[43] The complaints to which I became a listener were made by maleks, bishops, priests, headmen, and others. Exaggerations prevail, and the same story is often told with as many variations as there are narrators. I cannot vouch for anything which did not come under my own observation. Some narratives dissolved under investigation, leaving a mere nucleus of fact. Those which I thought worthy of being noted down—some of which were published in the Contemporary Review in May and June in two papers called The Shadow of the Kurd—were either fortified by corroborative circumstances, or rest on the concurrent testimony as to the main facts of three independent narrators.
In some cases I was asked to lay the statements before the British Consul at Erzerum, with the names of the narrators as the authority on which they rested, but in the greater number I was implored not to give names or places, or any means of identification. "We are in fear of our lives if we tell the truth," they urged. Sometimes I asked them if they would abide by what they told me in the event of an investigation by the British Vice-Consul at Van. "No, no, no, we dare not!" was the usual reply. Under these circumstances, the only course open to me is to withhold the names of persons and places wherever I was pledged to do so, but as a guarantee of good faith I have placed the statements, confidentially, with the names, in the hands of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
[44] For the correction of my very imperfect investigations into the religious customs of the Syrians, I am indebted to a very careful and learned paper by Canon Maclean, Some Account of the Customs of the Eastern Syrian Churches, originally published in the Guardian, and now to be obtained at the office of "The Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians, 2 Deans Yard, Westminster."
[45] A singular legend is told regarding the origin of the sacred leaven and the sacred oil.
The Syrians say that as our Lord went up out of the Jordan after His baptism John the Baptist collected in a phial the baptismal water as it dropped from His sacred person, giving it before his death to St. John the Evangelist. At the Last Supper (the legend runs) our Lord gave to John two loaves, putting it into his heart to preserve one. At the Cross, when this same apostle saw the "blood and water," he took the phial from his bosom and added the water from the pierced side to the water of baptism, dipping the loaf at the same time in the blood. After the Day of Pentecost the disciples, before going forth to "disciple" the nations, ground John's blood-dyed loaf to powder, mixed it with flour and salt, divided it among themselves, and carried it forth to serve as leaven for ever for the bread of remembrance. In like manner they took of the mingled water of the phial, and mixing it with oil of unction, divided it, and preserved it for the perpetual sanctification of the waters of baptism.
[46] A portion of one of the latter follows:—
The newly dead.—"Hail, my brethren and friends who sleep. Open the door that I may enter in and see your ranks."
Those in Hades.—"Come, enter and see how many giants are sleeping here, and have been made dust and rust and worms in the bosom of Sheol. Come, enter and see, O child of death, the race of Adam: see and gaze where thy kind dwells. Come, enter and see the abundance of the bones and their commingling. The bone of the king and the bone of the servant are not separated. Come, enter and see the great corruption we are dwelling in."
The mourners.—"Wait for the Lord, who will come and raise you by His right hand."
Translations of the Liturgies are to be found in Dr. Badger's valuable book, The Nestorians and their Rituals.