Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/566

 'Go, tell ye now my mother dear, my mother sore-afflicted, Ne'er to await me home again, ne'er to abide my coming; Yet tell her not that I am slain, tell her not I am fallen; Nay, tell her then that I am wed—wed in these wilds so weary. The black earth for my wife I took, the hard rock my bride's mother, And all the little pebbles here I took for my new kindred .'

The feeling displayed in these lines (which are credited by Passow to the town of Livadia ([Greek: Lebadeia]) in Boeotia) finds closely similar expression in a recently-published Macedonian folk-song. The latter however is not a mere copy of the former. Its metre is different, and further it is a folk-song of the romantic order, whereas the lines which I have quoted belong to an historical ballad. A youth is lowered by his brothers, so runs the story, into a well to get water for them, but the well proves to be haunted by a snake-like monster ([Greek: stoicheio] ) from whom they try in vain to rescue him. In this plight he cries to them:

'Oh leave me, brothers, leave me, go ye on your way, And say not to my mother dear that I am dead, But tell her, brothers, tell her how that I am wed; The black earth for my wife I took, the tombstone my bride's mother, And all these little blades of grass her brethren and her sisters .'

Even more remarkable in its total absence of grief is a fragment given by Passow under the title of 'the Wedding in Hades.' The lamentation—for technically at least the poem falls into the class of 'dirges'—is sung by a mother for her son, and she speaks of her own mother, who is already dead and in the nether world, as making preparation for the boy's wedding in Hades.

'My mother maketh glad to-day, she maketh my son's wedding, She goeth for water to the springs, for snow unto the mountains, To fruit-wives in their garden-plots for apples and for quinces. "Ye springs," she saith, "give water cool, and give me snow, ye mountains, Ye fruit-wives in your garden-plots, give apples and give quinces. For unto me a dear one comes down from the world above us; Not from a strange land cometh he, nor from among strange people, He is the child of mine own child, right dear and deep-beloved." '

From these passages and from many others conceived in the same spirit it will readily be seen that the thought of death as a kind of marriage, however mystical it may seem to us, is familiar to the modern Greek peasants. Nor has that thought become, which I have inadequately rendered as 'maketh glad,' is technically used of marriage. See above, p. 127.]