Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/347

 life of the two persons represented by the leaves will be disturbed by quarrels; if the leaves crackle fiercely and leap apart, there is an incompatibility of temper which renders the projected alliance undesirable.

These are but a few instances of domestic divination, and a much longer list might easily be compiled. But while I know that many of the peasants do indeed observe such occurrences seriously enough to act upon the supernatural warnings thereby conveyed, yet the religious character of these methods of divination is less demonstrable than that of divination from birds or from sacrifice; and I may content myself with indicating, by a few illustrations only, the continuity of Greek superstition in both this and those other minor branches of divination to which I now pass.

Palmistry, according to Suidas, was an ancient art, and a hand-book of it was composed by one Helenos. The signs of the future were read in the lines of the palm and of the fingers as in modern palmistry. This science is still kept up by some of the old women in Greece, but real proficiency therein is as in other countries chiefly attained by the gypsies ([Greek: atsinganoi]), who follow a nomadic life in the mountains and have very little intercourse with the native population.

Divination from involuntary movements of various parts of the body—[Greek: palmikon], as Suidas calls it, on which one Poseidonios was a leading authority—is still very generally practised, and evidently has deviated hardly at all from ancient lines. The twitching of a man's eye or eyebrow is a sign that he will soon see some acquaintance—an enemy, if it be the left eye that throbs, a friend, if it be the right; and this clearly was the principle which the goat-herd of Theocritus followed when he exclaimed, 'My eye throbs, my right eye; oh! shall I see Amaryllis herself?' Similarly the buzzing or singing of a man's ears is an indication that he is being spoken of by others, just as it was in the time of Lucian ; and, according to the usual principle, the right ear is affected in this manner by praise and kindly speech,; the order of the words, it will be seen, justifies the emphasis which I have given to [Greek: dexios] and to [Greek: autan].]