the Mistress of the Earth and of the Sea—for she was the woman in the hill—and when she had told him in brief words what awaited him after this life in requital for his wickedness, she stamped with her foot upon the ground, which swallowed up the castle with the king and all that was therein. But the old man that was slain had entered into Paradise.'
In this story the Mistress of the Earth and of the Sea ([Greek: hê kyra tsê gês kai tsê thalassês]) is, as we shall see later[1], none other than Demeter: but pagan as she is, she works in accord with the good angel (who is evidently her inferior), and orders the old man to invoke the Trinity.
Thus the peasant does not conceive of any antagonism between his pagan and his Christian objects of worship; and both classes are equally deserving of study by those interested in ancient Greek religion. For while every minutest trait or detail of the modern peasant's conception of those ancient deities, who, though despoiled of temples and organised worship, still survive, may throw some new ray of light on the divine personalities and the myths of old time, yet a more broad and comprehensive view of the outlines of ancient religion may be obtained by contemplating the worship of Christian saints who, though deficient often in personal significance, nevertheless by their possession of dedicated shrines and of all the apparatus of a formal cult occupy more exactly the position of the old gods and heroes.
The saints then, as I have remarked above, have a large share in the control of man's daily life. The whole religious sense of the people seems to demand a delegation of the powers of one supreme God to many lesser deities, who, for the very reason perhaps that they are lower in the scale of godhead, are more accessible to man. Under the name of saints lies, hardly concealed, the notion of gods. In mere nomenclature Christianity has had its way; but none of the old tendencies of paganism have been checked. The current of worship has been turned towards many new personalities; but the essence of that worship is the same. The Church would have its saints be merely mediators with the one God; but popular feeling has made of them many gods; their locality and scope of action are defined in exactly the old way; vows are made to the patron-saint of such and such a
- ↑ pp. 91 ff.
