Nor is it only in stories that the discovery of icons in obedience to dreams is heard of. During my stay in Greece a village schoolmaster embarrassed the Education Office by applying for a week’s holiday in order to direct a party of his fellow-villagers in digging up an icon of which he had dreamt, and to build a chapel for it on the spot. It was felt that a body concerned with religious as well as secular instruction ought not to commit the impiety of refusing such a request, but it was feared that other schoolmasters would be encouraged to dream.
Besides those visions which are concerned with the finding of treasure or of icons, that class of dream also may be noticed in which is given some divine communication as to the healing of the sick. Many a time I have met in some sanctuary of miraculous repute peasants from a far-off village, who have travelled from one end of Greece to another, bringing wife or child, in the faith that mind will be restored or sickness healed; time after time their story is the same, that they were bidden in a dream to go and tarry so many days in such a church, and they have started off at once, obedient to what they feel to be a promise of divine help, begging their way may be for many days, but unflinchingly hopeful. And then comes the long sojourn in a strange village, for a mere visit is not always enough; weeks and months they wait, sleeping each night in the holy precincts and if possible at the foot of the icon, hoping and believing that some mysterious virtue of the place will heal the sufferer, or at the least that in a fresh dream they will be told what is next to be done. And if nothing happen—for now and then rest or change of air or, it may be, faith[797] effects the cure desired—they return home with hope lessened but belief unshaken, ready to obey again if another message be vouchsafed to them from the dream-land of heaven.
Such dreams as these are regarded as spontaneous revelations of the divine will, granted possibly in response to prayer, but in no way controlled or procured by any previous action of the dreamer. But there is one curious custom, observed by the girls of Greece, by which dreams are deliberately induced as a means of foreknowing their matrimonial destinies. On the eve of St Catharine’s day[798] most appropriately, for she is the patroness of all marrying and giving in marriage, but sometimes also on the first day of Lent[799], the girls knead and bake cakes (ἀρμυροκούλουρα) of which, as their name implies, the chief ingredient is salt. By consuming undue quantities of this concoction, and often by assuaging the consequent thirst with an equally undue quantity of wine, they produce a condition of body eminently suited to cause a troubled sleep, and, their minds being already absorbed in speculations on marriage, it is little wonder if their dreams reveal to them their future husbands. How far this custom is now taken seriously, I cannot determine; in some districts it has certainly degenerated into a somewhat disreputable game. But the fact that the intoxication of the girls is tolerated on this occasion among a peasantry whose men even are seldom drunk except on certain religious occasions—on Easter-day and after funerals—proves clearly that the custom was once, as I think it sometimes is now, a genuinely religious rite and an acknowledged means of divination.
A modification of this custom, preferred in some districts as obviating alike the unpleasant process of eating salt-cake and the disreputable sequel thereto, substitutes for dreaming two other ancient methods of divination—divination by drawing lots, a primitive system common to many peoples but employed nevertheless even by established oracles[800] in ancient Greece, and divination from chance words overheard by the diviner, a method which is, I think, more exclusively Hellenic. For this form of the custom also salt-cakes are required, but only a morsel of each is eaten, and the remainder of the cake is divided into three portions, to which are tied respectively red, black, and blue ribbands. Each girl then places her three pieces under her pillow for the night, and in the morning draws out one by chance. The red ribband denotes a bachelor, the black a widower, and the blue a stranger, that is to say some one other than a fellow-villager. Then, in order to supplement with fuller detail the indications of the lot, the girl takes her stand in the door-way of the cottage and listens to the casual conversation of the neighbours or the passers-by; and the first name, trade, occupation, and suchlike which she hears mentioned are taken to be those of her future husband.
Another similar custom, practised only by girls and not necessarily taken more seriously than a game of forfeits, preserves in its modern name ὁ κλήδονας[801] the old word κληδών, and the purpose of the custom is to obtain that which Homer[802] actually denoted by κληδών, a presage drawn from chance words. The preliminaries of the ceremony are as follows. On the eve of the feast of St John the Baptist[803] a boy (who for choice should be the first-born of parents still living) is sent to fetch fresh water from the spring or well. This water is known as ἀμίλητο νερό, ‘speechless water,’ because the boy who brings it is forbidden to speak to anyone on his way. Each girl then drops into the vessel of water some object such as a coin, a ring, or, most frequently, an apple as her token. The vessel is then closed up and left for the night on the roof of a house or some other open place ‘where the stars may see it.’ The proceedings of the next morning vary. According to one traveller[804], each girl first takes out her own apple—for he mentions only this token—and then draws off some of the water into a smaller vessel. This vessel is then supported by two other girls on the points of their four thumbs and begins to revolve of its own accord. If it turn towards the right, the girl may expect to marry as she wishes; if to the left, otherwise. Also, he says, they wash their hands with this water and then go out into the road, and take the first name they hear spoken as that of their future husband. This latter part of the ceremony is true to the meaning of the word κλήδονας and is a genuine instance of divination from chance words. But neither this nor the former part as described by Magnoncourt is generally practised now. The usual procedure is either for the boy who fetched the water or for the girls in rotation to plunge the hand in and draw out the first object touched, improvising or reciting at the same time some couplet favourable or adverse to the love or matrimonial prospects of her who shall be found to own the forthcoming object; and so in turn, until each girl has received back her token and learnt the presage of her fate.
The recitation of possibly prepared distichs by those who are taking part in the ceremony is certainly a less pure method of divination than the earlier practice described by Magnoncourt. The prediction is deliberately provided, and the element of chance or of divine guidance is confined to the drawing of the token. The older method exhibits more clearly the relation of the modern custom to the superstitious observation of κληδόνες from the time of the Odyssey[805] onwards. Thus when Odysseus heard the suitors threaten to take the beggar Irus to Epirus, ‘even to the tyrant Echetus the destroyer of all men,’ he hailed the chance words as a divine ratification of his hope that soon the suitors should take their own journey to another destroyer of all men, even the tyrant of the nether world, and ‘he rejoiced in the presage’ (χαῖρεν δὲ κλεηδόνι)[806].
The same method of divination was frequently employed in the classical age also, and that too not only privately[807] but even by public oracles. It was thus that Hermes Agoraeus at Pherae made response to his worshippers. The enquirer presented himself towards evening before the statue of the god, burnt incense on the hearth, filled with oil and lighted some bronze lamps that stood there, placed a certain bronze coin of the local currency upon the altar, whispered his question into the ear of the statue, and then at once holding his hands over his ears made his way out of the agora. Once outside, he removed his hands, and the first words which greeted his ears were accepted as the god’s response to his question[808]. A primitive statue of Hermes with the surname κλεηδόνιος existed also at Pitane[809], which place may be the actual site of that ‘sanctuary of chance utterances’ (κληδόνων ἱερόν) to which, according to Pausanias[810], the people of Smyrna resorted for oracles. And at Thebes again Apollo Spodios gave his replies in like manner[811].
Clearly then in antiquity divination from chance words was a well-established religious institution; and at the present day, though the practice is rarer, its character is unchanged. The religious nature of the two customs which I have described is shown by their association with the festivals of St Catharine and St John the Baptist; and though in different localities or periods a certain amount of divination by the lot or other means has been mixed up with divination from chance words, the latter obviously forms the essence of both rites, supplying as it does to the one its very name, and supplementing in the other the meagre indications of the lot with more detailed information. A girl may learn from the colour of the ribband attached to the piece of salt-cake which she happens to draw whether her future husband is bachelor, widower, or stranger; but only from the chance utterance accepted as an answer to her own secret questionings can she learn the name and home and occupation and appearance of her destined husband.
The next branch of divination, the science of reading omens of success or failure in the objects which a traveller meets on his road, is still largely cultivated. In old days indeed it was so elaborate a science that a treatise, as Suidas tells us, could be written on this one method of divination alone. Possibly the same feat might be accomplished at the present day if a complete collection were made of all the superstitions on the subject of ‘meeting’ (ἀπάντημα) in all the villages of Greece. How instructive the results might be, I cannot forecast; but at any rate the task is beyond me, and I must content myself with mentioning a few of the commonest examples. To meet a priest is always unlucky, and for men even more so than for women, for, unless they take due precautions as they pass him[812], their virility is likely to be impaired; and the omen is even worse if the priest happen to be riding a donkey, for even the name of that animal is not mentioned by some of the peasants without an apology[813]. To meet a witch also is unfortunate, and since any old woman may be a witch, it is wise to make the sign of the cross before passing her. A cripple is also ominous of failure in an enterprise. On the other hand to meet an insane person is usually accounted a good omen, for insanity implies close communion with the powers above. To meet a woman with child is also fortunate, for it indicates that the journey undertaken will bear fruit; and the peasant by way of acknowledgement never fails to bow or to bare his head, and if he be exceptionally polite may wish the woman a good confinement. Of animals those which most commonly forebode ill are the hare, the rat, the stoat, the weasel, and any kind of snake. In Aetolia superstition is so strong regarding these that the mere sight of one of them, or indeed of the trail of a snake across the path, is enough to deter many a peasant from his day’s work and to send him back home to sit idly secure from morn till night; and even the more stout-hearted will cross themselves or spit three times before proceeding.
That some of these beliefs date from classical times is certain. Aristophanes, playing upon the use of ὄρνις, ‘a bird,’ in the sense of ‘omen,’ rallies the Athenians upon calling ‘a meeting a bird, a sound a bird, a servant a bird, and an ass a bird[814]’; and there can be little doubt that the ass belonged then as now to the category of objects ominous to encounter on the road; and the same author[815], corroborated in this case by Theophrastus’ portrait of the superstitious man[816], speaks to the dread inspired by a weasel crossing a man’s path. The snake too, it can hardly be doubted, was, owing perhaps to its association with tombs, an object of awe to the superstitious out of doors as well as within the house[817]. On the other hand an insane person apparently was in Theophrastus’ time not as now an omen of good but of evil, to be averted by spitting on the bosom[818]. But though the modern interpretations of such omens may not be identical in every respect with the old, enough has been said to show that the science of divining from the encounters of the road is still flourishing.