Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/68

 above and the god below' ([Greek: ton anô theo kai ton katô theo]). The latter indeed had long since given up watering the land; he had caused shakings of the earth and turned even the sea-water red. The god above also had once rained ashes when she asked for water, but generally he gave her rain, sometimes even in summer-*time. One thing she could not make out—who was the god that caused the thunder; did I know? I evaded the question, and our theological discussion went no further, for the god of thunder was making his voice heard more threateningly, and the old witch would not stay to make his acquaintance at closer quarters.

The physical interpretation of these references to the god above and the god below is not difficult. At the present day there are said to be three springs, and three only, in the whole island; nor are they of much use to the inhabitants; indeed the only one which I saw was dry save for a scanty moisture barely sufficient to keep the rock about it green and mossy: and in fact the population depends entirely upon rain-water stored up in large underground cisterns or reservoirs. Clearly the god below no longer gives water; but that there may have been more spring-*water prior to the great eruptions of 1866 is very probable; for the people still call certain dry old torrent-beds by which the island is intersected 'rivers' ([Greek: potamoi]), and real rivers with water in them figure also in several of the local folk-stories. The perversity of the god above in sending ashes on one occasion instead of rain may also be understood in reference to the same eruptions, of which the old woman gave me a vivid description.

But the theology itself is more interesting than its material basis. This witch—a good Christian, they told me, but a little mad, with a madness however of which sane vine-growers were eager enough to avail themselves—acknowledged certainly three gods: the unknown thunder-god was clearly distinct from the god of the rain who was known to her: and there was also the god of the waters under the earth, in whose service she had perhaps followed the calling of a water-finder, and to whom she ascribed, as did the ancients to Poseidon, the shaking of the earth.

Polytheism then even in its purely pagan form is not yet extinct in Greece. In the disguise of Christianity, we shall see, it is everywhere triumphant.

Among the Christian objects of worship—for I have already