Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study...

In this special class of ominous birds the principal group, says the same French writer[823], was composed of the eagle (ἀετός), the messenger[824] of Zeus, the ‘most perfect of birds[825]’; the vulture (γύψ), which closely rivalled even the king of birds[826]; the raven (κόραξ), the favourite and companion of Apollo, a bird so much observed that there were specialists (κορακομάντεις) who studied no other species; and the carrion-crow (κορώνη), transferred from the service of Apollo to that of Hera[827] or Athene[828]. These, it may safely be said, were observed at all periods. Of others, various species of hawk (ἵεραξ, ἴρηξ)—in particular that known as κίρκος, acting in Homeric times as the ‘swift messenger of Apollo[829]’ and thus rivalling the raven—and with them the heron[830] (ἐρωδιός) enjoyed in early times great respect, but gradually fell out of favour with the augur. But as these disappeared from the canon of ornithological divination, certain other birds were admitted, the wren[831] (τρόχιλος or βασιλίσκος), the owl (γλαῦξ)[832], the κρέξ dubiously identified with our ‘rail’ (crex rallus, Linn.), and the woodpecker (δρυοκολάπτης).

The continuity of the art of taking auspices is at once obvious when it is found that the birds which the modern peasant most frequently observes are of the very same class which furnished the Homeric gods with their special envoys. Eagles, vultures, hawks, ravens, crows—these are still the chief messengers of heaven, and only one other bird can claim equality with them, that bird which in classical times symbolised wisdom, the owl.

Of the methods pursued by the professional augurs in ancient Greece unfortunately less is known. The best treatise on the subject is that of Michael Psellus[833], written in the eleventh century; but probably ancient works on the subject, such as that of Telegonus to which Suidas[834] refers, were then extant and contributed the bulk of his information. But even so it is the broad principles rather than the detailed application of them which Psellus presents, and on them we must in the main rely in comparing the modern science with the ancient.

First of all the species of bird under observation had to be ascertained; for the characters of different species were held to be so various that birds as closely cognate as the raven and the crow employed wholly contrary methods of communication with mankind. ‘If as we go out of our house to work,’ says Psellus[835], ‘we hear the cry of a raven behind or of a crow in front, it forebodes anxieties and difficulties in our business, while if a crow fly past and caw on the left or a raven do likewise on the other side, it gives hope and confidence.’ The crow then was not subject even to the rule concerning right and left which applied, so far as I know, to all other birds, but, thanks to some innate contrariety, reversed the normal significance of position, and therewith also of cry and of flight[836]. Such exceptions even to the most general rules made the accurate identification of species an indispensable preliminary to successful augury. The same primary condition still holds. The diviner must be able to distinguish the cawing of a crow settled on his roof from that of a jackdaw; the former is an omen of death, as perhaps it was in Hesiod’s day[837], to some member of his family, the latter heralds the coming of a letter from a friend abroad. Again he must be able to distinguish the brown owl (κουκουβάγια) from the tawny owl (χαροποῦλι)[838]; the message of the former may be good or bad, as we shall see, according to its actions, while the latter brings only presages of woe.

The species having been identified, there remained, according to Psellus[839], four possible points in the behaviour of the bird itself (all of them liable to be modified in significance by the position of the observer) to be noticed and interpreted; these were its cry (anciently φωνή or κλαγγή), its flight (πτῆσις), its posture when settled (ἕδρα or καθέδρα), and any movement or action performed by it while thus settled (ἐνέργεια). These divisions are still recognised in modern augury.

The cry is observed in the case of many birds. The scream of an eagle is a warning of fighting or conflict to come. The croak of a raven, especially if it be thrice repeated, while the bird is flying over a house or a village, is a premonition of death to one of the inmates. The laugh of the woodpecker, owing I suppose to its mocking sound, is a sign that an intrigue against some one’s person or pocket is in train. The repeated call of the cuckoo within the bounds of a village forebodes an epidemic therein.

Flight is chiefly observed in the case of the birds of prey. The successful swoop of an eagle upon its prey, or the rapid determined flight of a hawk in pursuit of some other bird, is an encouragement to the observer (provided of course that the birds are seen on his right hand) to pursue untiringly any enterprise in which he is engaged, and is a promise of success and profit therein. In Scyros I once pointed out to my guide a large hawk chasing a flock of pigeons, which he at once hailed as a good omen and watched carefully as long as it was in sight; and when I asked him what kind of hawk it was, he promptly replied that that kind was known as τσίκρος—the goshawk, I believe. This word is a modern form of the ancient κίρκος[840], and a closely similar incident is mentioned in the Odyssey, when this bird, the ‘swift messenger of Apollo,’ is seen by Telemachus on the right, tearing a pigeon in its talons and scattering its feathers to the ground, and is taken to foreshow the fate that awaits Eurymachus[841].

The position occupied and the posture are observed above all in the case of owls. The ‘brown owl’ (κουκουβάγια), perched upon the roof of a house and suggesting by its inert posture that it is waiting in true oriental fashion for an event expected within a few days, forebodes a death in the household; but if it settle there for a few moments only, alert and vigilant, and then fly off elsewhere, it betokens merely the advent and sojourn there of some acquaintance. Another species of owl, our ‘tawny owl’ I believe, known popularly as χαροποῦλι or ‘Charon’s bird[842],’ is, as the name suggests, a messenger of evil under all circumstances, whether it be heard hooting or be seen sitting in deathlike stillness or flitting past like a ghost in the gathering darkness.

The casual actions and movements of birds are less observed now than the cry, flight, and posture; nor am I aware of any auspices being drawn therefrom with regard to any matters of higher importance and interest than the prospective state of the weather. For such humdrum prognostication poultry[843] serve better than the more dignified birds—perhaps because their movements on the ground are more easily observed—and by pluming themselves, by scratching a hole in which to dust themselves over, and by roosting on one leg or with their heads turned in some particular direction foretell rain, fine weather, or a change of wind.

All these auspices are further modified, as in ancient times, by the position of the observer in reference to the bird observed. The right hand side is the region of good omen, whether the bird be seen or heard; and if it be a case of the bird crossing the path of the observer, passage from left to right is to be desired, on the principle that all is well that ends well; flight from right to left indicates a decline of good fortune. Motion towards the right, it may be noted, has always been the auspicious direction in Greece. In that direction, according to Homer, the herald carried round the lot which had been shaken from the helmet, to be claimed by that Chieftain whose token it might prove to be[844]; in that direction Odysseus in beggar-guise proceeded round the board, asking alms of the suitors[845]; in that direction even the gods passed their wine[846]. And in like manner at the present day wine is passed, cards are played, and at weddings bride and bridegroom are led round the altar, from left to right. Thus then in modern augury too, if the eagle’s scream, which forebodes fighting, be heard on the right, the hearer will come well out of it, but if on the left, he is like to be worsted. If the woodpecker laugh on the right, the hearer may proceed with full confidence to cheat his neighbour, but if the sound come from the left, he must be wary to baffle intrigues against himself.

If the hawk pursue its prey on the right or across a man’s path from left to right, he may take the pursuer as the type of himself and go about the work in hand with assurance of success; but if the omen be on the other side or in the other direction, some enemy is the hawk and he himself is the pigeon to be plucked.

The interpretation of auspices is also affected by number. A single or twice repeated cry of a bird may be of good omen, but, if the same note be heard three times, the meaning may be reversed. This applies in Cephallenia, as I was told, to the case already mentioned of a raven flying over a house; one or two croaks are a presage of security or plenty, but three are a warning of imminent death. In this detail a pronounced change of feeling towards the number three is responsible for what must, I think, be a contravention of the ancient rules in the case. According to Michael Psellus, an even number of cries from the crow were lucky and an odd number unlucky; but the crow, as we have seen, was perverse and abnormal; reversing therefore the rule in the case of other birds, we find that an odd number of croaks from a raven should be lucky. But the number three, which in old times was lucky, is now universally unlucky; the peasant often will apologize for having to mention the number; and Tuesday, being called Τρίτη, the ‘third day’ of the week, is the unlucky day. But if in this case the significance of a particular number has changed, the principle of taking number into consideration is indubitably ancient.

Moreover there are some cases in which even the particular application of the old principle holds good. The first, almost the only, literary poet of modern Greece (as distinguished from the many composers of unwritten ballads), who found beauty in the popular beliefs and music in the vulgar tongue, makes his heroine thus divine her own death:

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].’

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.

Not of course that the peasant, when he draws an omen from the eagle’s stoop or the raven’s croak, pauses at all to reflect on the general principle by which his act is guided; his recognition of the principle is then as formal and unconscious as is his avowal of Christianity when he crosses himself. But if ever in meditative mood he seeks the reason and basis of his auspice-taking, he falls back, as the popular poetry proves, on the doctrine that the powers above and below have chosen birds as their messengers to mankind.

Doubtless many other peoples have held or still hold kindred beliefs; but the fact that in Modern Greece the same class of birds is observed as in Ancient Greece and that the same broad principles of interpretation are followed is sufficient warranty that the underlying belief is also a genuinely Hellenic heritage.

The next method of divination to be considered, that namely in which omens were obtained from sacrifice, was anciently divided into two branches; in one the diviner concerned himself with the dissection of the victim, and based his predictions on the appearance of various internal parts; in the other, special portions of the victim were consumed by fire, and omens were read in the flame or smoke therefrom. Of the latter I have discovered no trace in Modern Greece; but the former still survives in some districts.

Naturally however this mode of divination is less frequently practised than that with which I have just dealt. The cry or the flight of birds can be observed without let or hindrance in the course of daily work, and, what is more important still, without cost; while this method involves the slaying of a victim, and is consequently confined to high days and holidays when the peasants eat meat. But when occasion offers or even demands the performance of the rite, the presages drawn therefrom are the more valued because they are less readily to be obtained.

And the value attached to them is by no means diminished because the method pursued is less intelligent than the taking of auspices. In the latter case, as we have seen, the common-folk have a reasonable basis for their actions in the universal belief that birds are by nature qualified to act as messengers between gods and men; in the former the peasants are more blindly and mechanically repeating the practices of their forefathers. They would be hard put to it to say how it comes to pass that divine counsels should be found figured in the recesses of a sheep’s anatomy. But in their very inability to answer this question, no less than in their acceptance of the means of communion, they resemble their ancestors; for, with all their love of enquiry, they too practised the art without answering conclusively or unanimously the questionings of their own hearts concerning it. One theory advanced was that the anatomical construction of the victim was directly affected by the prayers and religious rites to which it was subjected. Another held the internal symptoms to be inexorable and immutable, and saw divine agency only in the promptings of the sacrificer’s mind and his choice of an animal whose entrails were suitably inscribed by nature[859].

A third view, advocated by Plato, was that the liver was as a mirror in which divine thought was reflected; during life this divine thought might remain hidden as tacit intuition or be manifested in prophetic utterance; after death the divine visions contemplated by the soul were left recorded in imagery upon the liver, and faded only by degrees[860]. The obvious objection to this theory was its too practical corollary, that human entrails would be the most interesting to consult. Less barbarous therefore in consequences, if also less exquisite in idea, was the fourth doctrine, propounded by Philostratus, that the liver had no power of presage unless it were completely emancipated from the passions and surrendered wholly to divine influence—a condition best fulfilled by animals of peaceful and apathetic temperament[861].

But while these theories were built up and knocked down, the practices which they were meant to explain continued firm and unshaken. The fact seems to be that the custom of consulting entrails was not native to Greece. In Homeric times the liver was not dissected in search of omens, and such observations as were made were directed to the brightness of the flame and the ascent of the smoke from burnt offerings and not to any malformation or discoloration of the victim’s inward parts. All that could be learnt was whether the sacrifice, and therefore also the prayers accompanying it, were accepted or rejected. The complexities of post-Homeric divination from burnt sacrifice and the whole system of inspecting the entrails seem to have been a foreign importation. Whether the source was Etruscan, Carian, Cyprian, Babylonian, or Egyptian, does not here concern us[862]; the practices were in origin foreign to Greece, and the ancients, in referring the invention of them to Delphus, son of Poseidon, to Prometheus, to Sisyphus, or to Orpheus[863], were guilty not only of sheer fabrication but of manifest anachronism[864]. Homer convicts them.

It is then the foreign origin of these methods of divination which explains the attitude of the ancient Greeks towards them. It was a practice, not a theory—a custom, not an idea—a conglomeration of usages, not a coherent and reasoned system—which was introduced from abroad. The Greeks accepted it readily as furnishing them with one more means to that communion with their gods which to them was a spiritual necessity. The principle of the machinery employed was unknown to them; but what matter? Its operation was commended by the experience of others and soon tested by their own. The unknown principle long continued to excite interest, conjecture, speculation, among the educated and enlightened, but their failures to reach any final and unanimous conclusion never moved them to dispute the tested fact. And if this was the attitude of the educated, the common-folk of those days must surely have been in the same position as the people of to-day—gladly accepting the usage and avowedly ignorant of the principle. Such blind acquiescence during so many centuries may seem indeed a disparagement of the Greeks’ intelligence; but it is equally a testimonial to their religious faith; it is the things which defy reasoning that are best worth believing; and among these the Greeks have steadfastly numbered the writing of divine counsels on the sacrificial victim’s inward parts.

The actual methods now pursued are also an inheritance from the ancient world. The animal from which the Klephts a century ago are said to have taken omens most successfully was the sheep, and the portion of its anatomy on which the tokens of the future were to be read was the shoulder-blade. The questions to which an answer was most often sought were, as might be surmised from the life of the enquirers, questions of war. ‘In this connexion,’ says a Greek writer[865] of the first half of last century, when stories of the Klephts’ life might still be heard from their own lips, ‘the shoulder-blade of a young lamb is ... a veritable Sibylline book; for its condition enables men to ascertain beforehand the issue of an important engagement, the serious losses on each side, the strength of the enemy, the reinforcements to be expected, and indeed the very moment when danger threatens’; and he recounts, by way of illustration, the story of a Thessalian band of Klephts, whose captain, in the security of his own fastness, was sitting divining in this way; suddenly he sprang up with the exclamation, ‘The Turks have caught us alive,’ and at the head of his troop had only just time to break through the Turkish forces which were already surrounding them.

That this method of divination was derived directly and with little deviation from the old system of inspecting shoulder-blades (ὠμοπλατοσκοπία) as known to Michael Psellus can hardly be doubted. ‘If the question be of war,’ he says, ‘a patch of red observed on the right side of the shoulder-blade, or a long dark line on the left, foreshows a great war; but if both sides present their normal white appearance, it is an omen of peace to come[866].’