Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/341

 each man bringing a kid or a lamb; service in the church having been duly performed, the priest comes out and blesses each of the animals in turn, after which they are killed and roasted and a feast is held accompanied by some kind of divination from the victims. Such in brief was the custodian's account; but, when I intervened in the conversation with a question about the method of divining, he would say nothing more. The Boeotians are still boorish. But what I had already overheard exhibits clearly enough the religious character of the rite; and I do not doubt that in Aetolia and Acarnania also the peasants handle the sheep's shoulder-blade in an equally religious mood. Their very indulgence in meat is due to the religious occasion; much more therefore the divination which reveals to them the mind of those powers whom they worship.

In the art of interpreting the particular marks upon the shoulder-blade I cannot claim to be an adept. The few facts which I managed to discover were that in general spots and blurs upon the bone are prognostications adverse to the hopes of the enquirer, and that a clean white surface always gives full security: that different portions of the bone are scrutinised for answers to different classes of questions; thus the prospects of the lambing season are indicated on the projecting ridge of the bone, and the weather-forecast on the flat surfaces on either side of it, marks on the right side (the bone being held horizontally with what is naturally its upper end towards the diviner) being favourable signs, and those on the left ill-omened: and finally that a pestilence is foreshown by a depression in the surface of the bone. The science, I was told, is extremely complex and elaborate; but I never had the fortune to meet any peasant who was considered an expert in it; the best exponents of it are to be found among the mountain shepherds, and since these are constantly shifting their grazing grounds it is no easy matter to fall in with one both able and willing to unfold the full mysteries of the art. How to distinguish in interpretation markings of different sizes, shapes, and colours I never discovered.

But the little which I learnt agrees in the main with the