Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/321

 Such dreams as these are regarded as spontaneous revelations of the divine will, granted possibly in response to prayer, but in no way controlled or procured by any previous action of the dreamer. But there is one curious custom, observed by the girls of Greece, by which dreams are deliberately induced as a means of foreknowing their matrimonial destinies. On the eve of St Catharine's day most appropriately, for she is the patroness of all marrying and giving in marriage, but sometimes also on the first day of Lent, the girls knead and bake cakes ([Greek: armyrokouloura]) of which, as their name implies, the chief ingredient is salt. By consuming undue quantities of this concoction, and often by assuaging the consequent thirst with an equally undue quantity of wine, they produce a condition of body eminently suited to cause a troubled sleep, and, their minds being already absorbed in speculations on marriage, it is little wonder if their dreams reveal to them their future husbands. How far this custom is now taken seriously, I cannot determine; in some districts it has certainly degenerated into a somewhat disreputable game. But the fact that the intoxication of the girls is tolerated on this occasion among a peasantry whose men even are seldom drunk except on certain religious occasions—on Easter-day and after funerals—proves clearly that the custom was once, as I think it sometimes is now, a genuinely religious rite and an acknowledged means of divination.

A modification of this custom, preferred in some districts as obviating alike the unpleasant process of eating salt-cake and the disreputable sequel thereto, substitutes for dreaming two other ancient methods of divination—divination by drawing lots, a primitive system common to many peoples but employed nevertheless even by established oracles in ancient Greece, and divination from chance words overheard by the diviner, a method which is, I think, more exclusively Hellenic. For this form of the custom also salt-cakes are required, but only a morsel of each is eaten, and the remainder of the cake is divided into three portions, to which are tied respectively red, black, and blue ribbands. Each girl then places her three pieces under her pillow for the night, and in the morning draws out one by chance. The red ribband, p. 19.]