expressly to be sung in the most solemn circumstances of the household and established festivals, and in compliance with social customs consecrated by immemorial usage. Of these there are several divisions, which I shall distinguish from each other as I advance, first speaking of those which appertain to social customs prevailing at particular yearly epochs, or festivals. An explanation of the mode in which two of the principal of these epochs, St. Basil's Day and the First of March, are observed, will furnish a sufficient illustration.

The feast of St. Basil is kept by the Greek church on the first of January, and that day is in Greece, as throughout Europe, a day of visits, compliments, and gifts, but with this difference, that in Greece every thing is conducted with more solemnity, with more amiability, and above all, more poetically than elsewhere. Companies of young people assemble and repair to the houses of their acquaintances to wish them a happy new year, and secure the customary presents. Now in every village, in every canton, this custom gives rise to a series of songs which belong to it exclusively, and it is to a certain national imprint of gracefulness, benevolence, and imagination, by which these songs are all more or less marked, that the festival in question is indebted for its character and interest.

The first of the series is in honor of the master of the house at which the young singers are visiting, and is addressed immediately to him. A second is sung in honor of the mistress, and is succeeded by as many others as there are persons to be complimented. If there be a son nearly grown, a separate song is devoted to him, and should he have sisters, they are not overlooked. The absent members of the family receive also their share of poetical remembrance and good wishes, some pretty verses of regret on their account being always recited to their friends who are present. In short, whatever can interest the family, whatever affords the opportunity of evincing sentiments of good will and esteem, becomes the theme of a particular song.

It may be added, that the youthful visiters, while passing into the dwelling, preface their complimentary songs by a special one in honor of the holiday and of St. Basil.

The First of March is as poetical a day in Greece as St. Basil's, and is celebrated very much as is the first of May in some other countries. Troops of young people and of children go from door to door singing the return of Spring, and collecting trifling presents, consisting commonly of eggs, cheese, or any product of the fields. Among several songs intended for this festival, there is one more remarkable than the rest, and peculiarly appropriate, on which, as I shall refer to it again, a few words only are here necessary. The song alluded to, which is a favorite through all Greece under the name of Song of the Swallow, is an artless outpouring of the indefinable delight imparted by the first breeze of Spring in a beautiful clime. It is sung by the children, bearing in their hands the figure of a swallow rudely carved in wood, and fitted to a species of mill, about which it is made to revolve rapidly by means of a string winding and unwinding on a small cylinder, to one end of which it is attached.

The other popular poems which I place, like the preceding, under the head of domestic, are those to which that denomination is more especially applicable, as they turn upon the most important incidents,

the joys and sorrows of domestic life. I shall restrict myself to those which relate to departure for foreign countries, and to the solemnization of marriages and of funerals.*

The funeral songs, in which the death of relatives is deplored, have obtained the appellation of Myriologia. The myriologues are similar to the other domestic songs of the Greeks in this, that they are equally universal and equally dedicated to the specific purpose of each. But they present peculiarities which manifest their connection with some of the most prominent features of the national character and genius. I shall hereafter consider the kind and degree of poetic power which they require and imply, and now proceed with a rapid sketch of the funeral ceremonies of which they are a part, and with which they must always be looked upon as united.

A sick man has just breathed his last: his wife, mother, daughters, sisters, in a word, such of his nearest female relatives as are at hand, close his eyes and mouth, each giving free course to the grief inflicted by the calamity, according to her disposition and the strength of her attachment. This first duty discharged, they all withdraw to the house of some relation or friend in the vicinity, where they change their garments and array themselves in white, and as for the nuptial ceremony, except that their heads are uncovered and their hair unbound and pendant. While they are thus occupied, other women are attending to the corpse; they clothe it from head to foot in the best apparel, and in this state lay it upon a very low bed, with the face uncovered and turned toward the east, and the arms crossed upon the breast.

These preparations being over, the relatives return in their mourning-dress to the house, leaving the doors open, so that all the women of the place, friends, neighbors, or strangers, may enter after them. A circle is formed around the corpse, and their grief breaks out anew and, as before, without measure or restraint, in tears, shrieks, or words. These irrepressible and simultaneous plaints are soon followed by lamentations of a different nature, that is to say, by myriologues. Ordinarily that of the nearest relative comes first; after her, the remaining relatives, friends, or mere neighbors, in a word, all the women on the spot, who possess the ability, bestow this last tribute of affection one after another, and sometimes a number together. Not unfrequently there are found in the circle of assistants, women who have recently lost one of their own kindred, whose hearts are yet overflowing with sorrow, and who have some communication to make him. In the dead before them, they behold a messenger who will convey to the dead for whom they mourn, fresh testimony of their recollection and regret, and in consequence a myriologue destined for the latter is delivered to the former. Others content themselves with throwing on the deceased bouquets of flowers, or various light articles, which they implore him to be so good as to transmit to their friends in the other world.

The delivery of the myriologues is not interrupted until the arrival of the priests to accompany the corpse to the place of interment, and is still prolonged until the funeral procession has reached the church.

* These are omitted in this translation.

They cease while the priests are engaged in prayer and singing, but recommence as the body is about to be lowered into the grave. Nor do they end with the rites of sepulture, but are renewed on fixed occasions for an indefinite space of time. First, for a whole year from the day on which the death has taken place, the females of the family are permitted to sing myriologues only; every other song, however melancholy, however befitting the most serious impressions which the ideas of death, the grave, and a last farewell, can produce, would be reputed a diversion incompatible with the reverence due to the dead. Nor is this all: whenever they go to church, the women seldom omit, either before or after divine service, to meet at the tomb and reiterate the adieu of the burial-day.

When one of their relatives dies in a foreign land, an image of the person is laid upon the funeral bed, partially clad in the garments of the individual whom it represents, and is then addressed with the same lamentations as if it were a real body. These myriologues are still more full of sadness than others, as the inability to deposit and preserve in consecrated ground the remains of the beloved object is regarded as adding to the weight of the affliction.

Mothers also compose for their deceased infants myriologues which are often exquisitely pathetic. The child is bewailed under the emblem of a flower, a bird, or any thing in nature sufficiently beautiful for a mother's fancy to experience pleasure in conceiving a resemblance between it and her lost darling.

From what has been said, the reader must have inferred what I now explicitly state, that the myriologues are invariably composed and sung by women. The men bid their final adieu at the moment when the corpse is committed to the earth: it is simple and laconic, being confined to a few familiar words, and kissing the lips of the deceased. They are or may be present while the women are singing their myriologues around the bed, but are always silent. I have never heard of a myriologue by a man, and if such cases have been known, they must have been exceptions to the existing practice. I say existing practice, because there are reasons for believing that at no very remote period, myriologues were, in some districts of Greece, repeated by the men. In Asiatic Greece and the Greek islands there are female myriologists by profession, whose services are procured for a regular compensation.

A myriologue is essentially distinguished from other popular poems by its being never prepared beforehand and at leisure, but always extemporized at the instant when it is uttered, and always adapted to the individual. It is, in the full signification of the word, a funeral poetical improvisation, inspired by sorrow.

Improvisations of this kind are always in verse, and the verse always in the usual metre of songs in general. They are likewise always sung, and to an air differing in different places, but which in any given place continues invariably employed in this department of poetry. The air is plaintive, as is suited to the subject, and slow enough to allow time for the words to make their way to the imagination, which is groping at random, uncertain whether, or how, it shall retain them. This air, unlike the majority of ordinary songs, terminates with very sharp notes, As to the length of myriologues, there is no prescribed

and settled rule; though sometimes very great, it commonly does not exceed that of other popular songs that is to say, they are generally

very short.

It is not, assuredly, without a violent effort of self-command, and an astonishing species of internal metamorphosis, that timid, ignorant, and uncultivated women accomplish the task which custom has imposed upon them. That task is indeed singularly difficult. They are obliged at a precise moment, a moment when grief has overwhelmed their ordinary faculties, to call up a power which they do not know to exist within them the power of controlling, of subduing that grief in such a manner as to bring it out under the pleasing form of poetry and music, and that in sight of a crowd more or less numerous, which is concentrating on them its attention, and waiting to be kindled into emotion! Frequently therefore, they are seen to fall, overcome by faintness in their exertion to rise, if I may so express myself, to the requisite elevation of tone.

But if the Grecian women are endowed with the poetic skill demanded and presumed in the improvisation of a myriologue, they are not all, as may well be supposed, on an equality in this respect. Some are eminently gifted, and their superiority operates as a title to consideration among their companions. These are specially invited to bid the farewells to the dead, and are expected to produce such as will awaken the sympathies of the hearers. A woman is noted in her village as a good myriologist, in nearly the same way as an accomplished improvisatore would attract observation in Italy.

It is perhaps with the view of acquiring this description of talent, perhaps from an instinctive thirst for lively and tender emotion, that the female villagers in some parts of Greece often exercise themselves in the open air, and amid the labors of the field, in composing fictitious myriologues, that is, myriologues which they have no occasion to use. They are sometimes founded upon events which have actually happened, but which do not directly affect the composer, such as the death of a neighbor or a stranger; at other times they are based on occurrences purely hypothetical, or even fantastical, such as the wilting of a flower, the death of a lamb, a bird, or other animal.

It would appear from the foregoing remarks in relation to myriologues, that they constitute the most valuable portion of the popular Modern Greek Poetry, but from the nature of the case it is also that portion of which it is least easy to procure specimens wherewith to satisfy the reader's curiosity. A bona fide myriologue escapes from the mind without passing through the memory: the individual by whom it is pronounced is always in a state of unnatural excitement, in which she is incapable of watching her own actions and language, and that incapacity is as it were the condition on which alone she is enabled to perform the duty assigned her. Nothing is left in her mind but a confused consciousness of the temporary energy, the transient enthusiasm, with which she has spoken; what she has spoken is unknown or unremembered. As to the assistants, and especially the men, who, taking no share in the myriologues, have only to listen, they are rendered by this very habit insensible either of curiosity or impatience; they can recollect here and there some passages by which they have been more forcibly struck than by others, but that is all: in general, a myriologue is forgotten as soon as concluded.

Judging from the small number of fragments before me, their chief characteristic seems to be a passionate excitement, almost the delirium of grief. Here, doubtless, as every where, there are many commonplace ideas and conventional phrases. But unquestionably also there are myriologues which are the offspring of a powerful inspiration, drawing forth the deepest secrets of the soul, and in which grief assumes an original and, if I may avail myself of the expression, entirely individual accent.

J. A.