Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/130

 that of the key which in the island of Zacynthos was also laid upon the dead man's breast; for the key was certainly not designed, as Schmidt's informant would have it, to open the gates of Paradise, but, like any other piece of iron, served originally to scare away spirits. The use of a coin as well as of a key in that island was merely meant to make assurance doubly sure.

Again, in many places throughout Greece, where this use of a coin is no longer known, a substitute of more Christian character has been found. On the lips of the dead is laid either a morsel of consecrated bread from the Eucharist, or more commonly a small piece of pottery—a fragment it may be of any earthenware vessel—on which is incised the sign of the cross with the legend [Greek: I. CH. NI. KA.] ('Jesus Christ conquers') in the four angles. Here the choice of the inscribed words of itself seems to indicate the intention of barring the dead man's mouth against the entrance of evil spirits; and as final proof of my theory I find that in both Chios and Rhodes, where a wholly or partially Christianised form of the custom prevails, the charm employed is definitely understood by the people to be a means of precaution against a devil entering the dead body and resuscitating it. Nor must the mention of a devil in this connexion be taken as evidence that the Chian and Rhodian interpretation of the custom is not ancient. I shall be able to show in a later chapter that the idea of a devil entering the corpse is only the Christian version of a pagan belief in a possible re-animation of the corpse by the soul.

But there is yet another variety of the custom, in which no coin and no Mohammedan nor Christian symbol is used, but a charm whose magic properties were in repute long before Mohammed, long before Christ, probably long before coinage was known to Greece. Again a piece of pottery is used, but the symbol stamped upon it is the geometrical figure, the, p. 269).]engraved upon it, and it still bears the old name [Greek: naulon], 'fare.'], pp. 335 and 339.]is combined with that to which I now come, the 'pentacle.']