Devon (England) -- Social life and customs; Wreyland (England)
We may have an equally wrong impression of the ancient Greeks. Zeuxis
painted his Helen from five damsels whom he had chosen out of all the
damsels in the city of Croton; and Anacreon suggests a similar plan for
painting a Bathyllus. Pheidias modelled a statue from Pantarkes, and
Praxiteles from Phryne. In the Hermes of Praxiteles the foot is copied
from a model who used to go about on stony ground in sandals; yet Hermes
was a god who travelled through the air. The statue represents an
individual, not a type.
I went out from Orchomenos to see the Acidalian fountain, in which the
Graces used to bathe. Instead of Graces bathing there, I found three old
washerwomen scrubbing very dirty clothes, 13 April 1888. Washerwomen
seem to have a fancy for such places. I have found them at Siloam, 17
March 1882, Fontebranda, 19 April 1892, and Vaucluse, 15 March 1891.
They probably were there in Petrarch’s time, and Ezzelino’s also, and at
an earlier time as well. I did not find them at Callichoros, where the
women of Eleusis performed their mystic dance; but I found their washing
spread out upon the beach to dry, 23 April 1880, and some of it puzzled
me very much indeed--pieces of white material, less than a yard in
width, but quite a dozen yards long.
These proved to be the petticoats of the Palikaris, old stalwarts of the
War of Independence, who still wore the national costume--which really
was Albanian, and not Greek at all. I found out afterwards how a
Palikari put his petticoat on. He took one end, while another man held
the other, and then he pirouetted towards the other man, winding the top
edge round his waist.
Meanwhile my mother was observing other things, and in her diary I
find:--“Some peasants at dinner at the little inn--one well dressed in
Greek costume. They had a bowl of French beans, over which they poured a
bottle of vinegar and sprinkled salt. Each man put in his fork, and
helped himself to a mouthful, and then bit off a piece of raw onion and
some black bread. They finished with honey on which they poured a
bottle of oil, and ate the same way.” My father sometimes noted things
like that. In his diary I find, Leukerbad, 27 August 1871:--“Sat by the
cold spring in the broad walk towards the Ladders. Many came to drink
it--with absinthe.”
My father and my mother were at the Certosa near Pavia on 21 August
1857. There were monks there then, and ladies were not admitted to the
monastery or the aisles and choir of the church, but only to the nave.
So my mother sat outside, while my father was seeing the interior. And
then a bull came rushing along, with peasants in pursuit. She made a
dash for the cloister gate; but the janitor was not going to have the
place polluted by her presence: so he crossed himself, and slammed the
door, leaving her to face the bull outside. Luckily the bull saw
something else and turned aside, and she reached the church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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