Syra in the Aegean. In the evening of that day the women used to go down to the shore en masse and wash their feet in the sea. Crowds of admiring males witnessed the performance, which was accompanied by much laughter and good-humoured horse-play. The custom may have originated in some solemn ceremony of propitiation of the sea-nymphs, if not of Aphrodite herself. The May festivities all over Europe are permeated with symbolical allusions to fertility, and such an appeal to the spirits of the water would harmonize well with the analogous appeals to the tree-spirits, exemplified by the wreaths already mentioned. The divinings by the flower petals are also obviously connected with a similar idea.

There are several saws expressing popular opinion on the character of this month: Ο Μάης ἔχει τ ̓ ὄνομα κῇ ̓Απρίλης Tà λovλoúdia, “May enjoys the fame, but April brings forth the flowers." Weather-lore pronounces: Máns äßpexos, xpovià Evтνxισμévη, “A rainless May portends a prosperous year." The serenity of May is, however, occasionally disturbed by hailstorms. The folk muse turns this untoward circumstance to account:

Αντά 'πρεπε δὲν ἔβρεχε, τὸν Μάη χαλαζώνει.

"When it should it did not even rain; in May it hails,"

a proverb applied to those who display inopportune energy or liberality.

An equivalent to our saying:

Change not a clout

Till May be out,2

is offered by the Macedonian commandment: Μὴν ξαλαφρώνῃς τὸ κορμί σ ̓ ὅσου ὁ Ἔλυμπος εἶναι ἀσπρισμένος, “Do not lighten your body so long as Mount Olympus is clad in white," an advice the prosaic import of which is redeemed by the poetic form of the expression.

1 This especially applies to the vines, v. infra September.

2 For a variety of saws concerning May see R. Inwards, Weather Lore, pp. 31 foll.

A. F.

4

June.

This month is known as the Harvester' (Oepioτns), because harvest begins during it. In fact, it is the beginning of the busiest time in the peasant's year, and the folk poet may well complain :

̓Απ ̓ τὸ θέρο ὡς τῆς ἐλῃαῖς

Δὲν ἀπολείπουν ᾗ δουλειαῖς.

"From harvest till the olive's press'd
In life there is but little rest."

Nevertheless, this month enjoys the distinction of including the very crown of Midsummer festivals. On the 24th of June is celebrated the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist or, as he is termed in the Calendar of the Greek Church, the Precursor ('O IIpódpoμos), and popularly known as St John of the Divination ("Aï Tiávvns Toû Kλýdova), a name derived from one of the many methods of fortune-telling which constitutes the principal feature of the festival.

On the eve (avýμepa) of the feast parties of village maidens are in the habit of gathering together in a purposely darkened room, with a mirror. Having thus "taken darkness for an ally," they all look into the magic mirror by turns. Those who are to marry within the year see, or fancy that they see, the future husband's face in the glass-peeping over their shoulders, as it were. The less fortunate, or less imaginative, ones are compelled to possess their souls in patience till next year.

Another form of the same practice is the following: each maid separately takes a looking-glass into her bedroom and after having undressed stands in front of it, uttering this formula:

Παίρνω τὸν καθρέφτη καὶ τὸν θεὸ περικαλώ
Ὅποιος εἶναι τῆς τύχης μου ἀπόψε νά τον διῶ.

"I take up this mirror and God I beseech,

Whosoever is to be my fate, may I see him this night."

She then puts the glass under her pillow and tries hard to dream. This ceremony closely corresponds with the Hallowe'en

practice of the North, mentioned in Burns's poem of that name (XIII). The custom for the Scotch maiden was to go alone to a looking-glass, holding a candle. According to some authorities she should eat an apple,' according to others she should comb her hair before the glass. Then the face of her predestined partner would appear in the depths of the mirror.

This superstition is related to another, not unknown to English school-girls of the present day. The first new moon in the year is made to declare to them the husband that is to be, and she is invoked in the following words, pronounced by the girl standing against a tree, with her foot on a

stone:

New Moon, New Moon, I hail thee

By all the virtue in thy body,
Grant this night that I may see

Him who my true love is to be.2

It is curious that the English girl's invocation should be more pagan in tone than the Macedonian maiden's prayer.

The looking-glass form of divination is akin to the familiar, and now fashionable, crystal-gazing. It is only one of a number of superstitions belonging to an ancient and numerous family. Visions are seen on walls or in water, in mirror or the moon; but the object is ever the same. Ancient and modern superstition...attributes the phantasms to spiritual agency," says Mr Andrew Lang.3

A third attempt at peering into futurity is made by means of water and molten lead-old spoons and forks often going to the pot for this purpose. A basin is filled with water and, while an incantation is being muttered, the molten lead is dropped into the vessel. The forms which the metal assumes in congealing are interpreted symbolically. If, for example, the lead spreads into an even surface, that is a sign that his or her wishes will be fulfilled without difficulty; should, on the contrary, the metal shape itself into a lump or 'mountain,' 1 Cp. Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, vol. iv. p. 38; pp. 55 foll. 2 School Superstitions, by T. Parker Wilson, in the Royal Magazine' of Sept., 1901. For other versions of this appeal to the Moon see Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, vol. iv. pp. 117 foll. 3 Cock-Lane and Common-Sense, pp. 69 foll.

it signifies that great obstacles lie in the way of his or her happiness, and so forth.

An allusion to this form of divination is to be found in a popular love-couplet which I heard at Salonica:

Ένα κομμάτι μάλαμα θὰ ῥίξω 'ς τὸ πηγάδι,

Νὰ καθαρέψῃ τὸ νερό, νὰ διῶ ποιὸς θά με πάρῃ.

"A lump of gold shall I drop into the well,

That the water may grow clear, and I may see who my husband is to be."

On the same evening takes place another ceremony with a similar end in view. Water is drawn from a well into a jug, in perfect silence (βουβὸ or ἀμίλητο νερό). Into it is thrown the white of an egg, and then it is left out in the open air through the night. The shapes which the egg assumes are examined on the following morning and interpreted in the same way as those of the lead. In Russia a parallel custom prevails on Christmas Eve; but, instead of lead or egg, the material used is molten wax. The sinful professions of the 'wax-melter' (KnроXÚτns) and the 'lead-melter' (uoλußdoxúτns) are not unknown to the islanders of the Aegean."

Of like spells we find many traces both in England and in Scotland. The Wake of Freya' still survives as a memory, if not as an actual practice. Burns in a note to Hallowe'en gives an interesting description of the custom as it prevailed in Scotland in his day, while Keats has immortalized a kindred superstition in his beautiful poem, The Eve of St Agnes:

They told her how, upon St Agnes's Eve
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
If ceremonies due they did aright.5

1 This water is also called aλaλov, see Ducange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis, s. v. μаσтражâ.

2 W. H. D. Rouse, Folklore from the Southern Sporades' in Folk-Lore, June, 1899, p. 152. Most of these methods of divination are common to many parts of the Greek East; see a few notes on Δεισιδαιμονίαι καὶ ̔́Ορκοι in the ‘Εθνικὸν Ἡμερολόγιον Μαρίνου Π. Βρετοῦ, Paris, 1866, pp. 219-220; G. Georgeakis et Léon Pineau, Le Folk-Lore de Lesbos, pp. 307-308.

3 G. Borrow, Lavengro, ch. xx.

4 N. 10.

5 VI. For a full description of this superstition see The Book of Days, vol. 1.

p. 140.

Likewise Poor Robin's Almanack for 1770 tells us how

On St Mark's Eve, at twelve o'clock,

The fair maid will watch her smock,
To find her husband in the dark,

By praying unto Good St Mark.1

But all the above modes of divination are in Macedonia eclipsed by the picturesque rite which lends to the feast of the Baptist its popular designation. This is the rite known throughout the Greek world as ô κλýdovas, and it well deserves a chapter to itself. It is perhaps the most interesting form of hydromancy which can be directly associated with the Midsummer ceremonies prevalent all over Europe and regarded by folklorists as having for their object the promotion of fertility. The step from a rite of propitiation to one of divination is but a short one. Even after the idea had been abandoned that the ceremonies in question operated to bring about the desired effect, the wish to obtain an omen as to the future of individuals, especially on matters matrimonial, might well have continued to be cherished. "It is thus that magic dwindles into divination."

2

Ὁ Κλήδονας.

In Macedonia the ceremony, or pastime-for, like most of these rites, it has long been shorn of its serious character1is performed as follows.

On the eve of the day young people of both sexes,-for this is a social spell,—and not unfrequently married men and women also, fix upon a certain spot where the performance is to be held. Then a child is sent round to collect from the members of the party different 'tokens' (onμádia), consisting

1 Quoted in The Book of Days, vol. 1. p. 550.

2 J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, vol. 11. p. 129.

3 The name is a modernized form of the ancient kλŋdwv, an omen contained in a word, whence kλŋdovišw, to give an omen, etc. The peasants, however, regard it as connected with the verb xλeidwvw, to lock, and this opinion has given rise to some of the terms employed above.

4 Indeed κλýdovas sometimes is used as a synonym for a frivolous sport, in which any nonsense is permissible. Hence the popular saying, “avrà 's Tòv κλήδονα να τα πῇς (or να τα πουλήσῃς)” conveying pretty nearly the same meaning as our "tell that to the marines."