DISCOVERY 



327 



taken from a black-figured vase the seated figure on 

 the left is saying, " Look, a swallow." " By Heracles, 

 so there is," says the man in the middle. " There 

 she goes," says the third. "It is spring already." 

 WTien the swallow came, the thick clothes of winter 

 were put off and summer suits were donned. The 

 swallow song, then, was a spring song performed 

 by bands of bovs who went from house to house 

 making a collection. 



" She has come, the swallow has come, bringing fine 

 seasons and fine years, white on her belly, black on 

 her back. Roll out a cake of compressed fruit from 

 your rich house and a cup of wine and a basket of 

 cheese. Wheaten cakes too, and bread of pulse the 

 swallow does not reject. Are we to go or are we to 

 get something ? If vou give something, well, but if 

 not we wiU not go away. Either we will carry off 

 the door or the lintel or your wife who sits within ; 

 she is small and we shall easily carry her off. .\nd if 

 you bring an\'thing. bring something big. Open the 

 door to the swallow ; for we are not old men but 

 bovs." In some parts of Tireece the swallow song is 

 still pjrformed on March ist by boys carrying a wooden 

 swallow on a pole. In the British Isles we may 

 compare the Wren Song of Christmastide : 



" The wren, the wren, the king of the birds, 

 St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze ; 

 -Although he is little, his family's great. 

 I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat. 



" My box, it would speak, if it had but a tongue, 

 And two or three shiUings would do it no wrong. 

 Sing holly, sing ivy — sing iv\', sing holly, 

 A drop just to drink it would save melancholy. 



' ' And if you draw it of the best 

 I hope your soul in Heaven may rest. 

 But if you draw it of the small 

 It won't agree with the wTen-boys at all." 



The Lesbian mill song is perhaps rather a genuine 

 work-song than a singing game — 



" Grind, mill, grind, 

 For Pittacus too grinds, 

 Who is king in great llitylene." 



An interesting parallel has been recorded b}' the 

 late Professor Politis. A woman in Maina, the wildest 

 part of the Peloponnese, upon whom there were 

 billeted the police who were after her husband, who 

 had taken to the hills, was heard to sing : 



" Grind, mill, grind. 

 Turn out your flour fine. 

 Your wheaten flour crisp 

 That the policemen may eat. 

 And the sergeant, the dog. 

 Who is sitting in the corner." ' 



' Quoted Kyriakidis, .Vi -,i'coi\e! di rrff Xaoypaipiaf, p. 68. 



Pittacus was a friend of Alcaeus the poet, and with 

 him a conspirator against the tyrant Myrsilus, but 

 eventually became tjTant himself early in the sixth 

 century B.C. His name, like that of Periander, 

 t\Tant of Corinth, was included in the list of the 

 traditional Seven Wise Men of Greece. It is recorded 

 of him by Diogenes Laertius that a friend came and 

 asked him whether it was wiser to marry an aristo- 

 cratic bride or one from his own station. " Go after 

 those boys who are whipping their tops," said Pittacus, 

 " and listen to what they say." When he got near, 

 the friend heard one boy say to the other, " \\'hip 

 the one that is by you." 



To pursue the practice of divination from the chance 

 utterances of children at play would take us too far 

 afield. It is not uncommon. Plutarch tells us that 

 the Egyptians drew inferences from the chance utter- 

 ances of children playing in the temples ; the hearing 

 of a boy's voice, which repeated, " Take up and read," 

 was a factor in the conversion of St. Augustine ; the 

 deductions to be dra%\Ti from children's play are given 

 in a German pamphlet of popular divination belonging 

 to the sixteenth century, and an interesting account 

 drawn from an eyewitness, the author's grandfather, 

 is given by the Turkish traveller Evliya Efendi, of 

 how the play of the seven sons of Sultan Ahmed I 

 (1603-1617) foretold their respective destinies and 

 the conquest of Crete by Sultan Ibrahim .- 



The te.xt of the Greek songs will be found collected in 

 Bergk, Poets Lyrici Grsci, vol. iii, and a description of the 

 English games mentioned in Lady Gomme, The Traditional 

 Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland ; some of the explana- 

 tions of their origins there given may perhaps be taken with 

 a grain of salt. For the bird songs see Swainson, The Folklore 

 of British Birds. The text of modern Greek swallow songs 

 is given in Passow, Carmina Popularia Crscics Recentioris, 

 Nos. 305-9. The illustration is after Baumeister, Denk- 

 mdler, des Alterthunis, III, Fig. 2128 ; it is also figured in Miss 

 Harrison, Themis, p. 98 The current number of the Journal 

 of Hellenic Studies, vol. xlii, contains reproductions of the very 

 interesting reliefs of the sixth century B.C. which were dis- 

 covered in Athens this year. One of the scenes depicted can 

 only be described as a game of hockey ! 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA 



Ix the articles on " The Antiquity of Man in America " which 

 appeared in our October and November numbers, the author, 

 referring to the discovery of a tooth in the early PUocene 

 beds of Nebraska, impressed upon his readers the necessity for 

 caution and careful deliberation before accepting the identifica- 

 tion of this tooth as the molar of an ape-like man of a ts^pe 

 earlier than any hitherto discovered. It is, therefore, interest- 

 ing to note that this identification was called into question at 

 a meeting of the Zoological Society of London held on 

 November 7, when photographs and a csist of the tooth were 

 exhibited by Prof. Elliot Smith. After a careful examination 

 of the characters of the tooth, one by one, and of the pulp 



IConlinued at toot of pas' 33°. 



= Von Hammer, The Travels of Evliya Efendi II, pp. 85-8. 



