‘Bird of black tidings, that art come from yon confronting coastland,Tell me what mean those sobs of woe, those dismal lamentations,That rise aloud from Parga’s walls and shake the very mountains.Hath the Turk overwhelmèd her, do fire and sword consume her?’‘The Turk hath not o’erwhelmèd her, nor fire and sword consume her;The men of Parga have been sold, as ye sell goats and oxen,And all must hie them thence to dwell in miserable exile.They must leave all, the homes they love, the tombs of their own fathers,The shrine whereat they bowed the knee, for infidels to trample.Women in anguish rend their hair and beat their bare white bosoms,Old men lift up their quavering voice in dismal lamentation,Priests amid flowing tears strip bare the churches where they worshipped.Dost see the glare of yonder fire? the pall of smoke above it?There are they burning dead men’s bones, the bones of valiant warriors,Who made the hosts of Turkey quail and fired their captain’s palace[1280].Yonder, I tell thee, many a son his father’s bones is burning,Lest the Liápid[1281]light on them, lest Turk upon them trample.Dost hear the wailing manifold wherewith the woodlands echo?Dost hear the beating of the breast, the dismal lamentation?’Tis that the parting hour has come, to part them from their country;They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.’
‘Bird of black tidings, that art come from yon confronting coastland,Tell me what mean those sobs of woe, those dismal lamentations,That rise aloud from Parga’s walls and shake the very mountains.Hath the Turk overwhelmèd her, do fire and sword consume her?’‘The Turk hath not o’erwhelmèd her, nor fire and sword consume her;The men of Parga have been sold, as ye sell goats and oxen,And all must hie them thence to dwell in miserable exile.They must leave all, the homes they love, the tombs of their own fathers,The shrine whereat they bowed the knee, for infidels to trample.Women in anguish rend their hair and beat their bare white bosoms,Old men lift up their quavering voice in dismal lamentation,Priests amid flowing tears strip bare the churches where they worshipped.Dost see the glare of yonder fire? the pall of smoke above it?There are they burning dead men’s bones, the bones of valiant warriors,Who made the hosts of Turkey quail and fired their captain’s palace[1280].Yonder, I tell thee, many a son his father’s bones is burning,Lest the Liápid[1281]light on them, lest Turk upon them trample.Dost hear the wailing manifold wherewith the woodlands echo?Dost hear the beating of the breast, the dismal lamentation?’Tis that the parting hour has come, to part them from their country;They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.’
‘Bird of black tidings, that art come from yon confronting coastland,Tell me what mean those sobs of woe, those dismal lamentations,That rise aloud from Parga’s walls and shake the very mountains.Hath the Turk overwhelmèd her, do fire and sword consume her?’‘The Turk hath not o’erwhelmèd her, nor fire and sword consume her;The men of Parga have been sold, as ye sell goats and oxen,And all must hie them thence to dwell in miserable exile.They must leave all, the homes they love, the tombs of their own fathers,The shrine whereat they bowed the knee, for infidels to trample.Women in anguish rend their hair and beat their bare white bosoms,Old men lift up their quavering voice in dismal lamentation,Priests amid flowing tears strip bare the churches where they worshipped.Dost see the glare of yonder fire? the pall of smoke above it?There are they burning dead men’s bones, the bones of valiant warriors,Who made the hosts of Turkey quail and fired their captain’s palace[1280].Yonder, I tell thee, many a son his father’s bones is burning,Lest the Liápid[1281]light on them, lest Turk upon them trample.Dost hear the wailing manifold wherewith the woodlands echo?Dost hear the beating of the breast, the dismal lamentation?’Tis that the parting hour has come, to part them from their country;They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.’
‘Bird of black tidings, that art come from yon confronting coastland,
Tell me what mean those sobs of woe, those dismal lamentations,
That rise aloud from Parga’s walls and shake the very mountains.
Hath the Turk overwhelmèd her, do fire and sword consume her?’
‘The Turk hath not o’erwhelmèd her, nor fire and sword consume her;
The men of Parga have been sold, as ye sell goats and oxen,
And all must hie them thence to dwell in miserable exile.
They must leave all, the homes they love, the tombs of their own fathers,
The shrine whereat they bowed the knee, for infidels to trample.
Women in anguish rend their hair and beat their bare white bosoms,
Old men lift up their quavering voice in dismal lamentation,
Priests amid flowing tears strip bare the churches where they worshipped.
Dost see the glare of yonder fire? the pall of smoke above it?
There are they burning dead men’s bones, the bones of valiant warriors,
Who made the hosts of Turkey quail and fired their captain’s palace[1280].
Yonder, I tell thee, many a son his father’s bones is burning,
Lest the Liápid[1281]light on them, lest Turk upon them trample.
Dost hear the wailing manifold wherewith the woodlands echo?
Dost hear the beating of the breast, the dismal lamentation?
’Tis that the parting hour has come, to part them from their country;
They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.’
The incident in this ballad with which we are concerned is the exhumation and burning of the remains of those dead warriors who had valiantly maintained the liberty of their native town; and there need be little doubt that the incident is actually historical, for the story is confirmed by a second ballad in the same collection[1282]; but in any case all that concerns us here is the fact that the motive for such an act was known and appreciated by the authors of the two ballads.
Now in order to understand this motive, it must be remembered that the general custom of the Church in Greece is to exhume the bones of the dead at the expiration of three years from the time of burial, when dissolution is expected to be complete. Hence the kinsfolk for whose remains the men of Parga were concerned were those who had been recently buried and could not yet have attained complete dissolution. They feared that the Turks would disturb and desecrate the graves and thus obstruct the proper course of natural decay; and they therefore decided to adopt the alternative method of disintegration, and by cremation to effect speedily and surely that end which, without friends at hand to guard the graves from the molestation of foes and infidels, could not be secured by leaving the dead to the slow action of the earth. This decision then reveals a clear recognition of the superiority of cremation over inhumation as a means of compassing the final dissolution of the dead; and equally clear is the motive for seeking that end; it was not fear on their own account—to that feeling indeed the men of Parga had proved themselves strangers—but simply love and respect for the brave men who had fought, and perhaps had fallen, in the defence of freedom.
Since then the exhumation and cremation of the dead constituted in this case an act of love towards them, the same action in the case of suspectedvrykolakescan never have been an act of hostility. It was rather a measure beneficial alike to the living and to the dead. To the living it gave immunity from the assaults ofvrykolakes, and this without doubt was commonly the uppermost or indeed the only thought in the minds of those who had recourse to it; but to the dead too it gave repose. And indeed I cannot but suppose that this is the reason why the Greeks, when first confronted with the horror ofvrykolakes, choseto burn them rather than to follow the Slavonic custom of impaling them. To impale them might have given security to the living, but it appeared as an act of cruelty and hostility against the dead. Cremation, by effecting immediate dissolution and the consequent severance of the dead from this world, was bound to give equal security to the living, and at the same time was an act of mercy and kindness to the dead. In effect, the new motive of dread which came along with Slavonic influence never excluded the old motive of love which inspired the sons of warriors at Parga no less than the chief of Homeric warriors at his comrade’s funeral, and perhaps will, if occasion arise, prove itself not yet extinct. Cremation, though often in recent times employed primarily as a safeguard for the living, has all along been felt to confer also a benefit on the dead, an even surer and speedier benefit than inhumation secured.
Now if this feeling existed, and if there existed also from early times, as I have shown to be probable, a system of combining cremation of a ceremonial kind with actual inhumation, it might reasonably be expected that many who recognised the superior merit of cremation, but had not the means to carry out so costly a rite in full, would have availed themselves of the inexpensive ceremonial practice. This, I believe, is what occurred, and in this I shall seek the explanation of a custom which, like the practice of real cremation, has been bequeathed by Ancient to Modern Greece.
In the funerals of Ancient Greece the procession, which escorted the dead body from the room where it had lain in state to the pyre or the grave, carried torches. Where cremation was to be employed, these were doubtless used for kindling the pyre; the fire brought from the dead man’s home in this world was used to speed him on his way to the next. But when inhumation was practised, what became of these torches? Was the fire brought from the dead man’s home put to no purpose? Or were the torches thrown into the grave along with him? That we cannot tell, for the torches were quickly perishable. But there is one object commonly found in tombs which is suggestive of the association of fire with the buried body. That common object is a lamp. Here again we cannot tell whether that lamp was lighted when it was put in the grave. Some that have been dug up have certainlybeen in use, for they bear marks of the flame; but of course they may have been in every-day use before they were devoted to the service of the dead. Yet the few facts known would at least fit the theory that the procession which carried out the dead man carried also fire from his home to the grave, and that either the torches themselves or a lamp lighted from them was put in the grave beside the body. If that view were correct, it would further be note-worthy that most of the lamps found are of little intrinsic value and of late date[1283]. Now the fact that they are mostly worthless implies that they were often given by poor persons, or, if the other contents of the grave be of value, that the lamp was not brought as a gift for its intrinsic worth or beauty, but for some practical purpose; while the fact that they are mainly of late date means that the practice of putting them in the graves increased in frequency during the period which begins with the fifth centuryB.C.—that is to say, during that period in which we have already noted an increasing preference for cremation. Further the increase in the frequency of lamps makes it improbable that they are to be reckoned as part and parcel of the ordinary furniture of a grave; for thelekythiand other vases which were the ordinary gifts to the dead had already in the fifth century assumed a conventional character. Any fresh departure therefore after that century, or any increase in the frequency of one particular object among the contents of graves, must be a sign of some new or more strongly marked feeling towards the dead. Now all these facts and inferences are intelligible on one hypothesis; and that hypothesis is that the lamps found in the graves were put there lighted and burning, as the ceremonial minimum of the rite of cremation for which a growing preference is evident during some four centuries before the Christian era.
When we pass on to the early days of Christianity, a similar series of facts meets our view. The Church officially rejected and reprobated the practice of cremation. Converts therefore were bound to use inhumation; and this obligation probably excited the less repugnance, in that interment was no new thing to them, but had always been alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation.But while even cheerfully obeying the law of the Church thus far, they clung to many of the details of their old funeral-custom, some of which were allowed by the Church, others disallowed. The practice of laying out the dead in rich and choice robes continued and called down strong rebuke from St Jerome[1284]; the excessive lamentation and the use of hired mourners at the lying-in-state provoked St Chrysostom to threats of excommunication[1285]; yet both these customs still obtain. But the custom of carrying torches in the funeral-procession was continued without even a protest on the part of the Church. Perhaps it was felt to be a harmless concession to ancient custom; perhaps then as now ecclesiastical taste even favoured the consumption of many candles in religious ceremonies. At any rate the fact is clear that the pagan custom of carrying torches in the procession held a place also in Christian ritual. What was the reason for which the common people held to their old custom? The torches were not needed any longer to kindle pyres; for actual cremation was abolished by the Church. Nor were they needed to give light to the procession; for Christian funerals, except in times of persecution, took place in open daylight. The reason was, I believe, that by means of these torches fire was carried along with the dead from his home to his grave, and that there a ceremonial act, a semblance of cremation, was combined with the rite of inhumation. And there are some indications that the fire brought to the grave-side was actually associated in some way with the dead body. In a disquisition ‘about them that sleep,’ which passed for a work of St Athanasius[1286], there is a recommendation to burn a mixture of oil and wax at the grave of the dead; and though the practice inculcated is disguised as ‘a sacrifice of burnt-offering to God,’ it is possible to attribute it to a less Jewish and more Greek motive, a desire to keep up the old custom of cremation, be it only in a ceremonial form. Again we have evidence that the custom of burning lights at the graves of the dead was commonly followed for some non-Christian purpose; for the Council of Eliberis saw fit to forbid it under pain of excommunication[1287]. This non-Christian purpose will explain itself in the light of some modern customs.
There is a custom well known in Modern Greece which consists in the maintenance of what is called ‘the unsleeping lamp’ (τὸ ἀκοίμητο καντῆλι). A fair general idea of it may be given by saying that after a funeral a light is kept continuously burning either in the room where death took place or at the grave for a period of either forty days or three years. This variation in time and place requires examination. In customs, as in other things, there is a right way and a wrong way; variety in observance is not original; there is a proper time and a proper place.
First then, which is the proper place for this particular custom, the chamber of death or the grave-side?
The localities, in which that form of the custom which I shall show to be correct in this particular has come most conspicuously under my own observation, are Aráchova, a village near Delphi; Leonídi on the east coast of Laconia; a cemetery in the Thriasian plain belonging, I think, to the village of Kalývia; and the island of Aegina. In the last-mentioned it is an ordinary lantern which is used; it is placed at the head of the grave, and for forty days after the funeral is so trimmed and tended that the flame is not once extinguished. At Aráchova and in the Thriasian plain each grave is provided with an erection capable of sheltering a naked light. Some of the erections are like doll’s-houses with door and windows complete; others are mere boxes; others again are no more than a few tiles or flat stones set on edge to form a square and covered over with a roof of the same material. At Aráchova the lamps contained in these erections are tended both evening and morning, and the obligation to keep them burning uninterruptedly for three years, until the exhumation of the body, is strongly felt and scrupulously discharged. In the Thriasian plain the light is kept burning with equal care, but I am uncertain for what period. At Leonídi some shelters of the same kind as those described are in use; but there are also more elaborate tombs at the head of which is built a small recess below the level of the ground or at any rate under the slab of stone or marble which covers the grave, and in this recess, which is closed with a small door allowing the passage of air through its chinks, is placed ‘the unsleeping lamp.’ Here again the lights are kept burning until the exhumation takes place, and the lamps are fed and trimmed every evening. At Gytheion a device not dissimilar,though ruder, was formerly employed; among some old graves, now neglected, from which, it appeared, the bones of the dead had never been exhumed, I noticed several plastered over with a rough concrete in which was sunk at the head of the grave an iron vessel, like a sauce-pan docked of its handle; this vessel had presumably served the purpose of sheltering a light.
Such then is the main aspect of this custom; but the preliminary details also require notice. The fire with which to light the ‘unsleeping lamp’ must not be kindled on the spot beside the grave, but is conveyed from the house of the deceased. There, in general, the moment that death takes place or at any rate so soon as the body is laid out in state, candles or lamps are lighted and are placed at the head and at the foot of the couch on which the body reposes. These are kept burning until the funeral-procession is ready to start, and along with the procession either the same lights or other tapers and candles lighted from them are carried to the grave; and here the same fire which was burning in the house of the dead is transmitted to the ‘unsleeping lamp’ at the grave.
This I believe to be the correct form of the custom, but I must notice other varieties and give my reasons for regarding them as less authentic. It is stated in a reliable treatise on the island of Chios[1288], that there the people keep a lamp burning for forty nights in the room where a death has taken place, thinking that the soul wanders for forty nights before it goes down to Hades. The interpretation given evidently implies that the lamp is intended to give light to the spirit of the dead if in the course of its nightly wanderings it visits its former home.
Now so far as the Chian form of the custom is concerned, some such meaning might reasonably be assigned to it. But what of the more usual form of the custom by which the lamp is kept burning both night and day? A disembodied spirit, if it resemble an ordinary man, may reasonably be supposed to need a candle to see its way at night, but surely it needs none in the day-time; yet it is only the custom of burning the light all day long as well as at night that can have gained for it the name of ‘the unsleeping lamp,’ the lamp that is never extinguished. Here then is a visible defect in the Chian manner of observing the custom and likewise in the Chian manner of interpreting it; and acustom defective and misinterpreted in one important detail is open to suspicion in others. So far therefore as Chios is concerned, no great importance attaches to the fact that there the chamber of death is the place where the remnants of the custom are observed.
But there are other parts of Greece in which the death-chamber is the place for the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ and where the lamp still deserves that designation inasmuch as it is kept burning both day and night until the fortieth day after the funeral, and is not, as in Chios, lighted afresh each night. In such districts, I believe, the custom has long ceased to bear any meaning, and being on the wane has for convenience undergone a change. It is still felt to be obligatory to keep the flame that is lighted as soon as death has occurred burning constantly for forty days, but the work of tending it has been found to be more conveniently performed at home than in the grave-yard. The necessity to transmit the flame to the grave, to keep it continuously in close proximity to the dead, is no longer felt. This form of the custom can then be accounted for as a relaxation of that which I have put forward as the old and correct form; whereas on the other hand if the room where death occurred had originally been the proper place for maintaining the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ it would be impossible to account for the transference of the custom to the grave-side, where special shelters or receptacles must be made for the protection of the flame and where more trouble is needed to feed and to trim the lamps day by day. Aráchova and Leonídi where most pains are taken in the observance of the custom—and that not for forty days only but for three years—have the best claim to be regarded as the true exponents of the old custom. The proper place for the ‘unsleeping lamp’ is the grave-side.
But there is a variation also, as I have said, in the period of time during which this custom is kept up in different districts. In some it is a period of forty days, in others a period of three years; and in this respect there is a divergence between the usages even of those places which in other details have been shown to adhere faithfully to the old custom; for at Aráchova and Leonídi the longer period is customary, in Aegina the shorter. It is in this very variation that we find a clue to the meaning and purpose of the custom. In the earlier part of this chapter I showed, by quotation from a popular dirge and by the consideration of various customsconnected with death, that in the belief of the common-folk the dissolution of a dead body is effected by the fortieth day after burial. On the other hand the Church has more prudently fixed three years as the time required for dissolution, the period which must elapse before the body may be exhumed. Thus there are two periods, fixed respectively by popular opinion and by ecclesiastical authority, between which there is a choice; thevox populiand thevox Deiare here in disagreement; and according as preference is locally given to the one or to the other mandate, so is a period of forty days or a period of three years locally believed to be that required for the dissolution of the body. But these two periods are also those between which there is a local variation in the custom of maintaining the ‘unsleeping lamp.’ Hence it is reasonably to be inferred that the ‘unsleeping lamp’ is in some way closely connected with the dissolution of the body.
Moreover this connexion is actually recognised by the common-folk themselves, as witness the following two couplets from a funeral-dirge. The words are put, as so often in the dirges, in the mouth of the dead man, who in this instance is supposed to be young and to be addressing his forlorn lady-love.
‘And when the priests with solemn song march toward the grave with me,Steal thou out from thy mother’s side and light me torches three;And when the priests shall quench again those lights for me,—ah then,Then, like the breath of roses, sweet, thou passest from my ken[1289].’
‘And when the priests with solemn song march toward the grave with me,Steal thou out from thy mother’s side and light me torches three;And when the priests shall quench again those lights for me,—ah then,Then, like the breath of roses, sweet, thou passest from my ken[1289].’
‘And when the priests with solemn song march toward the grave with me,Steal thou out from thy mother’s side and light me torches three;And when the priests shall quench again those lights for me,—ah then,Then, like the breath of roses, sweet, thou passest from my ken[1289].’
‘And when the priests with solemn song march toward the grave with me,
Steal thou out from thy mother’s side and light me torches three;
And when the priests shall quench again those lights for me,—ah then,
Then, like the breath of roses, sweet, thou passest from my ken[1289].’
These lines are based on a belief which is fairly general among the Greek peasants, that consciousness of, and concern for, the things of this world are not broken off finally at the moment of death, but continue in some degree until the body of the dead is completely dissolved. Here the memories of love are spoken of as lasting until the priests quench the burning lights, which can be none other in the context than the ‘unsleeping lamp’—for three, the number mentioned, is merely a number of peculiar virtue and has no special force. It follows then that the quenching of the lights is understood in the passage to denote the accomplishment of that process of dissolution, which, though it mean the cessation of all intercourse with this upper world, is yet earnestly desired. Here in fact are plain words of popular poetry which recognise the connexion of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ with the dissolution of the body, and make the quenching of the one signify the completion of the other. It is going but a short step further to suppose that the presence of the lamp’s flame at the grave was originally intended to advance the process of dissolution—or, in other words, that the maintenance of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ at the grave until the body is finally dissolved is an act of ceremonial cremation.
This supposition gains yet more in probability when we compare with the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ another not dissimilar custom which obtains in Zacynthos. There, as elsewhere, candles or lamps are lighted about the dead body while it is lying in state, and fire from them is carried to the grave. But, arrived there, instead of lighting an ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the bearers of the candles drop them into the grave beside the corpse. In this we have a close parallel to the ancient custom of putting a lamp, probably enough, as I have suggested, a lighted lamp, into the grave; and at the same time it cannot but be intimately connected with the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the purpose of which is now known to concern the dissolution of the dead body. I claim then that the series of customs which we have reviewed, exhibiting as they do an intention to associate fire in some close way with the buried body and, as in the modern form of the custom, to associate it therewith until the process of dissolution is complete, find a common explanation in the continuance of a practice already exemplified in earlier ages, the practice of ceremonial cremation in conjunction with the full burial rite.
Nor is this explanation open to attack on the ground that a mere lamp lighted near the dead body bears so little outward resemblance to real cremation. To the outside observer the ceremonial act may seem a mere travesty of that for which it is substituted; but to the persons concerned the presence of fire, in however small a volume, may have seemed sufficient; for in all ritual it is not the act, but the intention, which has value. I have already pointed out how interment was occasionally reduced to an equally ineffective minimum; but I may perhaps cite a still closerparallel—another case in which a lamp is thought to have done duty for a real fire. There was in old time a custom, to which several ancient writers refer[1290], of keeping a lamp burning both day and night in the Prytaneum or in the chief temple of a Greek city; and both Athens and Tarentum are said to have had these lamps so constructed that they could hold a supply of oil sufficient to last a whole year. Such lamps, it has been suggested[1291], represented the fire on the city’s hearth which was not allowed to go out. The purpose of the lamp was clearly not to give light—for then it need not have been kept burning by day as well as by night—but it was a labour-saving appliance for keeping the sacred fire ever burning. The small flame was in fact a rudimentary fire. Thus all that I am supposing is that a lamp could represent a real fire just as well at the tomb as in the Prytaneum.
If then my explanation of the modern custom is right, the fact that the common-folk, though they have for many centuries employed inhumation as the ordinary Christian rite, have clung at the same time to a ceremonial form of cremation which they still connect in some way with the dissolution of the buried corpse, is additional proof of the favour with which the quicker and surer rite was formerly, and perhaps here and there still is, regarded.
Thus then the study of ordinary funeral-usage has confirmed the conclusions drawn in preceding chapters from the study of a certain abnormal state of after-death existence. As incorruptibility was the greatest bane to the dead, so dissolution was the greatest boon that the living could give them. This dissolution was to be effected by one of two methods, cremation and inhumation, which in theory were alternative but in practice were frequently combined. The combination of them was due in the first instance to the amalgamation of two races to which they respectively appertained; but in later times the racial difference between the two rites was obliterated, and they were judged on their own merits, with the result that a preference for cremation manifested itself in funeral-usage. This preference was due to a recognition that cremation was a quicker and surer method of dissolution, and is itself strong testimony to the desire to effect dissolution. The end to which both rites were directed was the same, but since one ledto that end more quickly and surely than the other, it was rightly preferred.
Further the motive which prompted the living to effect the dissolution of the dead was not in general selfish; for dissolution, as we have seen, was a boon to the dead. That complete severance from this world, which came with the dissolution of the body, was in some way for the benefit of the dead. Patroclus sought for it, and Achilles granted his petition through love; and some three thousand years later the men of Parga are found effecting the rapid dissolution of their kinsfolk with the same motive. Only in one set of circumstances was the selfish motive of fear in operation, namely, where, the resuscitated dead were, by the influence of Slavonic superstition, invested with the character of malignant blood-thirsty monsters against whom self-defence was imperative, and whose complete severance from this world was desirable as a safeguard for the living. But such circumstances were the exception. The rule was that cremation and inhumation alike were means to the dissolution of the dead and their complete severance from this world, and the motive which prompted living men to seek that end was love of the dead who would in some way benefit thereby.