and who was imbued with the idea mentioned
above. "Bill," said she, "where thou art
bound to thou'lt maybe see our Tummas; be
sure thou tell him we have getted th' wheel o'
the shandry mended, and it's mostly as good
as new; and mind thou say'st we're getten
on vary weel without him; he may as weel
think so, poor chap!" To which Bill made
answer, "Why woman! dost 'oo think I'se
have nought better to do than go clumping
up and down the sky a-searching for thy
Tummas." To those who have lived in
Lancashire the word "clumping" exactly suggests
the kind of heavy walk of the country people
who wear the thick wooden clogs common in
that county.

But let us jump (like Dr. Faustus) out of
Lancashire into Greece. In that country
some of the people around the corpse are not
content with sending messages to their dead
friends; they place flowers and other tokens
of remembrance upon the body, entreating
the last deceased whose remains lie before
them to bear their flowers and presents to
those who have gone before.

All these messages and these adieus are
expressed in song; nor do they cease until
the body is laid in the grave. For a year
afterwards his relations are only allowed to
sing myriologia; any other kind of song,
however pious or pathetic, is prohibited by custom.
The anniversary of the death is kept by a
final gathering together of the friends, who
go in procession to the grave, and once more
chant their farewells. If a Greek dies far
away from Greece, they substitute an effigy
for the real corpse, round which they assemble,
to which they bid farewell, but with an
aggravation of sorrow and despair; inasmuch as he
has died far from his own bright land.
But perhaps the most touching of the myriologia
are those addressed by the mothers to
the infants they have lost. When the child
dies very young no one but the mother sings
the myriologia. It is hers and she belongs
to it. The tie between them was too
mysteriously close to allow a stranger to intermeddle
with her grief. But her lost child takes the
form of every pretty thing in nature in her
mind. It is a broken flower, a young bird
fallen out of the nest and killed, a little yearling
lamb lying dead by the side of its mother.
It is the exclusive right of women to sing the
myriologia. The men bid farewell to their
companion and friend in a few simple words
of prose, kissing the mouth of the deceased ere
they leave the house. But two centuries ago,
among the mountains of Greece, the shepherds
sang the myriologia over each other.

The original significance of the custom is
dying out even now. Women are hired to
express an assumed grief in formal verses,
where formerly the anguish of the nearest and
dearest gave them the gift of improvisation.
Before I go on to explain the character and
subject of the occasional songs, I had perhaps
better mention what class of men are the
means of their circulation among the
peasantry of Greece, as well as through the
islands of the Archipelago. There are no
beggars in these countries, excepting the
blind; all others would think it shame to live
by alms, with their blue and sunny sky above
them, and their fertile soil beneath their feet.
But the blind are a privileged class; they
go from house to house, receiving a ready
welcome at each, for they are wandering
minstrels, and have been so ever since Homer's
time. Some of them have learnt by heart an
immense number of songs; and all know a
large collection. Their memory is their stock
in trade, their means of living; they never
stay long in any one place, but traverse
Greece from end to end, and have a wonderful
knack in adapting their choice of songs to
the character of the inhabitants of the place
where they chant them. They generally
prefer the simple villagers as audience, to the
more sophisticated townspeople; and, in the
towns, they hang about the suburbs rather
than enter into the busy streets in the centre.
They know, half by experience half by
instinct, that the most ignorant part of a
population is always the least questioning, and the
most susceptible of impressions. The Turks
stalk past these blind minstrels with the
most supreme and unmoved indifference; but
the Greek welcomes them affectionately,
particularly at those village feasts which are
called paneghyris, and which would fall as
flat as Hamlet without the part of Hamlet, if
there were not several blind singers present.
They accompany themselves on the lyre, a
five-stringed instrument, played with a bow.

These minstrels are divided into two sets;
those who merely remember what they have
learnt from others, and those who compose
ballads of their own, in addition to their stores
of memory. These latter, in their long and
quiet walks through country which they
know to be wild and grand, although they
never more may see it, "turn inward," and
recall all that they have heard that has
excited their curiosity, or stirred their imagination
either in the traditional history of their
native land, or in the village accounts of some
local hero. Some of the minstrels spread the
fame of men whose deeds would have been
unknown beyond the immediate mountain
neighbourhood of each, from shore to shore. In
fact these blind beggars are the novelists and
the historians of modern Greece; but if one
subject be more clear to them than another,
it is always the deeds of arms of the Klephts;
the Adam Bells, and Clyne o' the Clough, or
perhaps still more the Robin Hoods of Greece.
All these songs are chanted to particular airs.
The poet must be also his own musician: if
he can also improvise he is a fully-
accomplished minstrel. There was one who lived
at the end of the last century at Auspelatria
in Thessaly, under the shadow of Mount
Ossa. His name was Gavoyanius, or John
the Blind. He was extremely old; and, in