Thou hast one brother dear to thee, and haply he may pass it.”
Then changèd she her speech withal, and uttered other presage:
“As iron now is my poor heart, as iron stand the bridge-way,
As iron are my tresses fair, iron be they that cross it!
For I’ve a brother far away, and haply he may pass it.”’
But while the most famous examples of sacrifice to genii are connected with bridges, the custom in a less criminal form than that which the folk-songs celebrate is common throughout Greece to-day. In building a house or any other edifice, the question of propitiating the genius already in possession of the site and of inducing it to become the guardian of the building is duly considered. Sacrifice is done. The peace-offering, according to the importance of the building and the means of the future owner, may consist of an ox, a ram, a he-goat, or a cock (or, less commonly, of a hen with her brood[699]), preferably of black colour, as were in old time victims designed for gods beneath the earth. The selected animal is in Acarnania and Aetolia[700] taken to the site, and there its throat is cut so that the blood may fall on the foundation-stone, beneath which the body is then interred. In some other places[701] it suffices to mark a cross upon the stone with the victim’s blood. In the same district the practice of taking auspices from the victim—from the shoulder-blade in the case of a ram and from the breast-bone in the case of a cock—is occasionally combined with the sacrifice, but is not essential to the ceremony.
But animals, though they are the only victims actually slaughtered upon the spot, are not the only form of peace-offering. Even at the present day when, added to the power of the law, a sense of humanity, or a fear of being pronounced ‘uncivilised,’ tends to deter the peasantry even of the most outlying districts from actually satisfying the more savage instincts of hereditary superstition, there still exists a strong feeling that a human victim is preferable to an animal for ensuring the stability of a building. Fortunately therefore for the builder’s peace of mind, the principles of sympathetic magic offer a compromise between actual murder and total disregard of the traditional rite. It suffices to obtain from a man or woman—an enemy for choice but, failing that, ‘out of philanthropy’ as a Greek authority puts it, any aged person whose term of life is well-nigh done—some such object as a hair or the paring of a nail, or again a shred of his clothing or a cast-off shoe, or it may be a thread or stick[702] marked with the measure either of the footprint or of the full stature of the person, and to bury it beneath the foundation-stone of the new edifice. By this proceeding a human victim is devoted to the genius of the site, and will die within the year as surely as if an image of him were moulded in wax and a needle run through its heart. Another variation of the same rite consists in enticing some passer-by to the spot and laying the foundation-stone upon his shadow. In Santorini I myself was once saved from such a fate by the rough benevolence of a stranger who dragged me back from the place where I was standing and adjured me to watch the proceedings from the other side of the trench where my shadow could not fall across the foundations. Nor are the invited guests immune; unenviable therefore is the position of those persons who are officially required to assist at the laying of the foundation-stones of churches and other public buildings. The demarch (or mayor) of Agrinion informed me that, according to the belief of the common-folk in the neighbourhood, his four immediate predecessors in office had all fallen victims to this their public duty; and he described to me the concern and consternation of his own women-folk when he himself had recently braved the ordeal. He honestly allowed too that he had kept his shadow clear of the dangerous spot.
So much importance is attached to these foundation-ceremonies that the Church has provided a special office to be read alike for cathedral or for cottage; and the priest who attends for this purpose is sometimes induced to pronounce a blessing on the animal that is to be sacrificed. This however is the more expensive rite; the victim has to be bought, and the priest expects a fee for blessing it; whereas the immolation of a shadow-victim costs nothing, is more efficacious as being equivalent to a human sacrifice, and provides an excellent means for removing an enemy with impunity.
The sacrificial ceremony is also sometimes performed on other occasions than those of the laying of foundation-stones. In Athens a precept of popular wisdom enjoins the slaughtering of a black cock when a new quarry is opened[703]; and an interesting account is given by Bent[704] of a similar scene at the launching of a ship in Santorini. ‘When they have built a new vessel, they have a grand ceremony at the launching, or benediction, as they call it here, at which the priest officiates; and the crowd eagerly watch, as she glides into the water, the position she takes, for an omen is attached to this. It is customary to slaughter an ox, a lamb or a dove on these occasions, according to the wealth of the proprietor and the size of the ship, and with the blood to make a cross on the deck. After this the captain jumps off the bows into the sea with all his clothes on, and the ceremony is followed by a banquet and much rejoicing.’ Here it is reasonable to suppose that the captain by jumping into the sea goes through the form of offering himself as a sacrifice to the genius of the sea, and that the animal actually slaughtered is a surrogate victim in his stead.
The strength of these superstitions to-day, as gauged by the shifts and compromises to which the peasants resort in order to satisfy their scruples, goes far to guarantee the historical accuracy of such ballads as ‘the Bridge of Arta.’ Not of course that each of the numerous versions with all its local colouring is to be taken as evidence of human sacrifice in each place named; exactitude of detail cannot be claimed for them. But as a faithful picture of the beliefs and customs prevalent not more perhaps than two or three centuries ago they deserve full credence. Both the wide dispersion of the several versions, and also the skill with which in each of them the action of the master-builder evokes feelings not of aversion but rather of pity for a man of whom religious duty demanded the sacrifice of his own wife, furnish plain proof of the domination which the superstition in its most gruesome form once exercised; and the intentions of the modern peasants, if not their acts, testify to the same overwhelming dread of genii.