Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/364

 expression. At the present day funerals are constantly treated by the peasants as real opportunities of communicating with their dead friends and relatives. Whether the custom is ever carried out exactly as it once was by the Galatae, who used to write letters to the departed and to lay them on the pyre of each new courier to the lower world, I cannot definitely say; but a proverbial expression used of a person dangerously ill, [Greek: mazeuei grammata gia tous pethammenous], 'he is collecting letters for the dead,' lends colour to the supposition that either now or in earlier days this form of the custom is or has been in vogue. But in general now certainly the messages are not written but verbal. It is a common custom, noticed by many writers on Greek folklore, for the women who assist in the ceremonial lamentation which precedes the interment to insert in the dirges, which they each in turn contribute, messages which they require the newly-dead to deliver to some departed person whom they name, or, according to a slightly different usage, to whisper such messages secretly in the ear of the dead either immediately before the body is borne away to the church, or, where women are allowed to attend the actual interment, at the moment of 'the last kiss' ([Greek: ho teleutaios aspasmos]), which forms an essential and very painful part of the Eastern rite.

The antiquity of this custom appears to me to be as certain as anything which is not explicitly stated in ancient literature can be. For in every detail of ancient funeral usage known to us there is so complete a coincidence with modern usage that it would be absurd not to supplement records of the past by observation of the present. Actually to establish that identity in every particular is beyond the scope of the present chapter and must be reserved until later; but my assertion may be justified here by reference to three points in Solon's legislation on the subject of funerals. That legislation was directed against three practices to which mourners were addicted in this ceremonial lamentation of which I have been speaking—laceration of the cheeks and breast, the use of set and premeditated dirges, and lamentation