Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/564

 their own times, might well believe that a joy, which had been granted to the brave men and fair women of a former and better age even during their life-time upon earth, was still reserved for the righteous in the world to come. Pausanias tells us with a wonderful simplicity that in his time owing to the increase of iniquity in all the world no one was changed from a man into a god, and that the wrath of the gods against the unrighteous was laid up against the time when they should quit this earth. If then there was believed to be a postponement of punishment for those who offended the gods, there might well be a reservation of blessedness for those who pleased them. It would have imposed no strain upon the faith of such as Pausanias to look forward to the enjoyment in a future life of the same bliss as had been enjoyed in old time upon earth by men 'who by reason of their uprightness and piety sat at the same hospitable board as gods, and whom the gods openly visited with honour for their goodness even as they visited the wicked with their displeasure ,' men who, as many an old legend told, had shared not the board only but even the bed of deities.

This curious Greek conception of death as a form of marriage was first borne in upon me by the funeral-dirges of the modern peasants. Examples may be found in any collection of Greek folk-songs. The actual expression of the thought varies considerably, but it would probably be hard to find in Greece any professional mourner in whose elaborations the idea did not occupy an important place. It is utilised with equal frequency in regard to persons of either sex, whether married or unmarried at the time of death. The two following specimens from Passow's collection are fairly representative.

'Ah me! ah me! the hours of youth and days all past and over, Haply shall they return again, those hours of youth regretted?' 'Nay when the crow dons plumage white, when crow to dove is changèd, Then only shall they come again, those hours of youth lamented.' 'Oh fare ye well, high mountain-tops and fir-trees rich in shadow, For I must go to marry me, to take a wife unto me; The black earth for my wife I take, the tombstone as her mother And yonder little pebbles all her brethren and her sisters .'

Here evidently we have the funeral-dirge of an old man, and, as is usual in these poems, a large part of the words are