Ios is celebrated for its flocks and herds, and of all islands Ios is the most celebrated for its mysethra, ‘food for the gods,’ as they call it. It is simply a curd made of boiled sheep’s milk, strained and pressed into a wicker basket called tyrobolon, just as they are spoken of in the ‘Odyssey’; from this basket it gets a pretty pattern before being turned out on to a plate. When eaten with honey it is truly delicious. I have tasted the same in Corsica called brocciu but not so good as those of Ios; in fact, the mysethra of the neighbouring islands does not approach that of Ios — there is something in the pasturage which produces the proper flavour. They make mysethra cakes, but they are inferior to the original thing, and the peasants most frequently salt them, in which condition they are perfectly horrid.

Some of this excellent mysethra we had for our breakfast next morning, and some of it, together with cold fish and plenty of wine, the demarch put into a basket for us to take with us on an expedition; he was determined to accompany us himself, for he said he had never been in that part of the island to which we were going, and he was a very considerable weight for a mule.

We were bound for no less a place than the reputed tomb of Homer, situated on a distant promontory to the north of the island, three hours’ ride from the capital, and on our way we had ample opportunity for enjoying the beauties of Ios, and as we passed through a rich gorge full of olives, oleanders, and lemons, the ground studded with anemones, and distinguished from afar by a huge umbrella pine, we thought the lot of the Iotes was preferable to that of the inhabitants of volcanic Santorin. They recognise the merits of this spot by calling it ‘the garden,’ and there are one or two little villas hidden away in the vegetation which must be delicious retreats in the summer heats. It was a lovely day, and when we reached the wretched hamlet of Plaketos, close to which Homer's grave is said to be, the midday sun was almost too hot.

I always shall envy the imagination of Count Pasch van Krienen, who took upon himself the glory of having opened the tomb of the immortal poet, and of having looked upon his mortal remains as they crumbled into dust on exposure to the air. Before this imagination pales every other, even that which proposes to have opened the grave of Agamemnon, and disclosed the halls of Ilium. Count Pasch had, however, a great deal to go upon; he had read his Herodotus, and believed that Homer, on his way from Samos to Athens, died at Ios, and must necessarily have been buried. Furthermore, ships bound from Samos to Athens do still pass along the north coast of Ios, and if there is a southern gale they will shelter for days in the little harbour below Plaketos. There are traces of a round Hellenic watch-tower, in the vicinity of which are scattered many graves. Several of these Count Pasch opened, and one he decided to be the grave of Homer because he found a coin in it with something like OMIROS ^gr upon it. Perhaps the next grave which is just like it — a long ordinary tomb — he considered as the resting place of Homer’s mother. Who knows?

Tradition from earliest times has honoured Ios as the burial-place of Homer. Pliny calls Ios ‘Homeri sepulchre veneranda,’ and there exists still a modern legend, which looks as if it owed its origin to Homer's story:— ‘Once upon a time there lived at Plaketos an old woman and her son in a little cottage; robbers penetrated one night into it, strangled the mother and gouged out the eyes of her son. When they had gone the son buried his mother, and set off to wander through the archipelago, singing songs to earn his bread as he travelled — songs which were even better than those of Riga, and which gained for him great fame. Eventually he returned to Ios to die, and was buried near his mother.’

I wonder whether Count Pasch ever heard this legend? He would have been delighted with it if he had; at any rate, he got hold of a marble slab which was before the Church of St. Catharine, and which tradition said came from the grave of Homer. On this he thought he detected letters which looked suspiciously like Homer's name, and on these grounds he started to dig, and astonished the literary world a hundred years ago by his reported discovery.

We did not stay very long at the tower or the tombs, but returned to Plaketos, where some twenty hovels form a little colony celebrated for its honey productions. Several of the houses are storehouses full of the productions of the soil, and large jars (psélloi ^gr) in which the bees have made their honey. Hardly anyone lives here in winter, except an old man, who said he was eighty, but did not look or act as if he was sixty. He boasted of having shown King Otho and Queen Amalia the tomb of Homer, and the demarch invited him to join our repast, constantly filled his gourd with wine, and made him very merry. The poor old man sang with wonderful vigour for his years, and on rising to go came down with such a crack on a stone with his skull that we thought he must be killed, but he was up again in no time, sobered somewhat, and not so gay. I never saw a more miserable hovel than his house: it was exceedingly low, so that a tall person could not stand upright; the window was merely the absence of a stone in the wall; the door four feet high; the bed simply a collection of stones on which were placed boards and dried grass, and twigs on the top of that Implements of husbandry impeded progress at every step; the only seats were stones; people who can live to be eighty in places like this must indeed be hardy. As for our old friend, they told us he was so devoted to the spot that he could never be persuaded to join his family in their winter migration to a more comfortable house in the Chora.

Under the influence of the wine we had brought with us everybody grew gay — the muleteers, the old man, and the demarch — and on a little open space outside the hovel they began to play some of their wild island games, which interested us exceedingly, and in which they were joined by field labourers from Plaketos.

‘Wine’ (krasí ^gr, as they call it) is a really savage game: one man sits in the middle of his fellow-players with a long rope in his hand, the other end of which is held by another player; the game is for the rest to try to smack the man who is sitting down as hard as they can with their hands, and say krasí ^gr, whilst the other man runs about and protects the sitter, giving his assailants sharp cuts with the rope if he can get at them. In this game really serious blows were given and received with great good-humour.

They next played a game called ‘first and second olive,’ being an intricate and acrobatical form of leapfrog: one man knelt on the ground, two others leant against him for support, and then the players followed in succession; including the old man and the demarch, there were seven. ‘First olive’ simply sang out his name, bounded forward, rested his hands on the shoulder of the frog, or rather beast of burden (zöon ^gr, as they call him here), turned a somersault, and lighted on his feet on the other side. The demarch was second olive, and shouted, ‘Second olive with its branches,’ before modestly leaping after our fashion, for he was too bulky for the somersault. ‘Third olive is in the air,’ shouted the old man who came next, and followed the demarch’s modest example. Fourth olive was an active muleteer; his password was, ‘The fourth who misses falls;’ and he did the correct somersault, as did also fifth, sixth, and seventh olive, who shouted before leaping respectively, ‘To the good ass who is behind;’ ‘Let us put on the saddle, let us fetch wood;’ ‘That we may roast the lamb on Easter day.’ When there are more players on a feast day they have more sayings, which each man has to say before leaping. Even when there are twenty, each man knows his place and his password.

‘The priest’(o papas ^gr) is another rough game of the same nature, which was next played. Four men stood with their arms linked together, and moved round and round; whilst they moved thus the others tried to jump on their backs. He who succeeded took the place of one of the four, he who did not had to receive a cut on his back from a rope which ‘the priest,’ a sort of umpire, held in his hand for administering justice.

After amusing themselves for some time with these games it was suggested that a start homewards had better be made, as the days were not too long; and on our way we passed through what is called the upper plain of Ios, which is a fertile plateau, some 300 feet above the lower plain by the sea-level, and in the centre of which is the foundation of a fine square Hellenic watch-tower, nine yards and three quarters long by nine, built with very long narrow stones — one of which I measured was three yards seven inches long and only eight and a half thick. This tower is now used as a stable, and on the top of it has been built a cottage; the old doorway is still there, and the holes visible into which the bolts once fitted. All the stones are rounded at the edge, and the place is substantially and well built; evidently for the purpose of protecting this fertile plain.

We were on most friendly terms this second evening with our hosts, whose object seemed to be to do everything to make us comfortable. At our meal a luscious kid took the place of the fowls, and during dinner our conversation turned on local customs, which interested us exceedingly. The fair young ladies of the house knew a great deal about certain ceremonies annually performed on the eve of June 23, the vigil of St. John the Baptist’s nativity, and commonly known by the name of aklídones ^gr. They were rather shy at telling their secrets at first, but Marousa was not a girl to remain shy long; and, seeing the interest we expressed in the subject, she soon consented to disclose the divinations which she and her sisters used to foretell the husbands that will fall to their lot.

Marousa and her sisters were such comely damsels that I expressed surprise that they should ever have had occasion to consult the oracle about their future lot, whereat they laughed and explained that in Ios there were so few young men, but Marousa prophesied great things from a prospective visit to Athens, which had been promised her. She really was a pattern of life and spirits in this far-off island, where life not gifted with natural buoyancy must be fearfully dreary, for unless you can, as the Greeks say, ‘skip with the lambs and play with the kids,’ your chance of amusement is small.

Marousa began her story:—

‘First of all you must take an unused jar, and you must send a girl to fill it at the well, with strict injunctions not to speak to anyone she meets. Into this jar we sisters and our friends each put something (aklídona ^gr) — an apple, a ring, a pin, and so forth — each being careful to remember the article that she has put in. Then we cover up the jar with a red cloak, and leave it out in the air all night, that it may see the stars, as the saying goes.

‘Often,’ and here Marousa and her sisters roared with laughter, ‘the young men watch where we put our jar, and steal the contents, so that we lose our trinkets and our chance of recognising our husband both at the same time, and we daren't tell for fear of being laughed at.’

‘But when no one finds our jar we girls bring it in next morning, put it on a table, and sing the following song as we crowd round it:—

‘After singing this we remove the red cloth, and a child draws out the things one by one which we have deposited in the jar, and between each drawing we sing again, promising to adorn the church of St. John with a votive offering and so forth if he tells us true. When the vase is emptied of these things each of us girls pours a little of the water into her shoe, and goes out into the street, and the first name she hears called by a child or anyone, such as Andronico, Themistocles, and so forth, is to be the name of her future husband.

‘Then we have another plan: we pour the remainder of the water into glass phials, and cast into it the white of an egg, which forthwith forms different sorts of clouds in the water. These clouds, according to the fancy of each of us, take the form of the man who is to be our husband. If he is to be an educated man he will have a book or letter near him, if he is to be a sailor he will resemble a man holding a helm or an anchor, and if a shepherd he will be playing the sabouna or syravlion, and so on.’

Here Marousa paused, and Ekaterina took up her parable:— ‘But we are not only content with knowing the name of our future husband, and what his occupation is, but we want to know the date of our wedding, and to do this we take an acanthus branch, burn it in the candle, and expose it to the dew of the night; if it blossoms forth again in one night, as it sometimes, though rarely, does, the happy girl will be married before the year is out, and by the number of nights it takes to blossom we count the number of years that will elapse before our marriage. Sometimes here in Ios it never blossoms at all, she added coyly, ‘for there are so few young men in the place.’ So we wound up this interesting conversation by promising to let their distress be known in England, and recommending them to wear the lovely costume which we had seen the night before if they wished to captivate, like the maid of Athens, susceptible travellers from the north.

It is curious that this day of St. John, the summer solstice, should be treated similarly by devotees of both the Eastern and Western Churches. Everywhere they light the fires of St. John, round which Greeks, as well as Norwegians, dance and amuse themselves. In Ireland the girls make dumb cakes, that is to say, without speaking, and sleep on them when they wish to dream of their lovers: this is closely akin to an Eastern aklídona ^gr.

On the following morning we had another expedition to make, and the demarch, who had work to do, could not accompany us, and accordingly made his niece Marousa mount her mule to do the honours of her island. We were to visit the old Frankish town Palaeocastro, as it is called, and our road led along rugged mountain sides and up steep cliffs; these Marousa preferred to ascend on foot, for she remembered a priest whose mule had slipped, and given him an awkward fall as he was returning from the annual feast.

The fortress and the ruined town are built on the summit of a white marble mountain, which commands the north-west passage between Ios and Naxos; and the houses of the town and the walls are all built of this marble — loose, unshaped stones stuck together with a strong cement of lime and sand — so that many roofless houses were still standing, and the brilliant whiteness of the place was quite dazzling in the bright sunshine. In the middle of the ruins was constructed a small white church, which is the special property of the Lorenziades family; and here on September 4, the Virgin’s birthday, they have a family panegyris ^dnote. Each member of this family — cousins, uncles, aunts — all who can manage a six hours’ mule ride go and worship here on that day, on which the population of Ios go to the Church of the Holy Theodote, in the valley below, to celebrate their festival. We entered the family church with Marousa, who did her pious duty of incensing the pictures and lighting a lamp, chatting to us and crossing herself as she did so, in anything but what we should call a solemn frame of mind; finally she made us scribble our names on the wall and on the tempelon in Greek and English, which appeared to us both irreverent and vulgar; but we thought what a pleasure it would be to the family next feast day to see these scribblings of ours, so we did as we were bid.

Close to this old town is a marble quarry lately started by a modest but impecunious Greek company; the marble is inferior to that of Paros and Pentelicus, and it seems doubtful if it will answer as a marketable commodity in a country where marble is so common.

We ate our midday meal under a wide-spreading plane tree down in the valley, and then went to visit some tombs and vaulted chambers, evincing the existence of a considerable Roman colony here in former years; and then Marousa took us to see the Church of the Holy Theodote, the scene of the great annual gathering of the inhabitants of Ios. The building is a large Byzantine church, with a great dome over the body of the church and a smaller one over the apse. There are two narrow transepts on the north and south, and inside the northern one was a low stone bench, with seats on either sides, at which on the feast days the worshippers have their common meal under the very eyes of their patron saint. When hearing of these island festivals one’s thoughts involuntarily travel back to remote antiquity. There are some half-dozen cauldrons piled in one corner of the church, and large wooden spoons with which to stir the contents. Every pilgrim to the festival produces something towards this meal: the well-to-do will bring a lamb or a goat; the poor, rice, olives, and wine. Everything is then common property, and in picturesque groups outside the church they cook their food; into one cauldron is cast the lamb, into another the goat, into another the rice, and the fragrance of the meal ascends in wreaths of smoke towards the blue heavens. There is something patriarchal in a scene like this.

The men, whilst their wives are engaged in tending the pots, indulge in their rough games on the little platform before the church — those rough games which we had seen our muleteers play the day before. All is conviviality and joy. It makes no difference to their mirth at table that they are taking their food inside a sacred edifice; they laugh, sing, and chat, and then, when they have eaten their fill, they play milder games, in which the women can take a part, within the church.

‘We always come round here in the afternoon,’ said Marousa Lorenziades, ‘when we have had our own family panegyris, and play games with the people.’ They are simple-minded folks, the men of Ios, with no class distinctions. Marousa laughed and chatted with her muleteer all the way, regardless of the fact that hers was the first family of Ios and he was an unkempt yokel.

As evening comes on, after these festivals at the Church of the Holy Theodote, they dance and play in front of the church, and do not return home till well on in the night, wearied with their gaiety, and saying, ‘Till next year’ to one another as they part.

After dinner that evening the Lorenziades had invited a large party of lotes to meet and entertain us. So after the meal was cleared away, which to-night consisted only of different kinds of fish and mysethra, the guests trooped in and were formally introduced to us. Marousa and her sisters had arranged everything for our benefit tonight. Instead of dancing, the usual amusement at these gatherings, they were to play games such as they usually play on the annual feast-day at the Church of the Holy Theodote; and before the evening was over we saw at least a dozen of them, many of them easily learnt, and in which we could take a part without conspicuously disgracing ourselves.

‘You see,’ said the demarch apologetically, ‘we have no theatres here, no amusements, such as you are accustomed to; so in winter evenings and on festival days we play the old games which we have learnt from our fathers.’ And he assured me that every game we saw that night had been played by the lotes from generation to generation; none of them had been borrowed from abroad; for from the similarity of some of them to our own homely games I almost felt as if they had been transplanted from English soil.

The first game they played was a species of blind man’s buff (tyflomía ^gr). A victim was selected, blindfolded, and given a stick to hold in his hand. Then the players joined hands and danced round him, singing as they went. At last the blind man touched one of them on the shoulder with his stick, and put one end of the stick to his ear; then the individual thus called upon whistled at the other end of the stick, and from this whistle the blind man had to divine whom he had touched.

Then we had hunt the ring and puss in the corner, both vastly improved by the singing, which is a necessary adjunct to all these games in Greece. They all seem to know part-songs, suited to each occasion, and verses answering one another, which they sing with considerable pathos, and thereby elevate the game from a mere romp to a musical entertainment

The demarch was expressly fetched now to take part in a game of a more imposing character called the confessional (exomológisis ^gr). An Eastern carpet was laid on the floor, and a pillow was placed upon it, on which Demarch Lorenziades solemnly knelt down; then a large sheet was put over his head, and the confession began. The first confessor was his niece Marousa, who knelt before him, and the sheet was thrown over her head, too. From under the sheet we heard the demarch’s stentorian voice say, ‘What have you to confess, my child?’ In reply she mentioned some trivial offence, and the demarch gave her as penance to kneel for five minutes in a corner. Two or three others then followed. At length an unsuspecting damsel came to confess. ‘What have you done wrong?’ asked the demarch. ‘Nothing!’ was the reply; when suddenly the demarch glided backwards from off the carpet, and from under the sheet, and four men rushed forward, seized the four ends of the carpet, and mercilessly tossed the poor girl, still enveloped in the sheet, to the exceeding delight of all around.

‘This is one of our favourite games at the panegyris,’ said Marousa; and I could not help thinking that if games must be played at a church this was a very suitable one, having a moral attached.

After this we had a vindictive game called ‘the president’ (o próedros ^gr). A chosen one was placed in the middle of the room on a chair, holding in her hand a knotted handkerchief. All the players were seated around, pretending to be busily engaged; one said she was busy knitting, another she was grinding coffee, and so on, and all imitating the motions. At length one jumped up, walked to the president, and, with an obsequious bow, said, ‘Mr. President, Miss Ekaterina is idle; she is not grinding coffee.’ If the president considered the plaint a just one the handkerchief was given to the plaintiff, with orders to administer to the culprit a verdict of stripes; if, on the contrary, she deemed it frivolous the plaintiff received stripes from the president, and returned crestfallen to his seat. The success of this game depended entirely on the genius of the players; some of them invented ridiculous complaints, which convulsed the whole company with laughter, and many of the personal hits were lost upon us, not knowing the secrets of the inner circle; yet it gave us a good insight into Greek character, which in many cases was marked by great originality and wit, excessive good humour, and quickness of repartee.

A wilder game, and one which we thought more suitable for the male sex, next took place. It was called the ‘bad companions’ (oi kakoi síntrofoi ^gr). The Eastern carpet was again spread, and two pillows were put upon it, and two females laid down, as if in bed, with their faces on the pillow, and the sheet cast over them, heads and all. The players, each armed with a knotted handkerchief, danced and sang around the reposers, and in turns caught them severe cuts on the back with the knotted handkerchief, saying, ‘Who has hit you?’ and in reply came a groan from under the sheet, ‘Companion So-and-so,’ until the right name was guessed.

Several other games of a like nature were played before we retired to rest. Whilst on the subject of games I will just allude here to another island game I once saw, called sfaira ^gr, or ball, which bears a closer relationship to cricket than anything I ever saw out of England. Instead of a bat the hand is used, and instead of wickets a stone is set up. There are five on each side; one is at the stone, four are doing nothing, the remaining five are fielding. If the player hits the ball to a certain distance he counts one, but does not run; if the ball is caught or if it hits the stone his innings are over. This game, I was assured, has been played in Greece as far back as the memory of the oldest inhabitant can go, and, no doubt, much longer; it is obvious that it was not borrowed from us. Did we take our idea from them; or will the minds of men intent on sport produce the same results in different parts of the globe?

Next morning our stay at Ios came to a close. The Lorenziades pressed us to remain for a wedding, but the wind was favourable for Sikinos, so we regretfully bade them farewell. Marousa came with a lovely piece of red Cretan embroidery as a present, and her handkerchief full of pine nuts, that we might never forget her; Callirhoë gave us her pocket handkerchief full of sesame seeds; and Ekaterina wrote a touching little poem with the same intent. The three brothers and the three girls went down with us to the harbour, where our boat was waiting, bringing with them a fresh mysethra, wine, and figs for our journey. They taught us to improve the wretched little wizen figs of the islands by the introduction of sesame seeds, for which plan we were grateful; for you might as well eat shoe leather as the figs they give you in the Cyclades. After many shakings of handkerchiefs and much tacking we eventually got out of Ios harbour, and sped quickly in our caïque for Sikinos.