326 



DISCOVERY 



honour a song, which is sung to this day (our informant 

 Pausanias is writing in the second century after Christ) : 



" To the midst of the Stenyclerian plain and to the top of the 

 mountain 

 Aristomenes followed the Lacedaemonians." 



7/ and the song 



We are reminded of i Samuel xviii. 

 may have been a popular ballad, but again I suspect 

 a singing game. Historical events often leave their 

 traces in nursery song. A Shropshire woman in the 

 nineteenth century was heard to hush her baby with : 



Ring-a-ding, I heard a bird sing 



The Parliament soldiers are gone for the king " — 



which is a clear reference to General Monk's mission 

 in 1660. 



Where our children sing, " Rain, rain, go to Spain, 

 Fine weather, come again," the Greek children of 



witch who affected the shape of a screech owl and 

 was peculiarly addicted to sucking the blood of small 

 children. 



At weddings a song was sung about crows. There 

 is, unfortunately, considerable doubt about the text. 

 The reading, " Boy, drive away the crow," ^ has been 

 interpreted by the theory that the crow symbolises 

 widowhood. But the crow was a bird of ill luck, 

 and naturally its appearance at weddings would not 

 be welcomed. I suspect that the song was merely 

 the equivalent of the English — 



" Crow, crow, get out of my sight. 

 Or else I'll eat your liver and light " ; 



or the French — 



Corbeau, corbeau sauv-e toi 

 Voila le petit-fils du roi. 

 Qui te coupera al p'tit doigt ! 

 Vinn vinaigre ! " 



V4 



THE CU.MIXG UK SPRING. 



Aristophanes' day clapped their hands 

 " Come out, dear Sun." With — 



and sang. 



" Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home. 



Your house is on fire, your children all gone " — 



may be compared, " Fly, beetles ; a savage wolf is 

 after you." 



Greek children had also a song to " send away the 

 strix, the crier by night, from the land, the nameless 

 bird, upon the swift ships." The strix was a vampire- 



' " And the women sang one to another in their play and said : 

 Saul hath slain his thousands 

 And David his ten thousands.' " 



The most famous of Greek seasonal songs is the 

 Swalloiv Song of Rhodes. In ancient Greece as in 

 Europe pretty generally the advent of the swallow 

 marked the beginning of spring. In the illustration 



- The first line of the song has been corrupted, from causes 

 readily intelligible, into the jingle enKopi /co/ai KopJ.fijp. 

 Bergk's reading, €'s/,-6pei, Kdpi] Kopdii'i;, " Sing the marriage 

 song, maiden crow," gives an ill-supported meaning to the 

 verb, and explains the " maiden crow " by a suggestion for 

 which there is some evidence that girls were sometimes nick- 

 named crows. But CKKipei, Kdpf, KopwvT^v preserves the 

 normal sense of the verb and is quite straightforward. Although 

 our authorities refer to its use at weddings, I doubt if the song 

 was necessarily restricted to those occasions. 



