Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/274

 which was apparently a little too cultured for many of those who heard or read it. It conveyed to their minds probably no more than 'being enslaved to weak and beggarly elements ' conveys to the British peasant of to-day. What more natural then than that the commentator should accept the word in the sense given to it by the Platonists, and that the common-folk who heard his exposition should readily identify the [Greek: stoicheia] whom they were bidden no longer to serve with the lesser deities and local genii to whose service they had long been bound—to whose service moreover in spite of the supposed injunction they have always continued faithful? The Church, they would have felt, acknowledged the existence of these beings; ecclesiastical authority endorsed ancestral tradition; and since such beings existed, it were folly to ignore them; nay, since the Church declared that they were powers of evil, it was but prudent to propitiate them, to appease their malevolence. Thus [Greek: stoicheia] came to be reckoned by every right-minded peasant among his regular demoniacal entourage. And so they remain—some of them hostile to man, some benevolent, but all alike wild, uncontrollable spirits—so that St Paul's phrase [Greek: stoicheia tou kosmou] even appears in one folk-song metaphorically as a description of wild and wilful young men.

Thus the very origin of the term rendered it comprehensive in meaning. Even the greater deities of ancient Greece were, in a sense, local—the occupants of prescribed domains; Poseidon might logically be called the genius of the sea, Demeter of the corn-land; while lesser deities were always associated with particular spots and often unknown elsewhere. But mediaeval usage of the word [Greek: stoicheion] and of its derivatives tended to widen the meaning of the word yet more. A verb [Greek: stoicheioun] was formed which properly meant to settle a genius in a particular place—either a beneficent genius to act as tutelary deity, or an evil genius whose range of activity would thus be circumscribed within known and narrower limits; but it was used also in a larger sense to denote the exercise of any magical powers. A corresponding adjective [Greek: stoicheiômatikos] was applied([Greek: Lexikon], s.v.) [Greek: stoicheion] is sometimes a term of abuse; on that statement I base my interpretation of the folk-song.]