Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/320

 outlines of the rest of the picture being merely incised upon the silver foil. But, with inspection thus limited, the layman does not detect in any crudity of style a sufficient reason why the saintly painter, if only he could have foreseen the ordinary decoration of Greek churches, should have had his productions put out of sight in the ground. Nevertheless the story of the origin of the icon is believed as readily as the story of its finding.

Nor is it only in stories that the discovery of icons in obedience to dreams is heard of. During my stay in Greece a village schoolmaster embarrassed the Education Office by applying for a week's holiday in order to direct a party of his fellow-villagers in digging up an icon of which he had dreamt, and to build a chapel for it on the spot. It was felt that a body concerned with religious as well as secular instruction ought not to commit the impiety of refusing such a request, but it was feared that other schoolmasters would be encouraged to dream.

Besides those visions which are concerned with the finding of treasure or of icons, that class of dream also may be noticed in which is given some divine communication as to the healing of the sick. Many a time I have met in some sanctuary of miraculous repute peasants from a far-off village, who have travelled from one end of Greece to another, bringing wife or child, in the faith that mind will be restored or sickness healed; time after time their story is the same, that they were bidden in a dream to go and tarry so many days in such a church, and they have started off at once, obedient to what they feel to be a promise of divine help, begging their way may be for many days, but unflinchingly hopeful. And then comes the long sojourn in a strange village, for a mere visit is not always enough; weeks and months they wait, sleeping each night in the holy precincts and if possible at the foot of the icon, hoping and believing that some mysterious virtue of the place will heal the sufferer, or at the least that in a fresh dream they will be told what is next to be done. And if nothing happen—for now and then rest or change of air or, it may be, faith effects the cure desired—they return home with hope lessened but belief unshaken, ready to obey again if another message be vouchsafed to them from the dream-land of heaven.