Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/282

 that which the folk-songs celebrate is common throughout Greece to-day. In building a house or any other edifice, the question of propitiating the genius already in possession of the site and of inducing it to become the guardian of the building is duly considered. Sacrifice is done. The peace-offering, according to the importance of the building and the means of the future owner, may consist of an ox, a ram, a he-goat, or a cock (or, less commonly, of a hen with her brood ), preferably of black colour, as were in old time victims designed for gods beneath the earth. The selected animal is in Acarnania and Aetolia taken to the site, and there its throat is cut so that the blood may fall on the foundation-stone, beneath which the body is then interred. In some other places it suffices to mark a cross upon the stone with the victim's blood. In the same district the practice of taking auspices from the victim—from the shoulder-*blade in the case of a ram and from the breast-bone in the case of a cock—is occasionally combined with the sacrifice, but is not essential to the ceremony.

But animals, though they are the only victims actually slaughtered upon the spot, are not the only form of peace-offering. Even at the present day when, added to the power of the law, a sense of humanity, or a fear of being pronounced 'uncivilised,' tends to deter the peasantry even of the most outlying districts from actually satisfying the more savage instincts of hereditary superstition, there still exists a strong feeling that a human victim is preferable to an animal for ensuring the stability of a building. Fortunately therefore for the builder's peace of mind, the principles of sympathetic magic offer a compromise between actual murder and total disregard of the traditional rite. It suffices to obtain from a man or woman—an enemy for choice but, failing that, 'out of philanthropy' as a Greek authority puts it, any aged person whose term of life is well-nigh done—some such object as a hair or the paring of a nail, or again a shred of his clothing or a cast-off shoe, or it may be a thread or stick marked with the, [Greek: Syllogê dêmot. asmatôn], p. 93, mentions also a dog.]