Presently came the prince, and there was much feasting and dancing, and she was far the most beautiful of all the company. And because he saw her lovely dress and knew how much toil it must have cost her to array herself thus for him, he granted her the favour of doing no more work all her days[1].'
This story, besides illustrating well the finality of every word pronounced by the Fates and the means which they may employ to mitigate their own severity, is typical too of the ideas generally accepted concerning the Fates. Their number is three[2], and they are seen in the shape of old women, one of whom at least is always engaged in spinning. Of the remaining two, one is sometimes seen bearing a book wherein to record in writing the decrees which the three jointly utter, while the other carries a pair of scissors wherewith to cut the thread of life at the appointed time; or again sometimes these two also are spinning, one of them carrying a basket of wool or a distaff and the other fashioning the thread. This association of the Fates with spinning operations is commemorated in certain popular phrases by the comparison of man's life to a thread. 'His thread is cut' or 'is finished' ([Greek: kopêke] or [Greek: sôthêke hê klôstê tou]) is a familiar euphemism for 'he is dead': and again, with the same ultimate meaning but a somewhat different metaphor, the people of Arachova use the phrase [Greek: mazôthêke to koubar' tou][3], 'his spindle is wound full,'—an expression which seems to imply the idea that the Fates apportion to each man at birth a mass of rough wool from which they go on spinning day by day till the thread of life is completed.
According to Fauriel[4], a reminiscence of the Fates is also to be found in a personification of the plague ([Greek: hê panoukla]), which in the tradition of some districts is not represented as a single demon but has been multiplied into a trio of terrible women who pass through the towns and devastate them, one of them carrying a roll on which to write the names of the victims, another a pair of scissors wherewith to cut them off from the living, and the third a broom with which to sweep them away. He assigns however no
- ↑ I regret to say that I cannot trace the source of this story. I incline to think that I took it from some publication, but it is possible that it was narrated to me personally.
- ↑ Except in Zacynthos, according to Schmidt (Volksleben, p. 211), where they number twelve.
- ↑ Schmidt, Volksleben, p. 220.
- ↑ Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne, Discours préliminaire, p. 83.
