Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/147

] and there can be no doubt that the original was a widely-esteemed incantation. I have given the most intelligible; but the mere fact that some of the others, through verbal corruption in the course of tradition, have become almost meaningless, is strong proof of the antiquity of the original. There are however two clear marks of antiquity in the version before us. The mention of Olympus as the abode of deities carries us back at once to the classical age; and the word in the sense of 'summit' is no less suggestive of a very early date. The ancient word, used in this sense by Aeschylus and by Herodotus , is obsolete now in the spoken language. But is evidently either a dialectic form of it (with the common interchange of  and ) or else a corrupt form, not understood by those who continued to use it in this incantation, and assimilated, by way of assonance, to. Further one of the other versions gives the word as, where the original  is retained but the  lost before , which now universally has the sound of the English v. A comparison of the two forms therefore establishes beyond question the fact that the somewhat rare classical word, in its known meaning of 'summit,' was the original form. Hence the incantation, containing both a mention of Olympus as the seat of deities and an old classical word long since disused, cannot but date from very early times. Possibly therefore the belief in subordinate Fates, attached each to one human being, was known to the common-folk of the classical age.

But, be this as it may, the popular conception of the great Trinity of Fates has persisted unchanged for more than a score of centuries—and who shall say for how many more? Here the literary tradition of classical times was evidently faithful to popular traditions. The number of the Fates is still the same as in Hesiod's day ; they are still depicted as old and infirm women, as they were by the poets at any rate in antiquity, though in ancient art, for beauty's sake, they are apt to be figured as more youthful; it is still their task 'to assign to mortal men at their