Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/345

 these signs, I was told, the old women of the village profess to determine such points of interest as the chastity of the bride, the supremacy of the husband or the wife in the future ménage, and the number and sex of children to be born. All this information can in most places where the rite prevails be obtained without any dissection of the victim such as would have been customary in antiquity; but in Aetolia and Acarnania the peasants continue faithful to what are probably ancient methods even in this detail; there the breast-bone of the fowl is treated both at weddings and on other religious occasions as a poor man's legitimate substitute for the ovine shoulder-blade, which it sufficiently resembles in the possession of a ridge with flat surfaces on either side suitable for divine inscriptions.

But it is not upon coincidences of practical detail, instructive as they are in proving the unity of modern with ancient Greece, that I wish most to insist. If it is clear that the victims often blest by the priests at weddings and on other religious occasions are really felt by the people to be sacrifices, then the practice of divining from them, whatever the exact method pursued, is once more distinct evidence of the belief that the powers above are able and willing to hold close communion with men.

Among the minor methods of divination we may notice first what Suidas calls [Greek: oikoskopikon] or 'domestic divination'; under this head he includes such incidents as the appearance of a weasel on the roof, or of a snake, the spilling of oil, honey, wine, water, or ashes, and the crackling of logs on the fire. The subject was expounded apparently in a serious treatise by one Xenocrates; but it is difficult to suppose that there was any scientific system governing so heterogeneous a conglomeration of incidents; the treatise was probably no more than a compilation of possible occurrences with disconnected regulations for interpreting each of them.

Many events of a like trivial nature are observed at the present day, and the interpretations set upon some of them are demonstrably ancient. A weasel seen about the house, just as on the road, is significant of evil, more especially if there is in the household a girl about to be married; for the weasel