The village of Livadhi, by the harbour, is small but tidy, and we there partook of refreshments in a clean fisherman’s cottage off a table rudely carved with all sorts of fish designs. The ceilings of the houses are here all made of canes placed crosswise; on the top of this ceiling they put seaweed, and on the top of the seaweed mud, which is carefully pressed and rolled, and forms the roof of the one-storeyed houses; a very treacherous roof, indeed, in wet weather, as we often experienced.

The tiny plain down by the harbour is a pattern of fertility. There is a well in each field; pomegranates, figs, and almond trees abound; another feature peculiar to Seriphos at once caught the eye: every proprietor has his grave in his own field, built like a little shrine, and if he sells his field special provision in the articles of sale have to be made for the non-disturbance of ancestral bones. This custom is not carried on in any other of the Cyclades, and reminded us of the days when an Athenian possessor of land left directions in his will to be buried in his private ground (Demosthenes, ‘Euerg.’ p. 1159). Frequently, too, the graves, as at Seriphos now, were by the roadside. The family sepulchre of Isocrates was near the Cynosarges, that of Thucydides by the Melitic Gate.

We climbed up the steep ascent to the town on foot, as did the rest of the population who had come to see the steamer arrive: women carrying their babies tied to their backs with string; fishermen with their baskets full of fish, now in great request, for the ante-Christmas fast had just set in; and by our side our new host, Captain George, trotted, pointing out each object of interest we passed. ‘This is the tomb of So-and-so, who died of so-and-so, and was the father of Maria So-and-so. This is the Church of St. Isidoros, where is a spring of warm water, reckoned excellent for the health, where a yearly panegyris (a festival) is held; and it was built by Sophia Makri, who was asleep and dreamt she was caught by her neck by St. Isidoros and commanded to go and build a church on this spot. When she awoke she had it built. Come in and have a glass of water; there is iron in it.’ So Captain George rambled on. I followed him in, drank some exquisite water, and recognised why it was dedicated to St. Isidoros, because sídiros ^gr, iron (according to modern pronunciation) suggested one of those ecclesiastical puns in which the Eastern Church loves to indulge.

Captain George here paused awhile to rest, and as I scrutinised our new acquaintance I felt I did not like him; he was a little thick-set man with an evil countenance, but sparkling with intelligence. Afterwards I learnt that he was well known in these seas as an expert smuggler, who would have been a pirate if he had lived fifty years ago. He had just got a nice new caïque painted green, and his plan was to offer us hospitality and to persuade us to take his boat at a price which would pay him better than smuggling.

We went on a little further.

‘Here is the Church of St. Tryphon,’ said Captain George, ‘the protector of agriculture.’ Not knowing much about St. Tryphon I questioned further, and found that he is in great repute here. On his day no one works or cleans out his house, because they think he has power over rats and all animals hurtful to agriculture, and on St. Tryphon’s Day ^dnote the Church has offices and prayers for the special supplication of this saint to ward off blight. St. Tryphon must, I thought, be a descendant of Apollo Smintheus, who was worshipped in the neighbouring isle of Keos.

Captain George’s house was a new one, at the lower end of the town, really quite a mansion for the islands. You enter the one sitting room with the divan, and off this are several little boxes, about eight feet square, entered by gates four feet high, the upper part being open: these are bedrooms. Ours had a thin gauze blind across the opening, which afforded us only a sorry attempt at seclusion.

Captain George’s wife was a chattel, and a very uninteresting piece of furniture, too; for he hounded the poor thing about until she looked like a scared mongrel. She waited upon us at meals and never took a part in them. She cooked, she swept, and she slaved whilst the captain made merry with his guests. The wife of a lower class Greek is a pitiable object, much as she was in Hesiod’s time, who, in his ‘Works and Days,’ shows us a wife’s condition then, and considered it the worst possible feature of a bad wife to wish to sit at meals with her lord and master. Hesiod’s advice to a young man starting in life would apply to a Greek of to-day : ‘You must start with a house, a wife, an ox, and a plough.’ Mrs. Ibelligeka would come up to Hesiod’s standard.

After the usual slight refreshments of coffee, jam, and mastic, we were joined by the demarch, a priest, and a schoolmaster, and taken forth to see the town. Of all towns in the Greek Islands, Seriphos will remain fixed in my mind as the most filthy. The main street is a sewer into which all the offal is thrown; and it is tenanted by countless pigs — for each householder has liberty to keep three. What the nuisance must have been when the number was unlimited I cannot think. Furthermore this street is like a ladder of rocks, and the pigs in their movements are as nimble as goats, most dangerous to the peace of mind of the pedestrian. Sometimes the street is not two feet wide, sometimes it is expanded to six feet, but always an inch deep in mire, often more.

In one of these narrow streets on the Tuesday after Easter the maidens of Seriphos play their favourite game of the swing (kouniá ^gr ). They hang a rope from one wall to the other, put some clothes on it, and swing, singing and swinging, one after the other. Aware of this the young men try to pass by, and are called upon for a toll of one penny each, a song, and a swing. The words they generally use are as follows:— ‘The gold is swung, the silver is swung, and swung, too, is my love with the golden hair;’ to which the maiden replies, ‘Who is it that swings me that I may gild him with my favour, that I may work him a fez all covered with pearls?’ Then, having paid his penny, he is permitted to pass, and another comes on and does likewise.

The houses opening on to this street were mere black-holes, where sat families shivering round charcoal fires on which pots full of ling were boiling for the evening meal. They seemed hospitably inclined towards us, for one woman ran out with a branch of myrtle and some basil, which she handed me for good luck; rather a nuisance, indeed, for the ascent demanded all one’s care. The summit of the hill, and the castle crowning it, were at length reached, and here the schoolmaster showed us a niche in which, he said, once stood a statue of a king of Seriphos, which the English had taken away. I asked for further particulars about this, to me, unknown royal house of Seriphos, but the schoolmaster’s genius for invention would lead him no further. He had not the face to tell me that it was a statue of King Polydectes. Over the gateway to the castle was a coat of arms, and 1433 over it; so I felt convinced that the schoolmaster alluded to a statue of one of the Latin dukes who ruled in Seriphos. But, though the English have been great robbers in Greece in their day, I question if anyone ever burdened himself with the statue of a Crispi or a Sommaripa.

The Church of St. Athanasius was worth seeing, being round with two little apses. It has a lovely iconostasis, commonly called tempelon, or screen, before the sanctuary, carved in wood, with vine tendrils, and festoons, and niches for twenty eikons, or sacred pictures, along the top. The rock on which the town is built goes down straight on the northern side, and is covered with a greenish lichen, which contrasts curiously with the white houses wedged against it.

The antiquities left in Seriphos do not point to any very great artistic merit in the days of old; a few headless statues here and there, fragments of pillars, and one solitary sculpture of a symposium over a doorway were all the traces that we could see of the city where once dwelt the ‘silent frogs.’

Next morning we started on an expedition with the object of visiting a convent dedicated to the Archangel Michael and a remote village called Galene (peace): Captain George was to be our guide. He had nothing to do, he said, and if we would pay for a mule for him nothing would give him greater pleasure than to do the honours of his island. There is much that is pretty in the steep slopes of Seriphos, though the island, except near the town, is bare; for at this time of year the vineyards were brown, and the long, straggling vines, which in the islands are trained along the ground to get what protection they can from the summer winds, do not in winter present a very lovely appearance. Seriphos is noted for its wine, and it is one of the chief industries of the place. Each vineyard has its wine-press in it (patetírion ^gr): these are just whitewashed tanks out of which the juice of the grapes when trampled on flows into a lower tank; all round were thrown the remnants of stalks and skins from the late vintage and the hard matter which had been extracted from the compressed pulp.

After extracting the juice in this manner they boil it for a month before it is considered fit to drink; and the day of St. Minas, in November ^dnote, is considered as the proper one on which to stop boiling the wine (apabrázo ^gr); and on this day all the well-known wine-tasters of the place repair to the vats and expect a present of wine straight out of them as an incentive to approve.

In July, when the first fruits of the vintage are supposed to be ready, they throw a bunch of grapes into their houses, thinking thereby to rid them of rats and other vermin, saying, as they do so, ‘The black grape will sicken, the black grape will poison. Out with you, fleas and rats!’ And on August 6, when the vintage begins, the Church has special offices and prayers for the success of the same.

In connection with the planting of vineyards they have quite a Bacchic festival in Seriphos. On one of the many feast-days of the Virgin after matins are over the man who desires to plant a new vineyard calls together fifty or more men, according to the size of the field which he intends to plant. To each man he hands a spade, and then he fills skins with wine, and has joints of goat’s flesh, which have been roasted for the occasion, brought out, and the company start off in high glee, singing as they go and preceded by a standard-bearer holding a white banner. During their interval of rest they consume the goats and the wine, and then work till the vineyard is planted — for it must all be done in one day — and in the evening they return home, with their spades, their hoes, and the wine-skins empty, somewhat the merrier for having imbibed the contents. At a spot called Panagia, before the Virgin’s Church, the white standard is set up, and the Seriphiotes enjoy a dance that evening in which the vineyard-planters join.

A somewhat similar co-operation is customary in Seriphos when the first rains of October fall. All the husbandmen meet together to assist one another at the forges in preparing their implements of husbandry for the coming season. They come with their spades, their ploughs, and their mattocks, and they come prepared, too, to have a festive gathering; and every evening until the work is done they have drinking parties, regular symposia, now called ta phteiasímata ^gr.

Another custom connected with husbandry still in vogue in Seriphos is that on September 14, the Day of the Cross. Farmers take a little of the grain which is about shortly to be sown and a rose with them to church. These things are blessed in the liturgy. The rose is broken up and scattered about in the first field which is sown that year as a sure emblem of abundance and success. This is a trace of the ancient proirósiai ^gr, or sacrifices before the sowing of seed, to ensure a productive harvest.

Captain George was most communicative about the ways of his country, as were also the muleteers who accompanied us, and supplied any knowledge in which Captain George was wanting. One of them, a stalwart fellow with grizzled hair, suddenly put me a question which puzzled me not a little.

‘Did you ever hear of the transfiguration basket, sir?’

The man was difficult to understand, the Seriphiote dialect being full of obscure words; and not until Captain George had come to my assistance did I comprehend what was meant. And he put it as follows into intelligible Greek for my benefit.

‘On the day of our Saviour’s transfiguration all faithful Seriphiotes believe that a basket is let down from heaven, full of all manner of good things, for the man who is lucky enough to be the first to see it; but he must be very quick in asking for what he wants, for the basket is immediately drawn up again, and the gift is not forthcoming.’

As a confirmation of this story, the muleteer went on to relate how a shepherd had once seen this basket descending, and, thinking hurriedly in his mind that money would be the best thing to have, he cried out in all haste, ‘Two thousand (chília ^gr),’ and was going to add florins, when two jars, called here cheilia ^gr, from cheilios ^gr, a brim, fell from the basket at his feet.

This story ought to be a warning to the Greeks generally to alter their pronunciation; for when nearly all the vowels and diphthongs are pronounced like e, that is to say, ι, η, ει, οι, υ, other people are puzzled who are less hurried visitors than the heavenly basket.

By this time we were nearing the convent of the archangel. From a distance it looked like a fortress; around it is a high wall with battlements, and a terrace inside, from which in those old troublous times the monks could fight. Beneath the terrace are the cells, and in the centre of the square is the church. There are four towers at each end of the walls, one of which is now converted into a dovecote. The entrance is exceedingly low, only about four feet high, at the top of a flight of steps, which have been added since the days of pirates. Formerly it was approached only by a wooden staircase, which could be drawn up. In the door is a most extraordinary bolt and wooden key, being a long bit of jagged wood, which is shoved into the bolt, and fits itself with a jerk into the required place; but it requires practice to work these locks. The ceiling of the porch was all crisscross reed-work, like the houses, and from it were hung the scales, with which they weighed the produce of the fields let out to husbandmen.

The church is old and interesting, being round and vaulted, evidently much earlier than the date over the door, 1447, which was of marble, and with rudely carved grape tendrils, with leaves painted green, stalks painted brown, and the background yellow, climbing up the jambs, above which were two birds on two poplars and an inscription describing the might of the archangel.

Inside the church was beautifully frescoed, having round it a frieze of saints, full length, over a dado of drapery. The vaulted roof was covered with biblical scenes, and on the entrance wall was the usual terrible fresco of St. Michael, and on the left those awful representations of hell so common in Byzantine churches. There is the fiery river with its inscription on a scroll (o pýrinos potamós ^gr); kings, bishops, &c. are engulfed in a dragon’s mouth; the proud man, labelled ο períthanos ^gr, is hung by his feet from a tree; the evil speaker (o katalalítis ^gr) is dragged by his feet, whilst a demon follows him, shoving a spear down his throat; the glutton is being slapped by two demons at the same time on the stomach and on the mouth; the drunkard is head downwards to let the wine run out; those who cannot get up for early mass on Sundays are lying in bed like dead men, with elegant coverlets over them; and the tortures of the woman who has nourished a foreigner are horrible to behold: a fitting subject for contemplation in these islands, from whence the female population has gone, at one time or another, to the Turkish towns as servants or to fill the harems.

The poor old monk who accompanied us was in a great state of grief that his superior was absent; however we satisfied him by promising to look in again on our return from Galene. He was such a queer old wretch, with bare legs, baggy blue trousers, blue cotton jacket lined with filthy fur, and a black cap on his head, by which alone we knew him to be a monk. His poor head was all on one side, and surrounded by a large crop of unkempt grizzled hair. Most of these monks are little above peasants; they go into the monasteries, instead of the workhouse, when too old and infirm to work, and take a vow to observe celibacy and let their hair grow. In Greece, as with us, the proverb is common, ‘When the devil grows old he becomes a monk.’ They till the ground belonging to the monastery and do all the menial offices, carrying out thereby the advice of an Egyptian father who taught that a labouring monk was tempted but by one devil, whilst an idle one was exposed to the devastation of a legion.