Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/334

 no more proof of the continuance of belief than mummies of the continuance of life.

But, even with the range of trustworthy evidence thus limited, the residue of popular poetry contains ample store of passages in which birds are recognised as the best messengers between this world and another. And here, as we shall see, the reiteration of the idea is not uniform in expression; the thought has not been crystallised into a number of beautiful but inert phrases; it is still alive, still young, still procreative of fresh poetry.

There is a well-known folk-song, recorded in several versions, which tells how a young bride, trusting in the might of her nine brothers and in her husband's valour, boasted that she had no fear of Charos. 'A bird, an evil bird, went unto Charos, and told him, and Charos shot an arrow at her and the girl grew pale; a second and a third he shot and stretched her on her death-bed .' The special bird in the poet's mind was, one may surmise, 'Charon's bird,' the tawny owl, which as I have noted is always a messenger of evil. In another poem a bird issues from the lower world and brings doleful tidings to women who weep over their lost ones. 'A little bird came forth from the world below; his claws were red and his feathers black, reddened with blood and blackened with the soil. Mothers run to see him, and sisters to learn of him, and wives of good men to get true tidings. Mother brings sugar, and sister scented wine, and wives of good men bear amaranth in their hands. "Eat the sugar, bird, and drink of the scented wine, and smell the amaranth, and confess to us the truth." "Good women, that which I saw, how should I tell it or confess it? I saw Charos riding in the plains apace; he dragged the young men by the hair, the old men by their hands, and ranged at his saddle-bow he bore the little children ."'

Nor is it only between earth and the nether world that birds carry tidings to and fro; earth and heaven are equally united by their ministry. An historical ballad, belonging to the year 1825, when Ibrahim Pasha had just occupied the fortress of Navarino and other places in the Morea and was about to join in investing Mesolonghi, gives to this idea unusually imaginative treatment; for the bird which brings from heaven encouragement and prophe-*