So much importance is attached to these foundation-ceremonies that the Church has provided a special office to be read alike for cathedral or for cottage; and the priest who attends for this purpose is sometimes induced to pronounce a blessing on the animal that is to be sacrificed. This however is the more expensive rite; the victim has to be bought, and the priest expects a fee for blessing it; whereas the immolation of a shadow-victim costs nothing, is more efficacious as being equivalent to a human sacrifice, and provides an excellent means for removing an enemy with impunity.
The sacrificial ceremony is also sometimes performed on other occasions than those of the laying of foundation-stones. In Athens a precept of popular wisdom enjoins the slaughtering of a black cock when a new quarry is opened[703]; and an interesting account is given by Bent[704] of a similar scene at the launching of a ship in Santorini. ‘When they have built a new vessel, they have a grand ceremony at the launching, or benediction, as they call it here, at which the priest officiates; and the crowd eagerly watch, as she glides into the water, the position she takes, for an omen is attached to this. It is customary to slaughter an ox, a lamb or a dove on these occasions, according to the wealth of the proprietor and the size of the ship, and with the blood to make a cross on the deck. After this the captain jumps off the bows into the sea with all his clothes on, and the ceremony is followed by a banquet and much rejoicing.’ Here it is reasonable to suppose that the captain by jumping into the sea goes through the form of offering himself as a sacrifice to the _genius_ of the sea, and that the animal actually slaughtered is a surrogate victim in his stead.
The strength of these superstitions to-day, as gauged by the shifts and compromises to which the peasants resort in order to satisfy their scruples, goes far to guarantee the historical accuracy of such ballads as ‘the Bridge of Arta.’ Not of course that each of the numerous versions with all its local colouring is to be taken as evidence of human sacrifice in each place named; exactitude of detail cannot be claimed for them. But as a faithful picture of the beliefs and customs prevalent not more perhaps than two or three centuries ago they deserve full credence. Both the wide dispersion of the several versions, and also the skill with which in each of them the action of the master-builder evokes feelings not of aversion but rather of pity for a man of whom religious duty demanded the sacrifice of his own wife, furnish plain proof of the domination which the superstition in its most gruesome form once exercised; and the intentions of the modern peasants, if not their acts, testify to the same overwhelming dread of _genii_.