Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/538

 the people, the fathers of the church also were compelled to describe Paradise in terms of the senses as well as of the spirit, thus making certain concessions to popular feeling and ideas. 'Some,' says John of Damascus, 'have imagined a sensuous Paradise, others a spiritual Paradise. For my part I think that, just as man himself has been created with senses as well as with spirit, so the most holy close ([Greek: hierôtaton temenos]) to which he has access appeals alike to the senses and to the spirit.'" The compromise in this passage is cleverly justified, but it has not lasted; the pagan part of it alone has survived, and the Paradise of the modern folk is none other than that abode which Pindar described. Even the rivers thereof, which are naturally desired above all things by the inhabitants of a dry and dusty land, were probably not absent from Pindar's picture; for Plutarch, to whom we owe the preservation of the fragment, passes in one passage from actual quotation of the opening lines to a mention of smooth and tranquil rivers flowing through the land ; and in the kindred picture of the Islands of the Blest, which Pindar paints elsewhere, he does not omit to mention the water wherewith the golden flowers are refreshed ; for in his eyes too water was the best of earth's gifts, even as gold was the brightest of wrought treasures.

It was this high appreciation of water which first informed a custom prevalent all over Greece on the occasion of funerals. As the bier passes along the road, the friends and neighbours of the dead man empty at their doorway or from their windows a vessel of water, and usually throw down the vessel itself to be broken on the stones of the road. This custom is evidently very old, for in some places the use of the water, the very essence of the rite, has become obsolete, and all that remains of the custom is the breaking of a piece of crockery. And even though in most places the custom is observed in full, its meaning has generally been forgotten, and curious conjectures have been made to explain it. Some interpret the custom as a symbol of that which has befallen the dead man; the vessel is his body, the water is his soul; the pouring out of the water symbolises the vanishing of the soul, and11 (25); Migne, Patrolog. (ser. Graec.) Vol. p. 916.]