MODERN GREECE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TIM " SPZCTATOR."]
Siu,—In the careful and sympathetic review which you have been good enough to publish of my "Customs and Lore of Modern Greece," one or two points are raised which I should be glad of an opportunity to answer. Your reviewer alludes to a contention on my part that the Albanian element in the country is being absorbed by the Greek, and assumes that the only data for such a statement are official census returns. It 'is, however, rather a process of Hellenisation than one of absorption which I have referred to, such as is abundantly testified to by the older inhabitants. Against Vrana, quoted in the review as a village of Attica where but little Greek is understood, to which, moreover, I might add several others, may be set such villages of Albanian origin as Doliana and Kerasitza in Arkadia, and Top&ova in Achaia, where the language has entirely disappeared.
• The islands of Hydra and the Spezzas (for there are two islands in the group, so that it is not wholly unintelligible to speak of Spezza on one page and the Spezzas in another) are also strong instances of the complete Hellenisation of colonies originally Albanian; and many more might be quoted. Such evidences, combined with the fact that Greek is exclusively taught in the schools, and is the official language, as well as that of the Church throughout the country, furnish strong presumptive grounds for concluding that an unwritten language like Albanian is doomed in Greece, and that it will disappear rapidly when the system of female education is more widely extended.
With regard to the universality—up to recent times, at any rate—of the habit of placing Charon's obol between the lips of the dead, I entirely agree with your reviewer; and the fact that on p. 126 I allude to a number of places where the custom, or an analogous one, may be traced, makes it clear that I had no intention of localising it in Asia Minor.
With regard to the Greek extracts, they are copied from the collections of those who have taken down the folk-songs from the mouths of the people, especially from those published by M. Lelekos, himself a Greek. How far it might be advisable to revise their syntax, I will not discuss, but will merely point out that, while fully admitting that an elementary knowledge of classical Greek would lead the reader to expect that certain particles should be followed by a verb in the subjunctive, a practical knowledge of popular Greek would also make it clear to him that the peasant is strangely in- different to the laws of grammar, and in certain cases heretical as to the rules of accentuation.
Having put forward this plea in reply to a portion of your reviewer's criticisms, for many of which I have every reason to be grateful to him, I must admit that, partly owing to my absence from England at the time of publication, a most regrettable number of misprints have found their way into the text.—I am, Sir. &c.,
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