Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/504

 and cremation as means to different religious ends; but that, whichever funeral-method has been employed, one and the same immediate object has always been kept in view, the dissolution of the dead body, and one and the same motive (save in the quite exceptional circumstances where a scare of vrykolakes has temporarily arisen) has always prompted the mourners thereto, the motive of benefiting the dead.

But, while the object in view was single and constant, there would have been no inconsistency in making a certain distinction between the two methods available. On the contrary, if the sole object was the disintegration of the dead body, the surer and quicker means of attaining it should logically have been preferred. Cremation therefore might legitimately have been reckoned a superior rite to inhumation; for it cannot but have been recognised that the disintegration of the body is more rapidly and unfailingly effected by the action of fire than by the action of the soil.

It is true indeed that the solvent action of the earth upon the buried body—even with all due allowance for the absence of any coffin in many cases—is popularly regarded as far more rapid than it can actually be. The period usually reckoned by the common-folk as the limit of time requisite for complete dissolution is forty days. This is stated clearly enough in a few lines of a song of lamentation heard in Zacynthos:

[Greek: kai mes' 'sto sarantoêmero armous armous chôrizoun, pephtoune ta xantha mallia, bgainoun ta maura matia, kai chôria paei to kormi kai chôria to kephali].

'And within the forty days, they (the dead) are severed joint from joint, their bright hair falls away, their dark eyes fall out, and asunder go trunk and head.'

The Zacynthian muse is horribly explicit; its utterances need no interpreter; itself rather gives the true interpretation of certain customs which are wide-spread in modern Greece and appear to date from pre-Christian days.

The fortieth day after death is almost universally observed in Greece as one on which the relations of the deceased should provide a memorial feast. There are indeed other fixed days for the like commemoration and 'forgiveness ' of the dead, but these