Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals

by J. C. Lawson

Here neither the species of the birds nor their cry nor flight is taken into account; the whole significance of the omen turns on the close company which they kept. And for the method of interpreting it we can go back to Aristotle. ‘Seers observe whether birds settle apart or settle together; the former indicates enmity, the latter mutual peace[848].’

Lastly, as regards practical augury from birds at the present day it may be laid down as a rule that any extraordinary phenomenon, exciting in the simple peasant’s mind more alarm than curiosity, passes for a bad omen. The hen that so far forgets her sex as to crow like a cock falls under suspicion and the knife at once. To the professional diviner of old time probably such incidents were less distressing; he could observe such striking anomalies in as calmly judicial a spirit as the details of more ordinary occurrences. But at the present day, though there are magicians in plenty, there are no specialists, to my knowledge, in the science of auspices. The modern peasant does not entice the birds with food to a special spot, as did Teiresias[849], in order to listen to their talk and to gain from them deliberately the knowledge of things that are and things that shall be. But amateur though he be, lacking in power of minute observation and in science of detailed interpretation, such rudiments of the art as he possesses are an heritage from the old Hellenic masters of divination.

So far then as the broad principles of practical auspice-taking are concerned, the proofs of the identity of modern with ancient methods are sufficiently complete; and it remains only to show that the modern practice of this art is not a mere inert survival of customs no longer understood but is in truth informed by the same intelligent religious spirit as in antiquity. What that spirit was, is admirably defined in that passage of Plutarch which I have already quoted, in which he claims that the quickness of birds and their intelligence and their alertness to act upon every thought qualify them, beyond all other living things, for the part of messengers between gods and men. Celsus too in his polemics against Christianity, made frank confession of the old faith: ‘We believe in the prescience of all animals and particularly of birds. Diviners are only interpreters of their predictions. If then the birds ... impart to us by signs all that God has revealed to them, it follows of necessity that they have a closer intimacy than we with the divine, that they surpass us in knowledge of it, and are dearer to God than we[850].’ Indeed it might seem that there was hope of birds knowing that which a god sought in vain to learn. To Demeter enquiring for her ravished child ‘no god nor mortal man would tell the true tale, nor came there to her any bird of omen as messenger of truth[851].’ In effect, the special aptitude of birds to carry divine messages to men was never questioned in ancient Greece; it was a very axiom of religion, without which the whole science of auspices would have been a baseless fabrication.

Now it would have been no matter of surprise for us, if practical augury had still been in vogue at the present day and the theory had been forgotten; if the customs born of a belief in the prophetic power of birds had, with the inveteracy of all custom, outlived the parent principle. Rather it is surprising that among all the perplexity and bewilderment of thought caused by the long series of changes, religious, political, and social, through which Greece has passed, this recognition of birds as intermediaries between heaven and earth has abated none of its force or its purity, neither vanquished by the direct antagonism of Christianity, nor contaminated by the influx of Slavonic or other foreign thought. Yet so it is; and the perusal of any collection of modern folk-songs will show that the idea is fully as familiar now as in the literature of old time.

A few examples may be cited; and in selecting them I shall exclude from consideration those many Klephtic ballads which open with a conversation between three ‘birds[852]’; for the word ‘bird’ (πουλί) seems to have become among the Klephts a colloquial equivalent for ‘spy’ or ‘scout,’ suggested perhaps by the qualities of intelligence, alertness, and speed required, and it is admittedly[853] impossible in many cases to determine whether the term has its literal or its conventional meaning. Moreover these openings of ballads have passed into a somewhat set form; and formulae are no more proof of the continuance of belief than mummies of the continuance of life.

But, even with the range of trustworthy evidence thus limited, the residue of popular poetry contains ample store of passages in which birds are recognised as the best messengers between this world and another. And here, as we shall see, the reiteration of the idea is not uniform in expression; the thought has not been crystallised into a number of beautiful but inert phrases; it is still alive, still young, still procreative of fresh poetry.

There is a well-known folk-song, recorded in several versions, which tells how a young bride, trusting in the might of her nine brothers and in her husband’s valour, boasted that she had no fear of Charos. ‘A bird, an evil bird, went unto Charos, and told him, and Charos shot an arrow at her and the girl grew pale; a second and a third he shot and stretched her on her death-bed[854].’ The special bird in the poet’s mind was, one may surmise, ‘Charon’s bird,’ the tawny owl, which as I have noted is always a messenger of evil. In another poem a bird issues from the lower world and brings doleful tidings to women who weep over their lost ones. ‘A little bird came forth from the world below; his claws were red and his feathers black, reddened with blood and blackened with the soil. Mothers run to see him, and sisters to learn of him, and wives of good men to get true tidings. Mother brings sugar, and sister scented wine, and wives of good men bear amaranth in their hands. “Eat the sugar, bird, and drink of the scented wine, and smell the amaranth, and confess to us the truth.” “Good women, that which I saw, how should I tell it or confess it? I saw Charos riding in the plains apace; he dragged the young men by the hair, the old men by their hands, and ranged at his saddle-bow he bore the little children[855].”’

Nor is it only between earth and the nether world that birds carry tidings to and fro; earth and heaven are equally united by their ministry. An historical ballad, belonging to the year 1825, when Ibrahim Pasha had just occupied the fortress of Navarino and other places in the Morea and was about to join in investing Mesolonghi, gives to this idea unusually imaginative treatment; for the bird which brings from heaven encouragement and prophecies of future success (one of which was literally fulfilled in the battle of Navarino two years later) is an incarnation of the soul of a fallen Greek warrior. ‘“Would I were a bird” (I said), “that I might fly and go to Mesolonghi, and see how goes the sword-play and the musketry, how fight the unconquered falcons[856] of Roumelie.” And a bird of golden plumage warbled answer to me: “Hold, good George; an thou thirstest for Arab[857] blood, here too are infidels for thee to slay as many as thou wilt. Dost see far away yonder the Turkish ships? Charos is standing over them, and they shall be turned to ashes.” “Good bird, how didst thou learn this that thou tellest me?” “A bird I seem to thee to be, but no bird am I. Yon island that I espied for thee afar belongeth to Navarino; ’twas there I spent my last breath a-fighting. Tsamados am I, and unto the world have I come; from the heavens where I dwell I discern you clearly, yet yearn to see you face to face.” “Nay, what shouldest thou see now among us in our unhappy land? Knowest thou not what befell and now is in the Morea?” “Good George, be not distraught, consent not to despair; though the Morea fight not now, a time will come again when they will fight like wild beasts and chase their foe. Piteously shall bones lie scattered before Mesolonghi, and there shall the lions of Suli rejoice.” And the bird flew away and went up to the heavens[858].’

Such an identification of the winged messenger with the soul of a dead man does not represent the ordinary thought of the people; it is a conceit peculiar to this ballad; but the very fact that the dead warrior is made to assume the guise of a bird in order to communicate with his living comrades shows how strong is the popular feeling that birds are the natural intermediaries between earth and heaven.

Thus then the ancient belief that birds are among the most apt instruments of divine and human communion has survived as little impaired by lapse of ages as the practical science of augury founded upon it. Perhaps indeed it has even fared better; for practical augury has, I suspect, suffered from the paucity or extinction of professional augurs, who alone could be expected to remember and to transmit to their successors all the complex details of their art, whereas the old faith may even have gained thereby; for history, I suppose, is not void of instances in which the professional exponents of a religion have fostered its forms and have starved its spirit, forgetting their ministry in their desire for mastery, and making their office the sole gate of communion with heaven. But, be that as it may, such decline as there may have been from the complete and elaborate system of auspices which the ancients possessed is not at any rate due to any abatement of the ancient belief in the mediation of birds.