Condemi; if I
liked, he would go through the local archives and prepare me a list of
all such surnames as appeared to him to be non-Italian; we could thus
obtain some idea of the percentage of Greek families still living here.
My best thanks to the good Signor!
After some further liquid refreshment, a youthful native volunteered to
guide me by short cuts to the remote railway station. We stepped
blithely into the twilight, and during the long descent I discoursed
with him, in fluent Byzantine Greek, of the affairs of his village.
It is my theory that among a populace of this kind the words relative to
agricultural pursuits will be those which are least likely to suffer
change with lapse of years, or to be replaced by others.
Acting on this principle, I put him through a catechism on the subject
as soon as we reached our destination, and was surprised at the relative
scarcity of Italian terms - barely 25 per cent I should say. Needless to
add, I omitted to note them down. Such as it is, be that my contribution
to the literature of these sporadic islets of mediaeval Hellenism, whose
outstanding features are being gnawed away by the waves of military
conscription, governmental schooling, and emigration.
