162 REV. G. E. WHITE^ ON SURVIVALS OF PRIMITIVE 



age to the great world centres is enjoined by the various 

 hierarchies, but this resort to local shrines is a remnant of 

 pagan customs, for it is similar to what we know was prac- 

 tised in Asia Minor in the centuries preceding the Christian 

 era. 



The desire to forecast tlie future and the attempt to force 

 the omens to assume a favourable character are impulses planted 

 deeply in the liuman bosom. Books on this and kindred 

 subjects, to the value of fifty thousand pieces of silver, were once 

 burned in Asia Minor, but I suppose that any language of the 

 Levant can still furnish books telling how to read the stars, the 

 palm of the hand, etc. Old women in the city streets offer for 

 sale collections of rings, seals and stones recommending certain 

 ones as very powerful and sure to bring good luck. Tn Zile I saw 

 a flat stone in a graveyard with a few pebbles on it, and a friend 

 informed me that people often go to this stone, throw a handful 

 of pebbles upon it with a prayer, and from the number of 

 pebbles in a given space, or from the number as odd or even, or 

 from the designs as resembling letters of the alphabet, they 

 predict a favourable or unfavourable issue to any undertaking 

 in hand. A shop-keeper sometimes hires a person considered 

 luck-bringing to be the first customer at his shop in the morning, 

 hoping thus to secure good luck in business for the day. At a 

 retired nook in the mountains is a peculiar hole in tlie thin edge 

 of a huge rock through which people have tried to pass in such 

 numbers as to have worn the rock smooth. Supposably a 

 sinner cannot pass ; an innocent person can. The place also 

 abounds in little stones : a person gathers up a handful, and 

 expects to live as many years as he has stones in his hand. At 

 the monastery of Sourp Slinas visitors clap stones against a wall 

 greasy from the candles which have l^een lighted and stuck 

 against . it, and if a stone adheres to the wall the owner is 

 expected to be fortunate. When a dog rolls before the door of 

 a sick man it is thouo-lit that he has seen the an^el of death ; and 

 so in the house of a sick man bread is kept ready to throw to 

 the dogs to prevent them from rolling before the door. 



There are traces remaining of a primitive agricultural 

 religious year. Praying for rain in the Spring, alreaciy referred 

 to, is a custom which has a wide and deep hold. Fixing crosses 

 in the windows at the Spring equinox, or liolding a festival at 

 the beginning of harvest, wliich coincides almost exactly with 

 the Summer solstice, has the same significance. A day in Spring 

 is called " mouse day," and no work, especially no weaving, is 

 (lone on it by the women lest mice gnaw and spoil the result. 



