FACTS ABOUT GREECE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 December 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

FACTS ABOUT GREECE.

SOME PECULIAR CUSTOMS. Since the Balkan war the Greek army has made enormous strides, both in strength and organisation. The full peace strength is 300,000 men. This by no means represents the whole anned strength of Greece, for there are 200,000 men of military age who will be available tp replace wostage. The Greeks are peculiarly sensitive fbout 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 of these two forms of Greek there is keen discussion and rivalry.

The extreme politeness agd 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 a present.

In Greece both men and women wear a wedding-ring.

In Corfu, as soon as a peasant girl is betrothed, she wears a vast mass of fale hair padded out at the side of her face and braided with stripn 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 reache/ the bridegroom's house after the wedding ceremony she smears honey in the centre of the door; then, standing hack ft 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 as a token of his long journey, but they are always removed before burial. Drunkenness is an uncommon vice in Greece. Is food, t(jo, they are very abstemious. Some peasants eat meat only twice or thrice a year; but there is much less poverty among them than in