Various substitutes for human offerings at the laying of a foundation-stone, or a threshold, have been adopted in different countries. Thus, in modern Greece, “after the ground has been cleared for the foundations of a new house, the future owner, his family, and the workmen attend, together with the _pappas_ [the priest] in full canonicals, accompanied by incense, holy water, and all due accessories. A prayer is said, and those present are aspersed, and the site is sprinkled with the consecrated water. Then a fowl or a lamb, which you have noticed lying near with the feet tied together, is taken by one of the workmen, killed and decapitated, the _pappas_ standing by all the while, and even giving directions; the blood is then smeared on the foundation-stone, in the fulfilment of the popular adage that ‘there must be blood in the foundation.’”[142] The modern Greek term for this ceremony, _stoicheionein_, would seem to indicate a sacrifice to the deity of the threshold, or the foundation. “The Bulgarians, it is said, when laying a house foundation, take a thread, and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by. The measure is then buried under the foundation-stone, and it is expected that the man whose shadow has been thus treated will soon become but a shade himself.... Sometimes a victim is put to death on the occasion; the foundations being sprinkled with the blood of a fowl, or a lamb, or some other species of scapegoat.”[143] Among the Russian peasants the idea prevails that the building of a new house “is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family who is the first to enter it will soon die. In accordance with a custom of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters the new house first; and in many places, as, for instance, in the Government of Archangel, some animal is killed and buried on the spot on which the first log or stone is laid.”[144]