FACTS ABOUT GREECE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIII, Issue 71, 23 November 1915, Page 7

FACTS ABOUT GREECE.

SOME PECULIAR CUSTOMS. / ——- Since the Balkan War the Greek army has mad e enormous strides, both in strength and organisation. The full peace strength is 300,000 men. This by no means represents the whole armed strength of Greece, for there are 200,000 men of military ago who will be available to replace wastage. . . The Greeks are .peculiarly sensitive about their language. There are two forms of Greek spoken—the pure language, used by the newspapers and spoken by the educated class, and the popular or "vulgar" language, which contains a number of Italian and Turkish words. Between the partisans o fthese two forms of Greek there is keen discussion and rivalry. The extreme politeness and hospitality of the Greeks is one of their chief characteristics. Tradespeople whose business it is to sell liquor often insist on "treating" the foreigner free ' of cost, or at least give him something extra as at present. In Greece both men and women wear a wedding-ring. In Corfu, as soon as a peasant girl i s betrothed, she wears a vast mass of false hair padded out at the side of her face and braided with strips of red material. The hair thus used is worn all through married life, and goes down from generation to generation. A quaint custom characterises the marriage ceremony of the peasant. When the bride reaches the bridegrooms's house after the wedding ceremony she smears honey in the centre of the door; 'then, standing hack a little, aims a pomegranate at the spot until' she breaks it. If the seeds do not stick to the* door it is considered unlucky. Greek funerals strike Europeans as uncanny, owing to the usual practice of carrying a dead person through the ' streets with the face uncovered. The boots of the dead are always put on in token of his long journey, but they are removed before burial. Drunkenness is an uncommon vice in Greece. In food, too, thoy are very abstemious. Some peasants eat meat only twice or thrice a year; but there is much less poverty among them than in Italy.