshippers of Demeter, like the Egyptians, were forbidden to use the pig for food at other times, and if the penalty for disobedience in Greece too was believed to be leprosy, the present case of taboo in Arcadia—the only one known to me in modern Greece—may be a survival from the ancient cult.

But apart from these traces of the worship of Demeter and Kore in Christian worship, in folk-story, and in custom, traces which constitute in themselves cogent proof of the firm hold on the popular mind which the goddesses twain must long have kept, there exists in the belief of the Greek peasantry a personal Power, a living non-Christian deity, who still inspires awe in many simple hearts and who may reasonably be identified with one or rather perhaps with both of them.

For it must not be forgotten that the mother and the daughter were in origin and symbolism one. The idea of life's ebb and flow, of nature's sleeping and waking, is expressed in them severally as well as conjointly. It would be impossible to analyse the complete myth and, even if a purely physical interpretation were sought, to express in physiological terms the two persons and the parts which they play: for certain ideas find duplicate expression. Either Demeter's retirement to some dark cave or the descent of Persephone to the underworld might have represented alone and unaided the temporary abeyance of earth's productive powers. Yet it was with good reason that the myth expanded as it were spontaneously until the spirit of life, that pervades not only the cornfield but all that is animal and human too, was pourtrayed in double form; not because the mere physical fact of the decay and