Vows and offerings which would in former days have been made to

Aphrodite are now made either to suitable saints who have taken her

place, such as S. Catharine[265], or to the Fates (Μοίραις), who

were from of old associated with her. According to a fragment of

Epimenides[266], ‘golden Aphrodite and the deathless Fates’ were

daughters of Cronos and Euonyme. Their sisterly relation was recognised

also in cult. Near the Ilissus once stood a temple containing an old

wooden statue (ξόανον) of Heavenly Aphrodite with an inscription naming

her ‘eldest of the Fates’ (πρεσβυτέρα τῶν Μοιρῶν)[267]. So venerable a

shrine must in old time have witnessed many a petition for success in

love; and when we bear in mind the ancient inscription of the statue,

it is interesting to find that among the girls of Athens until recent

times the custom prevailed of visiting the so-called ‘hollow hill[268]’

(τρύπιο βουνό) in the immediate neighbourhood to offer to the Fates

cakes with honey and salt and to consult them as to their destined

husbands[269].

Sacred also to Aphrodite in old days was a cave in the neighbourhood

of Naupactus, frequented particularly by widows anxious to be

remarried[270]. At the present day a cave at the foot of Mt Rigani,

which may probably be identified as the old sanctuary, is the spot to

which girls repair in order to consult the Fates on the all-absorbing

question[271].

Thus it seems that ‘golden Aphrodite’ has disappeared from the old

sisterly group of deities, and that ‘the deathless Fates’ alone remain

to receive prayers and to grant boons which once fell within the

province rather of Aphrodite. To the Fates we must now turn.

§ 8. THE FATES.

The custom of taking or sending offerings to a cave haunted by the

Fates, of which we have just seen two examples, is widely extended

among the women of Greece. In Athens, besides the ‘hollow hill,’ two

or three of the old rock-dwellings round about the Hill of the Muses

were formerly a common resort for the same purpose, and the practice

though rarer now is not yet extinct[272]. Among the best-known of these

resorts is the so-called Prison of Socrates. Dodwell, in his account

of his travels in Greece at the beginning of last century, states that

he found there ‘in the inner chamber, a small feast consisting of a

cup of honey and white almonds, a cake on a little napkin, and a vase

of aromatic herbs burning and exhaling an agreeable perfume[273]’; and

the observance of the custom is known to have continued in that place

down to recent years[274]. The same practice, I was informed at Sparta,

is known at the present day to the peasant-women of the surrounding

plain, who will undertake even a long and wearisome journey to lay a

honey-cake in a certain cave on one of the eastern spurs of Taÿgetus.

Other places in which to my own knowledge the custom still continues

are Agrinion in Aetolia and neighbouring districts, the villages of Mt

Pelion in Thessaly, and the island of Scyros; and from the testimony

of many other observers I conclude that it is, or was till recently,

universal in Greek lands.

Nor does there seem to be much variety in the subjects on which the

peasant-women consult the Fates: with the girls matrimony, with the

married women maternity, is the perpetually recurring theme. Everywhere

also honey in some form is an essential part of the offering by which

the Fates’ favour is to be won. The acceptance of this offering, and

therefore also the success of the prayers which accompany it, are

occasionally, as in the cave near Sparta which I have mentioned,

inferred from omens provided by the dripping of water from the roof of

the cave; but more usually the realisation of the conjugal aspirations

is not assured, unless a second visit to the sanctuary, three days or a

month later, proves that the sweetmeats have been accepted by the Fates

and are gone. This, I am told, occurs with some frequency. Dodwell

mentions that his donkey ate some[275]; and considering the character

of the offerings--cakes and honey for the most part, for only in the

‘hollow hill’ at Athens was salt added thereto--it is not surprising

if the Fates find many willing proxies, human and canine as well as

asinine.

At the moment when these delicacies are proffered, an invocation is

recited. This may take the form of a metrical line,

Μοίραις μου, μοιράνετέ με, καὶ καλὸ φαγὶ σας φέρνω,

‘Kind Fates, ordain my fate, for I bring you good fare,’

or may be a simple prose formulary,

Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν καὶ τῆς τάδε ἡ Μοῖρα, κοπιάστε νὰ φᾶτε καὶ νὰ

ξαναμοιράνετε τὴν τάδε νἄχῃ καλὴ μοῖρα[276],

‘Fates above all Fates, and Fate of N., come ye, I pray, and eat, and

ordain anew the fate of N., that she may have a good fate.’

Various other versions are also on record, one of which will be

considered later; but these two examples illustrate sufficiently for

the present the simple Homeric tenour of such prayers.

The words which I have quoted, it must be admitted, give clear

expression to the hope that the Fates may revise the decrees which they

have already pronounced on the fortunes of the suppliant. Nevertheless

that such a hope should be fulfilled is contrary to the general beliefs

of the people. The Fates, they know, are inexorable so far as concerns

the changing of any of their purposes once set; for, as their proverb

runs, ὅτι γράφουν ᾑ Μοίραις, δὲν ξεγράφουν, ‘what the Fates write,

that they make not unwritten[277].’ They are not, it would appear,

subordinate, as Charon is sometimes deemed to be, even to the supreme

God; I can find no song or story that would so present them. They are

absolute and irresponsible in the fashioning of human destiny. But the

Greek peasants are not the first who have at the same time believed

both in predestination and in the efficacy of prayer. Perhaps all

unconsciously they reconcile the ideas as did Aeschylus of old:

τὸ μόρσιμον μένει πάλαι,

εὐχομένοις δ’ ἂν ἔλθοι[278],

‘Destiny hath long been abiding its time, but in answer to prayer may

come.’

But even without any intuition of so hard a doctrine the peasant-women

may justify their prayers and offerings by the hope that, though the

Fates will detract nothing from the fulfilment of whatsoever they have

spoken or written, they may be willing to add thereto such supplement

as shall modify in large measure the issue. For the Fates are as Greek

in character as their worshippers, and stories are not wanting to

illustrate the shifts to which they have stooped in order practically

to invalidate without formally cancelling their whilom purpose.

‘Once upon a time a poor woman gave birth to a daughter, and on the

third night after the birth the Fates came to ordain the child’s lot.

As they entered the cottage they saw prepared for them a table with

a clean cloth and all manner of sweetmeats thereon. So when they had

partaken thereof and were content, they were kindly disposed toward the

child. And the first Fate gave to her long life, and the second beauty,

and the third chastity. But as they went forth from the cottage, the

first of them tripped against the threshold, and turning in wrath

towards the infant pronounced that she should be always an idler.

Now when she was grown up, she was so beautiful that the king’s son

would have her to wife. As the wedding-day drew near, her mother and

her friends chided her because she delayed to make her wedding dress;

but she was idle and heeded not. Soon came the eve of the wedding, and

she wept because the prince would learn of her idleness and refuse to

take her to wife. Now the Fates loved her, and saw her tears and pitied

her. Therefore they came suddenly before her, and asked why she wept;

and she told them all. Then sat they down there and spun and weaved and

embroidered all that night, and in the morning they arrayed her in a

bridal dress decked with gold and pearls such as had never been seen.

Presently came the prince, and there was much feasting and dancing, and

she was far the most beautiful of all the company. And because he saw

her lovely dress and knew how much toil it must have cost her to array

herself thus for him, he granted her the favour of doing no more work

all her days[279].’

This story, besides illustrating well the finality of every word

pronounced by the Fates and the means which they may employ to mitigate

their own severity, is typical too of the ideas generally accepted

concerning the Fates. Their number is three[280], and they are seen

in the shape of old women, one of whom at least is always engaged

in spinning. Of the remaining two, one is sometimes seen bearing a

book wherein to record in writing the decrees which the three jointly

utter, while the other carries a pair of scissors wherewith to cut the

thread of life at the appointed time; or again sometimes these two

also are spinning, one of them carrying a basket of wool or a distaff

and the other fashioning the thread. This association of the Fates

with spinning operations is commemorated in certain popular phrases by

the comparison of man’s life to a thread. ‘His thread is cut’ or ‘is

finished’ (κόπηκε or σώθηκε ἡ κλωστή του) is a familiar euphemism for

‘he is dead’: and again, with the same ultimate meaning but a somewhat

different metaphor, the people of Arachova use the phrase μαζώθηκε τὸ

κουβάρ’ του[281], ‘his spindle is wound full,’--an expression which

seems to imply the idea that the Fates apportion to each man at birth a

mass of rough wool from which they go on spinning day by day till the

thread of life is completed.

According to Fauriel[282], a reminiscence of the Fates is also to be

found in a personification of the plague (ἡ πανοῦκλα), which in the

tradition of some districts is not represented as a single demon but

has been multiplied into a trio of terrible women who pass through

the towns and devastate them, one of them carrying a roll on which to

write the names of the victims, another a pair of scissors wherewith

to cut them off from the living, and the third a broom with which to

sweep them away. He assigns however no reason for identifying the

deadly trio with the Fates, and it is more natural, if any link with

antiquity here exists, to connect them with the Erinyes[283] or other

similar deities. In fact their resemblance to the Fates, save for some

superficial details, is small. The Fates, though inexorable when once

their decree is pronounced, are never wantonly cruel. Their displeasure

may indeed be aroused by neglect, as we shall shortly see, to such an

extent that they will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.

But, when men treat them with the consideration and the reverence due

to deities, they are unfailingly kindly, and deserve the title by which

they are sometimes known, ᾑ καλοκυράδες, ‘the good ladies.’ For this

name is not an euphemism concealing dread and hatred, but an expression

of genuine reverence; such at any rate is my judgement, based on many

conversations with the common-folk in all parts of Greece--for on this

topic for some reason there is far less reticence than on many others.

And indeed if the character of the Fates were believed to be cruel,

their aspect also would be represented as grim and menacing; whereas

they are actually pourtrayed as deserving almost of pity rather than

awe by reason of their age and their infirmity.

The occasion on which the Fates have most often been seen by human eyes

and on which, even though invisible, they never fail to be present,

is the third night (or as some say the fifth night[284]) after the

birth of a child. Provision for their arrival is then scrupulously

made. The dog is chained up. Any obstacles over which the visitors

might trip in the darkness are removed. The house-door is left open

or at any rate unlatched. Inside a light is kept burning, and in the

middle of the room is set a low table with three cushions or low stools

placed round it--religious conservatism apparently forbidding the use

of so modern an invention as chairs, for at the lying-in-state before

a funeral also cushions or low stools are provided for the mourners.

On the table are set out such dainties as the Fates love, including

always honey; in Athens formerly the essentials were a dish of honey,

three white almonds, a loaf of bread, and a glass of water[285]; and

ready to hand, as presents from which the goddesses may choose what

they will, may be laid all the most costly treasures of the family,

such as jewellery and even money, in token that nothing has been spared

to give them welcome. These preparations made, their visit is awaited

in solemn silence; for none must speak when the Fates draw near. Most

often they are neither seen nor heard; but sometimes, it is said, a

wakeful mother has seen their forms as they bent over her child and

wrote their decrees on its brow--for which reason moles and other marks

on the forehead or the nose are in some places called γραψίματα τῶν

Μοιρῶν[286], ‘writings of the Fates’; sometimes she has heard the low

sound of their voices as they consulted together over the future of

the child; nay more, she has even caught and understood their speech;

yet even so her foreknowledge of the infant’s fate is unavailing; she

may be aware of the dangers which await its ripening years, but though

forewarned she is powerless to forearm; against destiny once pronounced

all weapons, all wiles, are futile.

Neglect of any of the due preparations for the visit of the Fates may

excite their wrath and cause them to decree an evil lot for the child.

This idea is the _motif_ of many fables current in Greece. A typical

example is furnished by the following extract from a popular poem in

which a man whose life has brought him nothing but misery sees in a

vision one of the Fates and appeals to her thus:

‘I beg and pray of thee, O Fate, to tell me now, my lady,

Then when my mother brought me forth, what passèd at my bearing?’

And she makes answer:

‘Then when thy mother brought thee forth, ’twas deep and bitter winter,

Eleven days o’ the year had run when anguish came upon her.

Thereon[287] I robed me and did on this raiment that thou seëst,

And had it in my heart to cry “Long life to thee and riches.”

Ah, but the night was deep and dark, yea wrappèd thick in darkness,

And hail and snow were driving hard, and angry rain was lashing;

From mire to mud, from mud to mire, so lay my road before me,

And as I went,--a murrain on’t,--against your well I stumbled;

Nay, sirrah, an thou believest not, scan well the scars I carry.

Two cursed hounds ye had withal, hounds from the Lombard country,

And fierce upon me sprang the twain, and fierce as wolves their baying.

Then cursèd I thee full bitterly, a curse of very venom,

That no bright day should ever cheer thy miserable body,

That thou shouldst burn, that thou shouldst burn, and have no hope of riddance,

That joy should ever ’scape thy clasp, and sorrow dog thy goings,

That thine own kin should slander thee and thy friends rail upon thee,

Nor strangers nor thy countrymen know aught of love toward thee.

Yet, hapless man, not thine the sin; thy parents’ was the sinning,

That chainèd not those hounds right fast to a corner of their dwelling;

Well is it said by men of old, well bruit they loud the saying,

“The fathers eat of acid things, and the bairns’ teeth fall aching.”

Have patience then, O hapless man, a year or twain of patience,

And there shall come a happy day when all thy woes shall vanish;

For all thy bitterness of soul thou shalt find consolation,

Thy dreams of beauty and of wealth thou shalt at last encompass[288].’

The Fates, it has been already said, are three in number; why so, it

seems impossible to determine. It may be that the functions discharged

by them fell readily into a three-fold division; thus in the district

of Zagorion in Epirus, one Fate ‘spins the thread’ (κλώθει τὸ γνέμα)

which determines the length of life, the second apportions good

fortune, and the third bad[289]. Or again, the division may have been

made in such a way that one Fate should preside over each of the

three great events of human experience, birth, marriage, and death.

The term ‘fate’ (μοῖρα)[290] is often used by women as a synonym for

marriage (γάμος)--in curious contrast with the man’s more optimistic

description of his wedding as χαρά, ‘joy’; and a Greek proverb, used of

a very ignorant man, δὲν ξέρει τὰ τρία κακὰ τῆς Μοίρας του, ‘he does

not know the three evils of his Fate,’ to wit birth, marriage, and

death, carries the connexion of fate with these three events a little

further. But such distributions of functions are probably posterior to

the choice of the number. Three was always a sacred number, and the

ancients delighted in trinities of goddesses[291].

But besides the three great Fates we must recognise also in modern

Greece the existence of lesser Fates, attached each to a single human

life. This is a slight extension of the main belief, and consists

really in the personification of the objective fate which the three

great Fates decree. Just as each man is believed to have his good

guardian-angel and, by antithesis but with less biblical warranty, his

bad angel, so too he is accompanied by his own personal Fate. But these

lesser Fates are only faint replicas of the great trinity, and I doubt

whether they are believed to have any independent power of their own;

they would seem to be mere ministers who carry out the original decrees

of the three supreme Fates.

Often in the popular songs it is impossible to tell whether it is the

lesser personal Fate or one of the great trio who is addressed. For in

such lines as,

Παρακαλῶ σε, Μοῖρα μου, νὰ μή με ξενιτέψῃς,

Κι’ ἂν λάχῃ καὶ ξενιτευτῶ, θάνατο μή μου δώσῃς[292],

‘I pray thee, good Fate, send me not to a strange land, but if it be

my lot to be sent, let me not die there,’

the form of address Μοῖρα μου (literally ‘my Fate’) implies no personal

possession, but is the same as that employed in praying to God or the

Virgin, Θεέ μου, Παναγία μου. But in definite forms of incantation,

composed for recitation along with propitiatory offerings, the great

Fates and the lesser Fate of the individual suppliant are coupled in a

way which shows the difference in importance between them. The former

are called ‘the Fates over all Fates’ (ἡ Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν), as in the

plain prose formulary quoted above; the latter is merely the Fate of

this or that person.

Whether these inferior Fates were known also in the classical period

is a question which I am unable to answer; but that the belief in them

is certainly of no recent growth is proved by an incantation more

elaborate than those given above and on internal evidence very old:--

’π’ τὸν Ὄλυμπον, τὸν κόλυμβον,

τὰ τρία ἄκρα τοὐρανοῦ,

ὁποῦ ᾑ Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν

καὶ ἡ ’δική μου Μοῖρα,

ἂς ἀκούσῃ καὶ ἂς ἔλθῃ[293].

‘From Olympus, even from the summit, from the three heights of heaven,

where dwell the Fates of all Fates and my own Fate, may she hearken

and come.’

The version of the formula which I have given is only one out of

several which have been recorded from various parts of Greece[294],

and there can be no doubt that the original was a widely-esteemed

incantation. I have given the most intelligible; but the mere fact

that some of the others, through verbal corruption in the course

of tradition, have become almost meaningless, is strong proof of

the antiquity of the original. There are however two clear marks of

antiquity in the version before us. The mention of Olympus as the abode

of deities carries us back at once to the classical age; and the word

κόλυμβος in the sense of ‘summit’ is no less suggestive of a very early

date. The ancient word κόρυμβος, used in this sense by Aeschylus[295]

and by Herodotus[296], is obsolete now in the spoken language. But

κόλυμβος is evidently either a dialectic form of it (with the common

interchange of λ and ρ) or else a corrupt form, not understood by those

who continued to use it in this incantation, and assimilated, by way of

assonance, to Ὄλυμπος. Further one of the other versions gives the word

as κόρυβο[297], where the original ρ is retained but the μ lost before

β, which now universally has the sound of the English _v_. A comparison

of the two forms therefore establishes beyond question the fact that

the somewhat rare classical word κόρυμβος, in its known meaning of

‘summit,’ was the original form. Hence the incantation, containing both

a mention of Olympus as the seat of deities and an old classical word

long since disused, cannot but date from very early times. Possibly

therefore the belief in subordinate Fates, attached each to one human

being, was known to the common-folk of the classical age.

But, be this as it may, the popular conception of the great Trinity of

Fates has persisted unchanged for more than a score of centuries--and

who shall say for how many more? Here the literary tradition of

classical times was evidently faithful to popular traditions. The

number of the Fates is still the same as in Hesiod’s day[298]; they

are still depicted as old and infirm women, as they were by the poets

at any rate in antiquity, though in ancient art, for beauty’s sake,

they are apt to be figured as more youthful; it is still their task

‘to assign to mortal men at their birth,’ as Hesiod knew, ‘both good

and ill[299]’; the functions of Clotho who spun the thread of life, of

Lachesis who apportioned destiny, and of Atropos whom none might turn

from her purpose, are still the joint functions of the great Three; the

book, the spindle, and an instrument for cutting the thread of life are

still their attributes.

There is little new therefore to be learnt from the study of the

Fates in modern folk-lore. The lesson which it teaches rather is the

continuity of the present with the past. But there is one point to

which special attention may perhaps be directed--the belief that the

Fates invariably visit each child that is born in order to decree

its lot. I do not wish to engage in the controversy which has raged

round the identification of the figures in the east pediment of the

Parthenon; but those who would recognise among them the three Fates

may fairly draw a fresh argument from the strength of this popular

belief. It is only fitting that at the birth of Athena from the head

of Zeus the Fates should be present; for even Zeus himself, said

Aeschylus[300], might not escape their decree.

§ 9. THE NYMPHS.

Of all the supernatural beings who haunt the path and the imagination

of the modern Greek peasant by far the most common are the Nymphs

or ‘Nereids’ (Νεράϊδες). The name itself occurs in a multitude of

dialectic varieties[301], but its meaning is everywhere uniform, and

more comprehensive than that of the ancient word. It is no longer

confined to nymphs of the sea, but embraces also their kindred of

mountain, river, and woodland. There is no longer a Nereus, god of

the sea, to claim the Nereids as his daughters, denizens like himself

of the deep; and the connexion of their name with the modern word for

‘water’ (νερό) is not understanded of the common-folk. Hence there has

been nothing to restrain the extension of the term Νεράϊδα, and it has

entirely superseded, in this sense, the ancient νύμφη, which in modern

speech can only mean ‘a bride.’

The familiarity of the peasants with the Nereids is more intimate than

can be easily imagined by those who have merely travelled, it may

be, through the country but have no knowledge of the people in their

homes. The educated classes of course, and with them some of the less

communicative of the peasants, will deny all belief in such beings

and affect to deride as old wives’ fables the many stories concerning

them. But in truth the belief is one which even men of considerable

culture fail sometimes to eradicate from their own breasts. A paper

on the Nereids (the nucleus of the present chapter) was read by me in

Athens at an open meeting of the British School; and no sooner was it

ended than an Athenian gentleman whose name is well known in certain

learned circles throughout Europe rose hurriedly crossing himself and

disappeared without a word of leave-taking. As for the peasants, let

them deny or avow their belief, there is probably no nook or hamlet

in all Greece where the womenfolk at least do not scrupulously take

precautions against the thefts and the malice of the Nereids, while

many a man may still be found ready to recount in all good faith

stories of their beauty and passion and caprice. Nor is it a matter

of faith only; more than once I have been in villages where certain

Nereids were known by sight to several persons (so at least they

averred); and there was a wonderful agreement among the witnesses

in the description of their appearance and dress. I myself once had

a Nereid pointed out to me by my guide, and there certainly was the

semblance of a female figure draped in white and tall beyond human

stature flitting in the dusk between the gnarled and twisted boles

of an old olive-yard. What the apparition was, I had no leisure to

investigate; for my guide with many signs of the cross and muttered

invocations of the Virgin urged my mule to perilous haste along the

rough mountain-path. But had I inherited, as he, a belief in Nereids

together with a fertile gift of mendacity, I should doubtless have

corroborated the highly-coloured story which he told when we reached

the light and safety of the next village; and the ready acceptance of

the story by those who heard it proved to me that a personal encounter

with Nereids was really reckoned among the possible incidents of

every-day life.

The awe in which the Nereids are held is partially responsible, without

doubt, for the many adulatory by-names by which they are known. Now and

again indeed a peasant, when he is suffering from some imagined injury

at their hands, may so far speak his mind concerning them as to call

them ‘evil women’ (κακαὶς or ἄσχημαις γυναῖκες): but in general his

references are more diplomatic and conciliatory in tone. He adopts the

same attitude towards them as did his forefathers towards the Furies;

and, though the actual word ‘Eumenides’ is lost to his vocabulary,

the spirit of his address is unchanged. ‘The Ladies’ (ᾑ κυρᾶδες),

‘Our Maidens’ (τὰ κουρίτσι̯α μας), ‘Our good Queens’ (ᾑ καλαὶς

ἀρχόντισσαις), ‘The kind-hearted ones’ (ᾑ καλόκαρδαις), ‘The ladies

to whom we wish joy’ (ᾑ χαιράμεναις), or most commonly of all ‘Our

good Ladies’ (ᾑ καλοκυρᾶδες or καλλικυρᾶδες)[302],--such is the wonted

style of his adulation, in which the frequent use of the word κυρᾶδες

(the plural of κυρά, i.e. κυρία) is a heritage from his ancestors who

made dedications ‘to the lady nymphs’ (κυρίαις νύμφαις). Yet it may be

questioned whether these by-names are wholly euphemistic; for mingled

with the awe which the Nereids inspire there is certainly an element of

admiration and, I had almost said, of affection in the feelings of the

common-folk toward them.

The Nereids are conceived as women half-divine yet not immortal, always

young, always beautiful, capricious at best, and at their worst

cruel. Their presence is suspected everywhere; grim forest-depth and

laughing valley, babbling stream and wind-swept ridge, tree and cave

and pool, each may be their chosen haunt, the charmed scene of their

dance and song and godlike revelry. The old distinctions between the

nymphs according to their habitations still to some extent hold good;

there are nymphs of the sea and nymphs of the streams, tree-nymphs

and mountain-nymphs; but in characteristics these several classes

are alike, in grace, in frolic, in wantonness. Of all that is light

and mirthful they are the ideal; of all that is lovely the exquisite

embodiment; and their hearts beneath are ever swayed by fierce gusts of

love and of hate.

The beauty of the Nereids, the sweetness of their voices, and the grace

and litheness of their movements have given rise to many familiar

phrases which are eloquent of feelings other than awe in the people’s

minds. ‘She is fair as a Nereid’ (εἶνε ὤμορφη σὰ νεράϊδα), ‘she has

the eyes, the arms, the bosom of a Nereid’ (ἔχει μάτια, χέρια, βυζιὰ

νεράϊδας), ‘she sings, she dances, like a Nereid’ (τραγουδάει, χορεύει,

σὰ νεράϊδα),--such are the compliments time and again passed upon a

bride, whose white dress and ornaments of gold seem to complete the

resemblance. Possibly the twofold usage in antiquity of the word νύμφη

is responsible for a still surviving association of bridal dress with

the Nereids; it is at any rate to the peasants’ mind an incontestable

fact that white and gold are the colours chiefly affected by Nereids in

their dress[303].

Only in one particular is the beauty of the Nereids ever thought to

be marred; in some localities they are said to have the feet of goats

or of asses[304]; as for instance the three Nereids who are believed

to dance together without pause on the heights of Taÿgetus. But this

is a somewhat rare and local trait, and must have been transferred to

them, it would seem, from Pan and his attendant satyrs, with whom of

old they were wont to consort; in general they are held to be of beauty

unblemished.

Their accomplishments include, besides singing and dancing, the humbler

arts of the good housewife. ‘She cooks like a Nereid’ (μαγειρεύει

σὰ νεράϊδα) and ‘she does house-cleaning like a Nereid’ (παστρεύει

σὰν ἀνεράϊδα) are phrases of commendation[305] occasionally heard.

But chiefly do they excel in the art of spinning[306]; and so well

known is their dexterity therein that a delicate kind of creeper with

which trees are often festooned is known in the vulgar tongue under

the pretty name of νεραϊδογνέματα, ‘Nereid-spinnings.’ The attribute

indeed is natural and obvious; for the popular conception of the

nymphs is but an idealisation of the peasant-women, to whom, whether

sitting in the sunlight at their cottage-door or tending their sheep

and goats afield, the distaff is an ever constant companion. But, easy

though it is to account for the trait, some interest, if no great

measure of importance, attaches to its consonance with the ancient

characterisation of Nymphs. To the Nereids proper[307] a golden spindle

was specially assigned; and in the cave of the Naiads in Ithaca might

be seen, in Odysseus’ day, the kindred occupation of weaving, for

‘therein were great looms of stone whereon the nymphs wove sea-purple

robes, a wonder to behold[308].’

As might be expected of beings so divinely feminine, their relations

with men and with women are very different; in the one case there

is the possibility of love; in the other the certainty of spite. It

is necessary therefore to examine their attitude towards either sex

separately.

The marriage of men with Nereids not only forms the theme of many

folk-stories current in Greece, but in the more remote districts is

still regarded as a credible occurrence. Even at the present day the

traveller may hear of families in whose ancestry of more or less remote

date is numbered a Nereid. A Thessalian peasant whom I once met claimed

a Nereid-grandmother, and little as his looks warranted the assumption

of any grace or beauty in so near an ancestor--he happened to have a

squint--his claim appeared to be admitted by his fellow-villagers, and

a certain prestige attached to him. Hence the epithet ‘Nereid-born’

(νεραϊδογεννημένος or νεραϊδοκαμωμένος) frequently heard in amatory

distichs[309] may formerly have been not merely an exaggerated

compliment to the lady’s beauty, but a recognition of high birth

calculated to conciliate the future mother-in-law.

Nor is it men only whose susceptibilities are stirred by the beauty of

the Nereids; even animals may fall under their spell. A shepherd of

Scopelos told me that in the neighbouring island of Ioura, which he

frequented with his flocks for pasturage, he once tamed a wild goat,

which after a time began to behave very oddly. All night long it would

remain with the rest of his flock, but in the daytime it persistently

strayed away from the pasture to the neighbourhood of a Nereid-haunted

cave on the bare and rocky hillside, and from want of food became very

thin. The goat, he believed, was enamoured of a Nereid and pining away

from unrequited love.

But it is from the old folk-stories rather than from the records of

contemporary or recent experience that the character of the Nereids

as lovers or wives is best learnt. And herein they are not models of

womanhood; passion indeed they feel and inspire; they suffer, they

even seek the caresses of the young and brave; but true wives they

will not long remain. Constancy and care are not for them; the longing

for freedom and the breezes of heaven, the memory of rapid tuneful

dance, are hot within them; they leave the men whose strength and

valour snared their hearts, they forsake their homes and children,

and on the wings of the wind are gone, seeking again their etherial

unwearied fellows. Yet they do not altogether forget their children;

for motherhood is presently more to them than mirth; ever and anon

they steal back to visit their homes and bless their children with the

gifts of beauty and wealth which their touch can bestow, and even stay

to mend their husbands’ clothes and clean the house, vanishing again

however before the man’s return. Only in one case have I heard of a

nymph’s continued intimacy with a man throughout his life, and that

strangely enough not in a folk-story but in recent experience. Their

relations, it must be acknowledged, were illicit, for he had a human

wife and family; but it was commonly reported that his rise from penury

to affluence and the mayoralty of his native village was the work of a

Nereid in a cave near by, who of her love for him enriched the produce

of his land and shielded his flocks from pestilence.

In the popular stories which deal with the marriages of Nereids, the

bridal fashion of their dress, which has already been noticed, is often

an essential feature of the plot. In one tale it is said explicitly

that the supernatural quality of the Nereids lies not in their persons

but in their raiment[310]; and for this reason a prince, smitten with

love of the youngest of three sister Nereids but knowing not how to win

her, is counselled by a wise woman, to whom he confides his perplexity,

to lie in wait when they go to bathe in their accustomed pool and to

steal the clothes of his _inamorata_, who would then follow him to

recover her loss and so be in his power to take to wife. But there is

greater delicacy and, as we shall see, more certain antiquity also

in the commoner version of the episode, in which a kerchief alone is

possessed of the magic powers ascribed above to the whole dress. And in

this detail of costume the resemblance of bride and Nereid still holds

good; for no wedding-dress would be complete without a kerchief either

wrapped about the bride’s head or pinned upon her breast or carried in

her hand to form a link with her neighbour in the chain of dancers[311].

Of the stories which have for their _motif_ the theft of such a

kerchief from a Nereid[312] the following Messenian tale is a good

example.

‘Once upon a time there was a young shepherd who played the pipes

so beautifully that the Nereids one night carried him off to the

threshing-floor where they danced and bade him play to them. At first

he was much afraid and thought that some evil would overtake him from

being in their company and speaking with them. But gradually, as he

grew accustomed to his strange surroundings and the Nereids showed

themselves kind to him and grateful for his piping, he took courage

again and night after night made his way to the spot which they haunted

and made music till cock-crow.

Now it so happened that one of the Nereids was beautiful beyond the

rest, and the shepherd loved her and determined to make her his wife.

But inasmuch as the Nereids danced all night long without pause while

he piped, and at dawn vanished to be seen no more until the next

night’s dance began, he knew not what to do.

So at last he went to an old woman and told her his trouble, and she

said to him, “Go again to-night and play till dawn is near; then before

the cock crows[313], make a dash and seize the kerchief in the Nereid’s

hand, and hold it fast. And though she change into terrible shapes, be

not afraid; only hold fast until she take again her proper form; then

must she do as thou wilt.”

The young man therefore went again that night and played till close on

dawn. Then as the Nereid passed close beside him, leading the dance,

he sprang upon her and grasped the kerchief. And straightway the cock

crew, and the other Nereids fled; but she whose kerchief he had seized

could not go, but at once began to transform herself into horrible

shapes in hope to frighten the shepherd and make him loose his hold.

First she became a lion, but he remembered the witch’s warning and

held fast for all the lion’s roaring. And then the Nereid turned into

a snake, and then into fire[314], but he kept a stout heart and would

not let go the kerchief. Then at last she returned to her proper form

and went home with him and was his wife and bore him a son; but the

kerchief he kept hidden from her, lest she should become a Nereid

again.’

In this story there are two ancient traits especially noteworthy. The

power of transformation into horrible shapes is precisely the means of

defence which the Nereid Thetis once sought to employ against Peleus;

the forms of wild beast and of fire, which she assumed according to

ancient myth, are the same as Nereids now adopt; and the instructions

now given to hold fast until the Nereid resume her proper shape are

the same as Chiron, the wise Centaur, gave once to Peleus[315]. It is

true that in the ancient story it is the person of Thetis that Peleus

was bidden to grasp, while in the modern tale the shepherd’s immediate

object is to retain hold of the kerchief only. But this feature of

the story too is an interesting witness to antiquity, although in

Thetis’ history it does not appear. Ancient art has left to us several

representations[316] of nymphs with veil-like scarves worn on the

head or borne in the hand and floating down the breeze; and the magic

properties inherent in them are exemplified by Ino’s gift, or rather

loan, to Odysseus. The scarf imperishable (κρήδεμνον ἄμβροτον) which

she bade him gird about his breast and have no fear of any suffering

nor of death, was not his own to keep after he reached the mainland;

in accordance with her behest ‘he loosed then the goddess’ scarf from

about him, and let it fall into the river’s salt tide, and a great

wave bore it back down the stream, and readily did Ino catch it in her

hands’[317]. Here Ino’s anxiety and strait command as to the return of

her veil are most easily understood by the aid of the modern belief

which makes the possession of the scarf or kerchief the sole, or at

least the chief, means of godlike power. In Cythnos at the present day

it is the μπόλια, or scarf worn about the head, which alone is believed

to invest Nereids with their distinctive qualities[318]; and if the

modern scarf is a lineal descendant of the Homeric type such as Ino

wore--for even in feminine dress fashions are slow to change in the

Greek islands[319]--the epithet ‘imperishable’ may have unsuspected

force, as implying that the scarf confers a semblance of divinity on

its owner and not _vice versa_.

In such of the stories of the above type as do not end with the

marriage of the Nereid[320] the sequel is not encouraging to

other adventurers. For though she be a good wife in commonplace

estimation--and the Greek view of matrimony is in general commonplace

to the verge of sordidness--though her skill in domestic duties be as

proverbial as her beauty, she either turns her charms and her cunning

to such account as to discover the hiding-place of her stolen kerchief,

or, failing this, so mopes and pines over her work that her husband

worn down by her sullenness and persistent silence decides to risk

all if he can but restore her lightheartedness. Then though he have

taken an oath of her that she will not avail herself of her recovered

freedom, but will abide with him as his wife, her promise is light as

the breeze that bears her away with fluttering kerchief, and he is

alone.

But fickleness is not the worst of the Nereids’ qualities in their

dealings with men. In malice they are as wanton as in love. Woe

betide him who trespasses upon their midday carnival or crosses their

nightly path; dumbness, blindness, epilepsy, and horrors of mutilation

have been the penalties of such intrusion, though the man offend

unwittingly; for the Nereids are tiger-like in all, in stealth and

cruelty as in grace and beauty; and none who look upon their radiance

can guess the darkness of their hearts. Terrible was the experience of

a Melian peasant, who coming unawares upon the Nereids one night was

bidden by them to a cave hard by, where they feasted him and made merry

together and did not deny him their utmost favours; but when morning

broke, they sent him to his home shattered and impotent.

If such be sometimes the results of their seeming goodwill and

proffered companionship, how much more fearful a thing must be their

enmity! Let a man but intrude upon their revels in some sequestered

glen, or sleep beneath the tree that shelters them, or play the pipe

beside the river where they bathe, and in such wrath they will gather

about him[321], that the eyes which have looked upon them see no more,

and the voice that cries out is thenceforth dumb, and madness springs

of their very presence.

But if the Nereids are fickle and treacherous in their dealings with

men, towards women they are consistently malicious. Especially on two

occasions must every prudent peasant-woman be on her guard against

their envy--at marriage and in child-birth. For though the Nereids

themselves prove no true wives, so jealous are they of the joys of

wedlock, that if a bride be not well secured from their molestation,

they will mar the fruition of her love, or else, where they cannot

prevent, they will endeavour at the least to cut short the happiness

of motherhood, slaying with fever the woman whose bliss has stirred

their malevolence, yet sparing always the child and even blessing it

with beauty and wealth.

The means by which women most commonly protect themselves on these

occasions are the wearing of amulets; the fastening of a bunch of

garlic over the house-door; the painting of a cross in black upon

the lintel (this custom may be a Christianised form of the ancient

practice, mentioned by Photius[322], of smearing houses with pitch

at the birth of children as a means of driving away powers of evil);

and, if any strange visitants are heard about the house at night, the

maintenance of strict silence. But steps are also sometimes taken to

appease the Nereids; offerings of food, in which honey is the essential

ingredient, are set out for them, and formerly in Athens[323] to this a

bride used to add two chemises out of her trousseau.

Such precautions after a confinement are regularly continued for forty

days. It would appear that in ancient times this was the period during

which women were held to be specially exposed to the evil eye and all

other ghostly and sinister influences[324], including probably, as now,

the assaults of nymphs; and in modern usage the duration of the time

of peril is so well established that the word σαραντίζω, literally to

‘accomplish forty (σαράντα) days,’ is used technically of the churching

of women at the end of that period; while a more frankly pagan survival

is to be found in the fact that for forty days no right-minded mother

will cross the threshold of her own house to go out, nor enter a

neighbour’s house, without stepping on the door-key, that being the

most easily available piece of iron, a metal, which in the folk-lore of

ancient Greece[325], as in that of many other countries, was a charm

and safeguard against the supernatural.

It is not however the mothers only, who need protection from the

Nereids, but the children also, and that too throughout their

childhood; yet not against the same perils; for the mother is liable

to malicious injuries; the child is safe indeed from wilful hurt, but

it may be stolen by Nereids. We have already seen how Nereids who

have wed with mortal men, though faithless to their husbands, are yet

drawn home now and again by love of their children. And such of them

too as have never yielded to human embrace are yet instinct with a

strange yearning to possess a mortal woman’s prettiest little ones; on

one child they exert a fascination which unhappily proves fatal to it;

another they seize with open violence; or again they set stealthily

in some cradle a babe of pure Nereid birth--a changeling that by some

weird fatality is weakly and doomed to die--and carry off to the woods

and hills the human infant, in whom they delight, to be their playmate

and their fosterling. In a history of the island of Pholegandros, the

writer, a native of the place, accounts for the multitude of small

chapels in the island on the ground of the peasants’ anxiety each to

have a saint close to his property to defend him from such raids by

Nereids and other kindred beings[326].

The wife of a priest at Chalandri in Attica related to Ross[327] a

story in point. ‘I had a daughter,’ she said, ‘a little girl between

twelve and thirteen years old, who showed a very strange disposition.

Though we all treated her kindly, her mood was always melancholy,

and whenever she got the chance she ran off from the village up the

wooded spurs of the mountain (Brilessos). There she would roam about

alone all day long, from early morning till late evening; often she

would take off some of her clothes and wear but one light garment,

so as to be less hindered in running and jumping. We dared not stop

her, for we saw quite well that the Nereids had allured her, but we

were much distressed. It was in vain that my husband took her time

after time to the church and read prayers over her. The Panagia (the

Virgin) was powerless to help. After the child had been thus afflicted

a considerable while, she fell into yet deeper despondency, and at last

died--a short time ago. When we buried her, the neighbours said, “Do

not wonder at her death; the Nereids wanted her; it is but two days

since we saw her dancing with them.”’

Such was the view taken by a Greek priest and his wife concerning the

cause of their daughter’s death about two generations ago; and at

the present day the traveller may hear of similar events in recent

experience. An important point to notice is that the child’s death

was thought to be due, not to any malevolence on the part of the

Nereids, but to their desire to have her for their own, a desire more

happily gratified in cases of which I have several times heard where

the child has not died but has simply disappeared. Thus in Arcadia I

was once assured that a small girl had been carried off by Nereids in

a whirlwind, and had been found again some weeks after on a lonely

mountain side some five or six hours distant from her home in a

condition which showed that she had been well fed and well cared for in

the interval.

But certainly the snatching away of children by the Nereids, whether

this mean death or only disappearance, is still a well-accredited fact

in the minds of many of the common-folk. They still remain too simple

and too closely wedded to the beliefs of their forefathers to need the

old exhortation[328],

‘Trust ye the fables of yore: ’tis not Death, but the Nymphs of the river

Seeing your daughter so sweet stole her to be their delight.’

They believe still that the Nereids have befriended their children,

even while they weep for their own loss.

Whatever mischief the Nereids work upon man, woman, or child, be it

death or loss of faculties or merely deportation from home to some

haunted spot, ‘seized’ (παρμένος or πιασμένος) is the word applied to

the victim. The compound ἀναρᾳδοπαρμένος[329], ‘Nereid-seized,’ also

occurs, exactly parallel in form as well as equivalent in meaning to

the ancient νυμφόληπτος as used by Plato. ‘Now listen to me,’ says

Socrates to Phaedrus[330], ‘in silence; for in very truth this seems to

be holy ground, so that if anon, in the course of what I say, I suffer

a “seizure” (νυμφόληπτος γένωμαι), you must not be surprised.’ Such

speech, save for its disregard of the acknowledged peril, might be held

in all seriousness by a peasant of to-day. In Socrates’ mouth it is

intended merely as a happy metaphor; but its point and appropriateness

are lost on those who do not both know the superstition to which he

alludes and at the same time recall the _mise-en-scène_[331] of the

dialogue. The two friends have crossed the Ilissus and are stretched

on a grassy slope in the shade of a lofty plane-tree, beneath which is

a spring of cool water pleasant to their feet as is the light breeze to

their faces in the heat of the summer noon. The spot must surely be a

favourite haunt of the rural gods, and indeed the statues close at hand

attest its dedication to Pan and to the Nymphs. In such a situation

there would be, according to modern notions, three distinct grounds

for apprehending a ‘seizure.’ The neighbourhood of water is throughout

Greece dreaded as the most dangerous haunt of Nereids[332], so that few

peasants will cross a stream or even a dry torrent-bed without making

the sign of the cross. Hardly less risky is it to rest in the shade of

any old or otherwise conspicuous tree. If in addition to this the time

of day be noon, it is not merely venturesome to trespass on such spots,

but inexcusably foolhardy; for the hour of midday slumber is fraught

with as many terrors as the night[333]. Any or all of these popular

beliefs may have been present to Plato’s mind as he wrote this passage;

for the ancients numbered among those Nymphs, by whom Socrates was

likely to be ‘seized,’ both Naiads and Dryads, who might be expected

to resent and to punish any intrusion upon their haunts in stream or

tree; while, as regards the hour of noon, the fear felt in old time

of arousing Pan[334] from his siesta may well have extended also to

Nymphs, who on this spot beside the Ilissus, as commonly elsewhere,

were named his comrades.

The same kind of ‘seizure’ was denoted formerly by the phrase ἔχει

ἀπ’ ἔξω[335], ‘he has it (i.e. a stroke or seizure) from without,’

and the modern compound ’ξωπαρμένος[336] bears obviously a kindred

meaning. The exact significance of ἔξω in this relation is difficult

to determine. Either it is only another example of the usage already

noted in discussing the term ἐξωτικά and implies the activity of one

of those supernatural beings who exist side by side with the powers

of Christianity and are by their very name proved to be pagan; or

else it indicates a difference in the mode of injury by two classes of

supernatural foes, the difference between ‘seizure’ and ‘possession.’

Certainly no story is known to me of ‘possession’ by Nereids in the

same sense as by devils. The latter take up their abode within a man

and are subject to exorcism; the seizure by Nereids is conceived rather

as an external act of violence. This is made clear by several terms

locally used of seizure. ‘He has been struck’ (βαρέθηκε or χτυπήθηκε),

‘he has been wounded’ (λαβώθηκε), ‘he has had hands laid upon him’

(ἐγγίχτηκε) are typical expressions, to which is sometimes added ‘by

Nereids’ or ‘by evil women[337].’ Such phrases clearly convict the

Nereids of assault and battery rather than of undue mental influence

upon their victims.

Moreover the Nereids, and with them all the surviving pagan deities,

are pictured by the peasant in corporeal form, whereas the angels--and

there are bad angels, who ‘possess’ men, as well as good--are in common

speech as well as in the formal dedications of churches known as οἱ

ἀσώματοι, ‘the Bodiless ones.’ There is then an essential difference

in the nature of these two classes of beings, which justifies the

supposed distinction in their methods of working. For ‘possession’

proper is the injury inflicted, or rather infused, by spirits pure and

simple; external ‘seizure’ is the work of corporeal beings. And this

distinction was recognised in comparatively early times; for John of

Damascus[338] in speaking of στρίγγαι, a peculiarly maleficent kind of

witch (of whom more anon), notes as singular the fact that sometimes

they appear clothed in bodily form and sometimes as mere spirits (μετὰ

σώματος ἢ γυμνῇ τῇ ψυχῇ). It is then to the second interpretation of

the phrase ἔχει ἀπ’ ἔξω, as implying external and bodily violence, that

the balance of argument, I think, inclines.

The precautions which may be taken against injury by Nereids have

already been briefly noticed. Amulets, garlic, the sign of the

cross, the invocation of saints--all these are common and suitable

prophylactics. But above all, in the actual moment when imminent danger

is suspected, the lips, as Phaedrus was reminded by Socrates, and also

the eyes should be close shut; for in general the principle obtains

that the particular organ by which there is converse or contact with

the Nereids is most likely to be impaired or destroyed. Apart from

this, there is no precaution more specially adapted for self-defence

against the Nereids than against the evil eye or any other baneful

influence; and with these I have already dealt[339].

But when these precautions are neglected or fail, the mischief wrought

by the Nereids is not necessarily permanent; there are several cures

which may be tried. Sometimes prayers (but not, so far as I know,

a formal exorcism such as the Greek Church provides for diabolic

possession) are recited by a priest over the sufferer in the church of

some suitable saint; or a trial may be made of sleeping in a church

which possesses a wonder-working _icon_. Sometimes an offering of

honey-cakes sent or carried to the spot where the misfortune occurred

suffices to turn the Nereids from their wrath and wins them to undo the

hurt that they have done; on such an errand however the bearer of the

offering must beware of looking back to the place where he has once

deposited it, lest a worse fate overtake him than that which he is

trying to dispel[340]. Theodore Bent[341] gives full details of such

an offering made in the island of Ceos. ‘For those,’ he writes, ‘who

are supposed to have been struck by the Nereids when sleeping under a

tree, the following cure is much in vogue. A white cloth is spread on

the spot, and on it is put a plate with bread, honey, and other sweets,

a bottle of good wine, a knife, a fork, an empty glass, an unburnt

candle, and a censer. These things must be brought by an old woman

who utters mystic words and then goes away, that the Nereids may eat

undisturbed, and that in their good humour they may allow the sufferer

to regain his health.’ How mystic may be the words of a Cean witch, I

cannot say; but the formula to be used by mothers in Chios in the event

of a similar misfortune to a child is extremely simple: ‘Good day to

you, good queens, eat ye the little cakes and heal my child’--καλημέρα

σας, καλαὶς ἀρχόντισσαις, φᾶτε σεῖς τὰ κουλουράκια καὶ ’γιάνετε τὸ

παιδί μου[342]. But the most frequent and most efficacious method of

cure (with which the offering of honeycakes may be combined) is for

the sufferer to revisit the scene of his calamity at the same hour of

the same day in week, month, or year, when by some capricious reversal

of fate the presence of the Nereids is apt to remove the hurt which it

formerly inflicted.

* * * * *

Thus far I have dealt with the main characteristics of nymphs in

general: it remains to consider the several classes into which

they were anciently divided; and though for the most part the old

appellations, Nereids, Naiads, Oreads, and Dryads, have either

disappeared or else changed their form or meaning, we shall find that

the old division of them into these four main classes according to

their habitation still to some extent survives.

The Nereids, whose name is now extended to comprise all kinds of

nymphs, are in the ancient and proper sense of the term among the

rarest of whom the peasant speaks. But here and there mention is made

of genuine sea-nymphs, and also of their queen, the Lamia of the

Sea[343], who has superseded Amphitrite. In 1826 a villager of Argolis

described to Soutzos, the historian of the Greek revolution[344], a

true Nereid. Her hair was green and adorned with pearls and corals;

often by moonlight she might be seen dancing merrily on the surface of

the sea, and in the daytime she would come to dry her clothes upon the

rocks near the mills of Lerna. These, I may add from my own knowledge,

are reputed to be haunted by Nereids down to this day. Happily a

peasant of that period cannot be suspected of any education; he was not

recalling a piece of repetition mastered at school when he spoke of

viridis Nereidum comas[345],

but knew by tradition from his ancestors what Horace learnt of them by

study.

In the Greek town of Sinasos also, in Cappadocia, a class of sea-nymphs

is popularly recognised and distinguished under the name Ζαβέται, a

word said by the recorder of it to be derived from a Cappadocian word

_zab_ meaning the ‘sea[346].’ But of the districts known to me the

most fertile in stories of sea-nymphs is the province of Maina, the

middle of the three peninsulas south of the Peloponnese. One such story

attaches to a fine palm-tree growing on the beach at Liméni, a small

port on the west coast of the peninsula. A full version of it has been

published[347], but as it is long and not peculiarly instructive, I

content myself with an abridgement of it.

A fisherman of Liméni was sleeping one summer night in his boat; at

midnight he suddenly awoke to find Nereids rowing him out to sea, but

happily, remembering at once that Nereids drown any one whom they catch

looking at them, he lay quiet as if asleep. The boat travelled like

lightning, and soon they reached Arabia; and having shipped a cargo

of dates, the Nereids started home again. As they were returning, one

Nereid proposed to drown the man; but the others replied that he had

not opened his eyes to see them, and that they owed him a debt besides

for the use of his boat. Finally they arrived at some unknown place and

unloaded the dates; and then in a flash the fisherman found himself

back at the shore by the monastery of Liméni, and ‘the she-devils,

the Nereids,’ gone. As he baled out his boat, he found one date; but

suspecting that it had been left intentionally by the Nereids to cause

him trouble, he threw it, not into the sea, for fear his fishing should

suffer, but ashore. And since the date had been handled by supernatural

beings (’ξωτικά), it could not perish, but took root where it fell; and

hence the palm-tree on the shore to this day.

These same sea-nymphs--θαλασσιναὶς νεράϊδες--play also a part in the

daily life of the people of this district[348]. It is said that every

Saturday night these Nereids join battle with the Nereids of the

mountains, and according as these or those win, their _protégés_,

the upland or the maritime population, are found on Sunday morning

in higher or lower spirits, booty-laden or despoiled. It is indeed

an imaginative folk which can thus make its deities responsible for

drunken brawls and sober thefts; but some of them have humour enough to

smile at their own imaginings.

A class of maleficent beings known to the inhabitants of Tenos,

Myconos, Amorgos, and other islands of the same group under the name

of ἀγιελοῦδες or γιαλοῦδες[349], have been reckoned as sea-nymphs

by several writers, who would derive the name from ’γιαλός (i.e.

αἰγιαλός), the ‘sea-shore[350].’ But there is no evidence advanced to

show that the common-folk regard them as a species of Nereid; and there

is, on the contrary, evidence of their identity with certain female

demons whose name more commonly appears in the form γελλοῦδες[351], and

with whom I shall deal later.

* * * * *

The Oreads are no longer known under their old name, but their

existence is still recognised throughout the mainland of Greece. Their

change of name is the result merely of a change in the ordinary word

for ‘mountain.’ Anciently ὄρος was usual, βουνός rare; now the peasant

uses commonly βουνό, and ὄρος although understood everywhere and

occurring in popular poetry comes less readily to his lips. Hence the

Oreads are now called ᾑ Βουνήσι̯αις[352] (sc. νεράϊδες) or τὰ κουρίτσια

τοῦ βουνοῦ[353] (‘the mountain-nymphs’ or ‘the maidens of the mount’).

These mountain-nymphs delight in dance and merriment even more than

their kin of the rivers and of the sea. In Maina indeed they seem to

have become infected with the pugnacious character of the people, for

as we have seen they there do battle with the sea-nymphs each Saturday

night. But in general frolic is more to their taste than fighting. On

the heights of Taÿgetus are three Oreads, well known to the dwellers

in the plain of Sparta, who dance together without pause. On the

summit of Hymettus too there is a flat space, called in the modern

Attic dialect a πλάτωμα and in shape ‘round like a threshing-floor,’

where Nereids of the mountain dance at midday[354]. Above all in the

uplands of Acarnania and Aetolia many are the hollows or tree-encircled

level spaces which the shepherds will point out as νεραϊδάλωνα,

‘threshing-floors’ where the nymphs make merry; for a threshing-floor,

it must be remembered, is the usual resort for dancing, wrestling, and

all those amusements for which a level space is required.

Nymphs of the same kind are known also in Crete. A curious story of

a wedding procession in which they took part was there narrated

to Pashley[355], and his informant’s words are recorded by him in

the original dialect. ‘Once upon a time a man told me that two men

had once gone up to the highest mountain-ridges, where wild goats

live, and sat by moonlight in a grassy hollow[356] (διασέλι), in the

hopes of shooting the goats. And there they heard a great noise, and

supposed that there were men come to get loads of snow to carry to

Canea. But when they drew nearer, they heard violins and cithers and

all kinds of music, and such music they had never heard. So they knew

at once that these were no men but an assemblage of divine beings

(δαιμονικὸ συνέδριον). And they watched them and saw them pass at a

short distance from where they were sitting, clothed in all manner of

raiment, and mounted some on grey horses and some on horses of other

colours, and they could make out that there were men and women, afoot

or riding, a very host. And the men were white as doves, and the

women very beautiful like the rays of the sun. They saw too that they

were carrying something in the way that a dead body is carried out.

Forthwith the mountaineers determined to have a shot at them as they

passed before them. They had heard also a song of which the words were

“Go we to fetch a bride, a lady bride,

From the steep rock, a bride that is alone.”

And they made up their minds and fired a shot at them. Thereupon those

that were in front cried out with one voice, “What is it?” and those

behind answered, “Our bridegroom is slain, our bridegroom is slain.”

And they wept and cried aloud and fled.’

In regard to this story it may be noted that a male form of Nereid

(Νεραΐδης) is sometimes mentioned, and here such are undoubtedly

implied. The necessity of finding husbands for the Nereids naturally

presents itself to the minds of the old women who are the chief

story-tellers, and the demand is met by an assorted supply of young

men, male Nereids, and devils. As consorts of the last-mentioned, the

Nereids enjoy in many places the title of διαβόλισσαις, ‘she-devils’;

and it was on the ground of such unions that a peasant-woman of

Acarnania once explained to me the belief, held in her own village,

that Nereids were seen only at midday. How should the devils their

husbands let such beautiful women be abroad at night?

It is on the mountain-nymphs also that the peasants most frequently

lay the responsibility for whirlwinds[357], by which children or

even adults are said to be caught up and carried from one place to

another[358], or to their death. Some such fate, we must suppose, in

ancient times also was held to have befallen a seven-year-old boy on

whose tomb was written, ‘Tearful Hades with the help of Oreads made

away with me, and this mournful tomb that has been builded nigh unto

the Nymphs contains me[359].’ The habit of travelling on a whirlwind,

or more correctly perhaps of stirring up a whirlwind by rapid passage,

has gained for the nymphs in some districts secondary names--in

Macedonia ἀνεμικαίς, in Gortynia ἀνεμογαζοῦδες[360]--which might almost

seem to constitute a new class of wind-nymphs. But so far as I know

the faculty of raising whirlwinds, though most frequently exercised by

Oreads, is common to all nymphs.

In Athens whirlwinds are said to occur most frequently near the old

Hill of the Nymphs[361]: and women of the lower classes, as they see

the spinning spiral of dust approach, fall to crossing themselves

busily and to repeating μέλι καὶ γάλα ’στὴ στράτα σας[362] (or ’στο

δρόμο σας), ‘Honey and milk in your path!’ This incantation is widely

known as an effective safeguard against the Nereids in their rapid

flight, and must in origin, it would seem, have been a vow. This

supposition is confirmed by the fact that in Corfu[363] a few decades

ago the peasantry used to make actual offerings of both milk and honey

to the Nereids, and that Theocritus also associates these two gifts in

vows made to the nymphs and to Pan. ‘I will set,’ sings Lacon, ‘a great

bowl of white milk for the nymphs, and another will I set full of sweet

oil’; to which Comatas in rivalry rejoins, ‘Eight pails of milk will

I set for Pan, and eight dishes of honey in the honeycomb[364].’ The

gift of honey is of special significance. In every recorded case which

I know of offerings to Nereids in modern Greece honey is expressly

mentioned, and seems indeed to be essential; and it is probably from

their known preference for this food that at Kastoria in Macedonia

they have even received the by-name, ᾑ μελιτένιαις, ‘the honeyed

ones[365].’ And if we look back over many centuries we may find a hint

of the same belief in Homer’s description of the cave of the Naiads

in Ithaca, wherein ‘are bowls for mixing and pitchers of stone, and

there besides do bees make store[366].’ For it is well established

that honey was the special offering made to the indigenous deities of

Greece before the making of wine such as Homer’s heroes quaff had yet

been discovered[367]. Perchance then even in distant pre-Homeric days

men vowed, as now they vow, honey and milk to the nymphs whose swift

passing was the whirlwind, and felt secure.

* * * * *

The memory of the tree-nymphs is still green throughout Greece. From

Aegina their ancient name δρυάδες is recorded as still in use[368];

and in parts of Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, as well as in

several islands of the Aegean Sea, Chios, Cimolos, Cythnos, and others,

there is a word employed which is, I believe, formed from the same root

and once denoted the same class of beings. This word is found in the

forms δρύμαις[369], δρύμιαις[370], δρύμναις[371], δρύμνιαις[372] and,

in Chios, in a neuter form δρύματα[373].

It has been suggested indeed by one writer[374] that this word has

nothing to do with Dryads, but that its root is δρυμ- (better perhaps

written δριμ- as in the ancient δριμύς, since, so far as the sound of

the vowel in modern Greek is concerned, the philologist may write η,

ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι, as seemeth him best), in the sense of ‘fierce,’

‘bitter’; and support for this derivation is sought in a somewhat vague

statement of Hesychius who explains the word δρυμίους by the phrase

τοὺς κατὰ τὴν χώραν κακοποιούς, ‘the evil-doers in the country’: but

whether he took δρυμίους to be the proper name of some class of demons,

or an adjective synonymous with κακοποιός, does not appear.

But even on the grounds of form alone (which grounds will be

considerably strengthened when we come to consider signification),

it appears better to derive this group of words from δρῦς or more

immediately from δρυμός, ‘a coppice’; for in ancient literature mention

is made of ‘Artemis of the coppice’ and ‘nymphs of the coppice’

(Ἄρτεμις δρυμονία[375] and δρυμίδες νύμφαι)[376], of a particular nymph

named Drymo[377], of a Ζεὺς δρύμνιος[378] worshipped in Pamphylia, and

of Apollo invoked at Miletus under the title δρύμας[379]. In the last

two instances the title may be supposed to have had reference merely to

the surroundings of a particular sanctuary; but in relation to Artemis

and the nymphs the epithet clearly suggests their woodland haunts.

In present-day usage the words which we are considering almost

universally denote, not nymphs or any other supernatural beings,

but the first few days of August, which are observed in a special

way. The number of these days varies from three in Sinasos[380], in

Carpathos[381], and in Syme (an island north of Rhodes), to five in

Cythnos[382] and Cyprus[383], and six in most other places where

they are specially observed. There are two rules laid down for this

observance, though in some places only one of the two is in force: no

tree may be peeled or cut (this is the usual practice for obtaining

mastic and resin); and the use of water for washing either the person

or clothes is prohibited; neither is it permitted to travel by water

during this period. In the interests of personal cleanliness it is

unfortunate that the month of August should have been selected for this

abstention; by that time even the Greeks find the sea tepid enough

to admit of bathing without serious risk of chill, and it is a pity

therefore that a penalty should be inflicted upon bathers during the

first week of the only month in which ablutions extend beyond the

pouring of a small jug of water over the fingers. Howbeit the decrees

stand, and as surely as there is transgression thereof, skin will

blister and peel off, clothes will rot[384], and trees will wither. The

severity of these pains has in Cyprus changed the name of these days

from δρύμαις into κακαουσκιαίς, ‘the evil days of August[385].’

Now among a people so superstitious as the Greeks it is reasonable to

suppose that days thus marked by special abstinences were originally

sacred to some deities. Washing and tree-cutting at this season must,

we may assume, have been offences against some supernatural persons

whose festival was then observed and who avenged its profanation; and

the supernatural persons most nearly concerned would naturally be the

tree-nymphs and the water-nymphs.

The association or even confusion of these two classes of nymphs is

very common both in ancient literature and in modern belief, and is

indeed a natural consequence of the fact that the finest trees, such

as that plane under which sat Socrates and Phaedrus, grow only in the

close vicinity of water. It would have puzzled even Socrates to say

whether the Nymphs by whom he might be seized would be more probably

Dryads or Naiads. Homer himself, to go yet further back, suggests the

same association, for he tells of ‘a spreading olive-tree and nigh

thereto’ the cave of the Naiads in Ithaca. Again in later times we

find a dedication by one Cleonymus to ‘Hamadryads, daughters of the

river’[386]; and though an ingenious critic would replace Ἁμαδρυάδες

by Ἀνιγριάδες (nymphs of the Arcadian river Anigrus), I believe the

fault to lie with Cleonymus and not with the manuscript; for the place

where he makes his dedication is beneath pine-trees (ὑπαὶ πιτύων). At

the present day the same tendency towards confusion of the two classes

is common. This was well illustrated to me by some peasants of Tenos.

Ten minutes’ walk from the town there is a good spring from which a

remarkable subterranean passage cut through the solid rock carries the

water to supply the town. The spring is within a cave, artificially

enlarged at the entrance, over which stands a fine fig-tree. Standing

outside while a companion entered first, I noticed that our guides

(for several persons had escorted us out of curiosity or hospitality)

were distinctly perturbed, and I heard one say to another, ‘See, he

is going in, he is not afraid.’ Inferring thence that the place was

haunted, and remembering that mid-day, the hour at which we happened

to be there, was fraught with special peril, I determined to test my

guides, and so sat down under the fig-tree. Then remarking that the

sun was hot at noon, I invited them to come and sit in the shade and

smoke a cigarette. But the bait was insufficient; they would stand in

the sun rather than approach either the spring or the tree, though

they were ready enough to accept cigarettes when I moved out of the

zone of danger. Afterwards by enquiries made elsewhere I learnt that

the spot was the reputed home of Nereids--but whether their abode was

tree or water, who should say? Close neighbours in their habitations,

indistinguishable in their appearance and attributes, it is pardonable

to confuse those sister nymphs,

‘Centum quae siluas, centum quae flumina seruant[387].’

It is exactly this kind of confusion of the two classes of nymphs

which has produced the twofold injunctions for the observance of the

days known as δρύμαις: for evidence is forthcoming that this word

originally denoted a class of nymphs and not, as generally now, their

August festival. From Stenimachos in Thrace comes the statement that

by δρύμιαις the people there understand female deities who live in

water and are always hostile to man, but specially dangerous only

during the first six days of August[388]. Here the name δρύμιαις, if

the derivation which I prefer is right, points to the identification of

these beings with the ancient Dryads; while their watery habitations

proclaim them rather Naiads. Reversely again in Syme, where the word

δρύμαις is not in use, there are certain nymphs known as Ἀλουστίναι

who live in mountain-torrents, in trees, and elsewhere, and who are

seen only at mid-day and at midnight during the first three days of

August; but, far from being hurtful to men, they may even themselves

be captured by certain magical ceremonies and employed as servants

in the house for a period, after which the spell is broken and they

return again to their homes. Their name Ἀλουστίναι[389], said to be

formed from Ἀλούστος[389], the local name for the month of August,

clearly means ‘anti-washing,’ and at once identifies them with those

Naiads whose festival, as I believe, has rendered the waters sacred

and therefore harmful if disturbed during these days; but on the other

hand their dwelling-places include trees. These two pieces of evidence

from places so wide apart as Stenimachos and Syme are reinforced by a

popular expression formerly, and perhaps still, in use, τὸν ἔπι̯ασαν ᾑ

δρύμαις[390], ‘the “drymes” have seized him’; where the word denoting

‘seizure’ is one of those already noted as proper to ‘seizure’ by

nymphs.

From the usage of the word therefore as well as from its formation we

may conclude that the word δρύμαις is the modern equivalent of the

ancient δρυάδες: and the widely-spread custom of abstaining both from

tree-cutting and from the use of water during the early days of August

is a survival of an old joint festival of wood-nymphs and water-nymphs.

But it is not in the relics of ancient worship only that traces of

the Dryads are now to be found. The traveller in Greece will commonly

hear that such and such a tree is haunted by a Nereid. Particularly

famous in North Arcadia is a magnificent pine-tree on the path from

the monastery of Megaspélaeon to the village of Solos. My muleteer

enthusiastically compared it to the gigantic tree which is believed

to uphold the world; and piously crossed himself, as we passed it,

for fear of the nymph who made it her home. In general the trees thus

reputed are the fruit-bearing trees which were comprehensively denoted

by the term δρῦς, from which the Dryads took their name--the fig-tree,

the olive, the holly-oak[391], and the plane. Such trees, especially

when conspicuous for age or for luxuriance, are readily suspected to

be the abode of Nereids. One Nereid only, it would seem, is assigned

to each tree (though, if her retreat be violated, she may swiftly call

others of her kind to aid her in taking vengeance), and with the life

of the tree her own life is bound up.

For a nymph is not immortal. Her span of life far exceeds that of

man, but none the less it is measured. ‘A crow lives twice as long

as a man, a tortoise twice as long as a crow, and a Nereid twice as

long as a tortoise.’ Such is a popular saying which I heard from an

unlettered peasant of Arcadia, to whom evidently had been transmitted

orally through many centuries a version of Hesiod’s lines, ‘Verily

nine times the age of men in their prime doth the croaking raven live;

and a stag doth equal four ravens; and ’tis three lives of a stag ere

the crow grows old; but the phoenix hath the life of nine crows; and

ye, fair-tressed Nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, do live ten

times the phoenix’ age[392].’ Commenting on this passage, Plutarch

takes the word γενεά in the phrase ἐννέα γενεὰς ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων, which

I have rendered as ‘nine times the age of men in their prime,’ to

be used as the equivalent of ἐνιαυτός, a year; and, making a sober

computation on this basis, discovers that the limit of life for nymphs

and _daemones_ in general is 9720 years. But he then admits that the

mass of men do not allow so long a duration, and quotes by way of

illustration a phrase from Pindar, νύμφας ... ἰσοδένδρου τέκμωρ αἰῶνος

λαχούσας, according to which the nymphs are allotted a term of life

commensurate with that of a tree; hence, it is added, the compound name

Ἁμαδρυάδες, Dryads whose lives are severally bound up with those of

the trees which they inhabit[393]. Other ancient authorities concur.

Sophocles markedly calls the nymphs of Mt Cithaeron ‘long-lived’

(μακραιῶνες), not ‘immortal’[394]: Pliny certifies the finding of

dead Nereids on the coasts of Gaul during the reign of Augustus[395]:

Tzetzes cites from the works of Charon of Lampsacus the story of an

Hamadryad who was in danger of being swept away and drowned by a

swollen mountain-torrent[396]: and, to revert to yet earlier authority,

in one of the Homeric Hymns Aphrodite rehearses to Anchises the whole

matter[397]. Speaking of the son whom she will bear to him, she says:

‘So soon as he shall see the light of the sun, he shall be tended

by deep-bosomed nymphs of the mountains, even those that dwell upon

this high and holy mount. These verily are neither of mortal men nor

of immortal gods. Long indeed they live and feed on food divine, and

they have strength too for fair dance amid immortals; yea, and with

them have the watchful Slayer of Argus and such as Silenus been joined

in love within the depths of pleasant grots. But at the moment of

their birth, there spring up upon the nurturing earth pines, may be,

or oaks rearing high their heads, good trees and luxuriant, upon the

mountain-heights. Far aloft they tower; sanctuaries of immortals they

are called, and men hew them not with axe[398]. But so soon as the doom

of death stands beside them, first the good trees are dried up at the

root and then their bark withers about them and their branches fall

away, and therewith the soul of the nymphs too leaves the light of the

sun.’

So my Arcadian friend was true to ancient tradition both in his

estimate of the life of Nereids and in his belief, thereby implied,

that they are mortal. Nor is other modern testimony wanting. There are

popular stories still current concerning Nereids’ deaths. One has been

recorded in which a Nereid is struck by God with lightning and slain as

a punishment for stealing a boy from his father, and her sister nymphs

in terror restore the child[399]. A pertinent confession of faith has

also been heard from the lips of a Cretan peasant. In explanation of

the name Νεραϊδόσπηλος, ‘Nereid-grot,’ attached to a cave near his

village, he had related a story of a Nereid who was carried off from

that spot and taken to wife by a young man, to whom she bore a son; but

as she would never open her lips in his presence, he went in despair to

an old woman who advised him to heat an oven hot and then taking the

child in his arms to say to the Nereid, ‘Speak to me; or I will burn

your child,’ and so saying to make show of throwing the child into

the oven. He did as the old woman advised; but the Nereid saying only,

‘You hound, leave my child alone,’ seized it from him and disappeared.

And since the other Nereids would not admit her again to their company

in the cave, as being now a mother, she took up her abode in a spring

close by; and there she is seen two or three times a year holding the

child in her arms. ‘After hearing this tale,’ says the recorder of

it, ‘I asked the old peasant who told it me, how long ago this had

happened.’ He replied that he had heard it from his grandfather, and

guessed it to be about a hundred and sixty years. ‘My good man,’ said

the other, ‘would not the child have grown up in all that time?’ ‘What

do you suppose, sir?’ he answered; ‘are those to grow up so easily who

live from a thousand to fifteen hundred years?[400]’

How this period was computed by the Cretan peasant, or whether it

was computed at all on any system known to him, is not related; but

very probably the longevity of trees was the original basis of the

calculation; for the peasants will often point out some old contorted

olive-trunk as a thousand or more years old; I was once even taken to

see a tree reputed to have been planted by Alexander the Great. But

at any rate it is clear that both in ancient and in modern times the

nymphs have always been believed to be subject to ultimate death, and

however the tenure of life may be determined in the case of the others,

the Dryads have without doubt been generally reckoned coeval with the

trees that are their homes.

An exception to this rule must however be made in the case of

Nereid-haunted trees which do not die a natural death, but are felled

untimely. A Nymph’s life is not to be cut short by a humanly-wielded

axe. In the Homeric Hymn indeed, which I have quoted, we learn that men

hew not such trees with steel; and the same might, I think, be said

at the present day with certainty of those trees which are known to

be haunted. But the unknown is ever full of risk; and the woodcutter

of the North Arcadian forests, mindful of the sacrilege which he may

commit and fearful of the vengeance wherewith it may be visited,

takes such precautions as piety suggests. With muttered appeals to

the Panagia or his own patron-saint and with much crossing of himself

he fills up the moments between each bout of hewing at any suspected

tree (unfortunately the finest timber on which he plies his axe is

also the most likely to harbour a Nereid) and finally as the upper

branches sway and the tree trembles to its fall, he runs back and

throws himself down with his face to the ground, in silence which not

even a prayer must break, lest a Nereid, passing out from her violated

abode, hear and espy and punish. For, as has been said before, nothing

is more sure than that he who speaks in the hearing of a Nereid loses

from thenceforth the power of speech; while the practice of hiding

the face in the ground is not a foolish imitation of the ostrich, but

is prompted by the belief that a Nereid is most prone to injure those

who by look, word, or touch have of their own act, though not always

of their own will, placed themselves in communication or contact with

her[401].

These precautions appertaining to the lore of modern Greek forestry

indicate a belief that, when a tree is hewn down, its death does not

involve the death of the Nereid within it, but that she escapes alive

and vengeful. And herein once more there is agreement between the

beliefs of modern and of ancient Greece. Apollonius Rhodius tells

the story of the want and penury which befell Paraebius for all his

labours. ‘Verily he was paying a cruel requital for the sin of his

father; who once when he was felling trees, alone upon the mountains,

made light of the prayers of an Hamadryad. For she with tears and

passionate speech strove to soften his heart, that he should not hew

the trunk of her coeval oak, wherein she lived continuously her whole

long life; but he right foolishly did fell the tree, in pride of his

young strength. Wherefore the Nymph set a doom of fruitless toil

thereafter on him and on his children[402].’

* * * * *

The Naiads, of whose ancient name, so far as I know, no trace remains

in the dialects of to-day, are not less numerous than other nymphs

and as much to be feared. The peasants speak of them usually as

‘Nereids of the river’ or ‘of the spring’ (νεράϊδες τοῦ ποταμίου or

τῆς βρύσης); and only in one place, Kephalóvryso (‘Fountain-head’)

in Aetolia, did I find a distinctive by-name for them. This was the

word ξεραμμέναις[403], which I take to be a half-humorous euphemism

meaning ‘the Parched Ones’; but, so far as sound is concerned, it

would be equally permissible to write ’ξεραμέναις (past participle of

’ξερνῶ = Latin _respuo_) and to interpret therefore in the sense of

‘the Abominable Ones.’ The latter appellation however seems to me too

outspoken in view of the awe in which the Naiads are everywhere held.

Wherever fresh water is, whether in mountain-torrent or reservoir, in

river or village-well, there is peril to be feared; no careful mother

will send her children at noontide to fetch water from the spring,

or, if they are sent, they must at least spit thrice into it before

they dip their pitchers, nor will she suffer them to loiter beside a

stream when dusk has fallen; no cautious man will ford a river without

crossing himself first on the brink.

The actual dwelling-place of these nymphs may be either the depths

of the water itself or some cave beside the stream. Homer gave to

the Naiads of Ithaca for their habitation a grotto, wherein were

everflowing waters[404]; and though in some cases the nymphs who haunt

the mountain caves may as well be Oreads as Naiads, I have preferred

to deal with them in this place; for usually it is river-gods who

have hollowed out these rocky homes for their daughters, and in many

such caves may be seen the everflowing waters that attest the Naiads’

birthright.

Some such places, whether springs or caves, have, as might be expected,

attained greater fame or notoriety than others; some special incident

starts a story about them which from generation to generation rolls on

gathering it may be fresh volume.

A typical story--typical save only for the absence of tragedy, since

the Naiads are wont to drown by mistake those whom they carry off--was

heard by Leo Allatius[405] from what he considered a trustworthy

source. ‘Some well-to-do people of Chios were taking a summer holiday

in the country _en famille_, when a pretty little girl of the party got

separated from the rest and ran off to a well at a little distance.

Amusing herself, as children will, she leant forward over the well,

and as she was looking at the water in it, was, without perceiving

it, insensibly lifted by some force and pushed into the well. Her

relations saw her carried off, and running up, perceived the girl

amusing herself on the top of the water as if she were seated on a bed.

Thereupon her father, emboldened by the sight, tried to climb down into

the well, but was pulled in by some force and set beside his child.

In the meantime some of the others had brought a ladder, which they

lowered into the well and bade the man ascend. Catching up his daughter

in his arms, he mounted the ladder safe and sound, and to the amazement

of all, though father and daughter had been all that time in the water,

they came out with clothes perfectly dry, without so much as a trace

of dampness. The seizure of the girl and her father they attributed

to Nereids, who were said to haunt that well. The girl too herself

asserted that while she was hanging over the well, she had seen women

sporting on the surface of the water with the utmost animation, and at

their invitation had voluntarily thrown herself in.’

This story, though it ends happily, bears a marked resemblance to that

of Hylas. It is specially noted that the child had a pretty face, and

this without doubt is conceived as impelling the Nereids to seize

her. It is of little consequence that their home is, in this case,

a mere well instead of ‘a spring,’ as Theocritus[406] pictures it,

‘in a hollow of the land, whereabout grew rushes thickly and purple

cuckoo-flower[407] and pale maidenhair and bright green parsley and

clover spreading wide’; for the ancients also attributed nymphs to

their wells[408].

Such stories are sometimes causes, sometimes effects, of the

not uncommon place-names νεραϊδόβρυσι, νεραϊδόσπηλῃ͜ο[409],

‘Nereid-spring,’ ‘Nereid-cave.’

Two such caves, to which the additional interest attaches of having

been in classical times also regarded as holy ground, are found on

Parnassus and on Olympus. The former is the famous Corycian cave

sacred in antiquity to Pan and the Nymphs[410] and still dreaded

by the inhabitants of the district as an abode of Nereids[411]. The

latter is thought to be the ancient sanctuary of the Pierian Muses,

and the peasants of the last generation held the place in such awe

that they refused to conduct anyone thither for fear of being seized

with madness[412]. It is right to add that the tenants of this cavern

were called by the vague name ἐξωτικαίς, which would comprise not

only Nereids, but presumably the Muses also, if any remembrance of

them survives in the district; but the fear of being seized with

madness suggests the ordinary conception of nymphs. In neither of

these instances of course can it be claimed that Naiads rather than

Oreads are the possessors of the cave; but as I have said the peasants

generally employ the wide appellation ‘Nereids’ or some yet vaguer

name, and do not discriminate between the looks and the qualities

of the several orders of nymphs. It is only by observing local and

occasional distinctions that I have been able to trace some survivals

of the four main ancient classes. In general the ‘Nereid’ of to-day is

simply the ‘Nymph’ of antiquity.

§ 10. THE QUEENS OF THE NYMPHS.

Travelling once in a small sailing-boat from the island of Scyros to

Scopelos I overheard an instructive conversation between one of my two

boatmen and a shepherd whom we had taken off from the small island

of Skánzoura. The occasion of our touching there, namely pursuit by

pirates (from whom the North Aegean is not yet wholly free, though

their piracies are seldom of a worse nature than cattle-lifting from

the coasts and islands), had certainly had an exciting effect upon my

boatman’s nerves, and, as darkness fell, the shepherd responded to his

companion’s mood, and their talk ranged over many strange experiences.

Very soon they were exchanging confidences about the supernatural

beings with whom they had come into contact; and among these figured

two who are the queens respectively of the nymphs of land and of sea.

Of these deities one only was known to each of the speakers, but on

comparing notes they agreed that the two personalities were distinct.

The landsman told of one whom he named ‘the queen of the mountains’ (ἡ

βασίλισσα τῶν βουνῶν) who with a retinue of Nereids was ever roaming

over the hills or dancing in some wooded dell. In form she was as a

Nereid, but taller and more glistening-white than they; and as she

surpassed her comrades in beauty, so did she also excel in cruelty

towards those who heedlessly crossed her path. The sailor on the other

hand had both seen and heard one whom he called ‘the queen of the

shore’ (ἡ βασίλισσα τοῦ γιαλοῦ). Most often she stands in the sea with

the water waist-high about her, and sings passionate love-songs to

those who pass by on the shore. Then must men close fast their eyes and

stop their ears; for, if they yield to her seductions, the bridal bed

is in the depths of the sea and she alone rises up again to tempt yet

others with her fatal love.

The former is without question she of whom Homer sang, ‘In company with

her do mirthful nymphs ... range o’er the land.... High above them all

she carries her head and brow, and full easily is she known, though

they all be beautiful’[413].

Nigh on three thousand years ago was composed this graceful epitome of

beliefs still current to-day; for, though the name of Artemis is no

longer heard, her personality remains. The peasants in general describe

rather than name her. In Zacynthos she is called ‘the great lady’ (ἡ

μεγάλη κυρά)[414]; in Cephalonia and in the villages of Parnassus

she is distinguished simply as ‘the chief’ or ‘the greatest’ of the

Nereids[415]; in either Chios or Scopelos (I cannot say which, for

my shepherd had been born in the former but was then living in the

latter) her title is ‘Queen of the mountains.’ In Aetolia however I was

fortunate enough to hear an actual name assigned, ἡ κυρὰ Κάλω, ‘the

lady Beautiful,’ where the shift of the accent in Κάλω as compared

with the adjective καλός is natural to the formation of a proper name,

and the feminine termination in -ω, almost obsolete now, argues an

early origin. The name therefore in its present form may have come

down unchanged from classical times; but, whatever its age, we may

at least hear in it an echo of the ancient cult-title of Artemis,

Καλλίστη, ‘most beautiful’[416]. The same deity, I suspect, survived

also until recently, under a disguised form but with a kindred name,

in Athens: for the folk there used to tell of one whom they named

‘Saint Beautiful’ (ἡ ἅγι̯α Καλή), but to whom no church was ever

dedicated[417]; her canonisation was only popular.

The account which I received in Aetolia of this ‘lady Beautiful’

agreed closely with the description already given of ‘the queen of

the mountains.’ In appearance and in character she is but a Nereid on

a larger scale. All the beauty and the frowardness so freely imputed

to the nymphs are superlatively hers; there is no safety from her; on

hillside, in coppice, by rivulet, everywhere she may be encountered;

the tongue that makes utterance in her presence is thenceforth tied,

and the eyes that behold her are darkened. The punishment that befell

Teiresias of old for looking upon Athena as she bathed still awaits

those who stray by mischance beside some sequestered pool or stream

where the Nereids and their queen are wont to bathe in the heat of noon.

Such a spot, favoured in olden time by Artemis and her attendant

Naiads, was the Cretan river Amnisos[418]; and it was probably no

mere coincidence, but a good instance rather of the continuity of

local tradition, that in comparatively recent times her personality

and perhaps even her old name were still known in the district. It

is recorded that in the sixteenth century both priests and people of

the district declared that at a pretty little tarn near the Gulf of

Mirabella they had seen ‘Diana and her fair nymphs’ lay aside their

white raiment and bathe and disappear in the clear waters[419]. It

would have been highly interesting to know the name of the goddess

which the Italian writer translated as ‘Diana.’ Though it is true that

in Italy[420] Diana herself was still worshipped in magical nightly

orgies as late as the fourteenth century, it is scarcely likely that

the Italian name had been adopted in Crete. More probably the slovenly

fashion of miscalling Greek deities by Latin names was as common then

as now; and in this instance a piece of valuable evidence has thereby

been irretrievably lost. Yet the traditional connexion of Artemis with

this district of Crete warrants the assumption that the leader of the

nymphs of whom the story tells was in personality, if not also in name,

the ancient Greek goddess, and no Italian importation.

Distinct reference to the bathing of Artemis is also made in a story

which has already been related in connexion with Aphrodite and

Eros[421]. A prince, who had journeyed to the garden of Eros to fetch

water for the healing of his father’s blindness, saw in the spring

there ‘a woman white as snow and shining as the moon. And it was in

very truth the moon that bathed here.’ The last sentence, provided

always that it be free from modern scholastic contamination, is an

unique example of the survival of Artemis in the _rôle_ of the moon;

while the healing properties of the spring in which she bathes offer

a coincidence, certainly undesigned, with the powers of the goddess

whom her worshippers of yore besought to ‘banish unto the mountain-tops

sickness and suffering’[422].

Whether ‘the lady Beautiful’ is known now also in her ancient

huntress-guise, is a point not readily determined. In Aetolia certainly

I once or twice heard mention of her hunting on the mountains, but

without feeling sure whether the word ‘hunt’ was being used literally

or in metaphor. Expressions borrowed from the chase are not uncommon

in the language, and the particular verb κυνηγῶ, ‘I hunt,’ is in the

vernacular used of anything from rabbit-shooting to wife-beating. The

injuries inflicted by Artemis on those who trespass upon her haunts

might possibly be denoted by the same term. On the other hand it is

not in the character of ‘the lady Beautiful,’ as it is in that of the

‘hunter’ Charos, to seek men out and slay them; men may fall chance

victims to the sudden anger of the goddess, but they are the chosen

quarry of the other’s prowess; he is a true ‘hunter’ of men, and, try

as they will to evade him, he still pursues; but Artemis strikes none

who turn aside from her path. I incline therefore to believe that the

word ‘to hunt’ was intended literally when I heard it used of ‘the lady

Beautiful,’ and that the ancient Artemis’ love of the chase is not

forgotten by the Aetolian peasantry.

Such are the reminiscences of Artemis which I have been able to

gather in a few districts of modern Greece. But it is clear that down

to the seventeenth century the goddess was much more widely known.

Leo Allatius[423], writing about the year 1630, after giving a good

description of the Nereids, plunges abruptly into a long quotation from

Michael Psellus, from which and from Allatius’ own comments on it some

information about the Queen of the Nereids may be gleaned. The passage

in question runs as follows, the comments and explanations in brackets

being my own:--

‘ἡ καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον. Supply ἀπέτεκεν. (Apparently a proverb, ‘Fair

mother, fine son,’ to the usage of which Psellus gives some religious

colour.) For the Virgin that brought forth was wonderfully fair,

dazzling in the brightness of her graces, and her son was exceeding

beautiful, fair beyond the sons of men. (Notwithstanding however the

religious significance of the proverb, he at once condemns the use of

it.) As a matter of fact, the phrase is due to faulty speech. For the

popular language has perverted the saying. It is right to say καλὴν

τῶν ὀρέων (‘fair lady of the mountains’); but the people have made

the saying καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον (‘fair mother, fine son’). (There is no

distinction in sound, according to the modern pronunciation, between

τῶν ὀρέων and τὸν ὡραῖον.) Hence we see that the popular imagination

had once fashioned, quite unreasonably, a female deity whose domain was

the mountains and who as it were disported herself upon them.... There

is no deity called ‘fair lady of the mountains,’ nor is the so-called

Barychnas a deity at all but a trouble arising in the head from

heartburn or ill-digested food, ... which is also known as Ephialtes.’

Here Psellus is rambling in his dissertation as wildly as though his

own head were affected by this demoniacal ailment. Which Allatius

observing comments thus:--

‘What has Barychnas or Babutzicarius[424] or if you like Ephialtes to

do with the fair lady of the woods or the mountains (_pulcram nemorum

sive montium_)? From them men suffer lying abed; whereas attacks such

as we have said are made by Callicantzarus[425], Burcolacas[426],

or Nereid, occur in the open country and public roadways.... And

Psellus himself knew quite well that the ‘fair lady of the mountains’

was nothing other than those who are commonly called the ‘fair

mistresses’[427] (i.e. Nereids), who have nothing on earth to do with

Barychnas and Ephialtes.’

The argument of this strangely confused passage is happily beside our

mark, and we need not puzzle, with Psellus, over the demonology of

dyspepsia. His interpretation of the phrase καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων I have even

ventured to omit, for a devious path of wilful reasoning leads only to

the conclusion that it means the tree on which Christ was crucified.

The only method in his mad medley of medicine and theology is the

intention to refute the popular belief in a beautiful goddess who

haunted the mountains.

Some details of the belief may be gathered from Allatius’ criticism of

the argument. Psellus mentions only the title ἡ καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων, but

Allatius amplifies it in the phrase _pulcram nemorum sive montium_,

implying thereby that in his own time Artemis--for it can be none

other--was associated as much with woodland as with mountain; while her

intimate connexion with the Nereids is adduced as a matter of common

knowledge. The somewhat loose phrase by which Allatius indicates this

fact--_pulcram montium nihil aliud esse quam eas quas vulgus vocat

pulcras dominas_--must not be read in any strict and narrow sense. The

beautiful lady of the mountains is, he means, just such as are the

Nereids; but she is a definite person, distinguished as of old among

her comrades by supreme grace and loveliness.

The statements of Leo Allatius, based as they are in the main upon his

own recollections of his native Chios, find remarkable corroboration

in a history of the same island written a little earlier by one

Jerosme Justinian[428]. In the main the history is purely fabulous,

taking its start from a point, if my memory serves me rightly, many

centuries earlier than the Deluge; but the reference to contemporary

superstitions may I think be trusted.

Previously to the passage which I translate, the writer has been

telling the tale of the building of a wonderful tower by king Scelerion

of Chios, wherein to guard his daughter Omorfia (Beauty) and three

maids of honour with her until such time as he should find a husband

worthy of her; how the workmen never left the tower till it was

finished; how the master-mason threw down his implements from the top

and himself essayed to fly down on wings of his own contrivance, which

however failed to work as he had hoped, with the result that he fell

into the river below the castle and was drowned; and how his ghost

was seen there every first of May at midday. This story, which may be

taken as a fair type of the whole ‘history,’ leads, by its mentions of

apparitions on May 1st, to the following passage[429]:--

‘They have also another foolish belief, that near the tower are to be

seen three youthful women, clothed in white, who invite passers-by to

throw themselves into the river and get some cups of gold and silver

which by diabolical illusion are seen floating on the water, in the

hope that going into the river they may be drowned in a whirlpool

called by the Greeks Chiroclacas, the water of which penetrates beneath

the mountain as far as the precipice where the princess still shows

herself. Further, there is no manner of doubt that the three ladies

who appear to the inhabitants of the place are those spirits who make

their dwelling in the water, assuming the form of women, and called by

the ancients _Nereides_ or _Negiardes_; the good women are so abused by

these illusions that on the first of May they are wont to make crosses

on their doors, saying that the goddess of their mountains is due to

come and visit them in their houses, and that without this mark she

would not come in; likewise they say that she would slay any one who

should go to meet her. And so they give her the name of ‘good,’ being

obliged by the fear in which they hold her to give her this title of

honour. Some people are of opinion that this goddess is one of the

Oread nymphs who dwell in the mountains....’

This ‘goddess of the mountains’ whom they call ‘good’ (i.e. probably

καλή) is beyond doubt the same who was known to Psellus and to

Allatius as ἡ καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων, ‘the beautiful lady of the mountains,’

and to my pastoral informant as ἡ βασίλισσα τῶν βουνῶν, ‘the queen of

the mountains’; and in general the conception of her is the same as

continues locally to the present day. One statement indeed I cannot

explain, namely that the women make crosses on their doors with the

purpose of attracting the goddess to their houses; for I have already

mentioned the same use of the symbol for the contrary purpose of

keeping the Nereids out[430]. Possibly as regards this detail of the

‘foolish belief’ the _grand seigneur_ was wrongly informed. But in

other respects, in the close association of the goddess with the Oreads

or other nymphs, in the fear which she inspired, in the belief that she

slew those who ventured upon her path, the Chian record is in complete

agreement with the description which I have given from oral sources. In

terror, as in charm, the Nereids’ queen is foremost.

A contrary view however is taken by Bernard Schmidt[431], who states

that she is pictured by the commonfolk as gentler and friendlier

to man than her companions, and even disposed to check their light

and froward ways. On such a point, I freely admit, local tradition

might well vary; but in this particular case I am inclined to think

that Schmidt fell into the error of confusing the wild-roaming,

nymph-escorted goddess of hill and vale and fountain with that other

goddess who dwells solitary in the heart of the mountain, dispensing

blessings to the good and pains to the wicked, and in the conception of

whom we found an aftermath of the ancient crop of legends concerning

Demeter and Kore. Surely this grand and lonely figure, ‘the Mistress

of the Earth and of the Sea,’ is in every trait different from the

lovely, capricious, cruel ‘Queen of the Mountains.’ Indeed the very

circumstance of both presentations being known in one and the same

district--as, to my own knowledge, in Aetolia, and, on Schmidt’s own

showing, in Zacynthos[432]--proves that two divine persons, in type

and in character essentially different, are here involved, and not

merely two accidental and local differentiations of the same deity.

Doubtless in the more ‘civilised’ parts of Greece (to use the word

beloved of the half-educated town-bred Greek), in the parts where old

beliefs and customs are falling into decay and contempt while nothing

good is substituted for them, even the lower classes have lost or are

losing count and memory of many of those powers whom their forefathers

acknowledged; but in the more favourably sequestered villages, let us

say, of Aetolia, where superstition still fears no mockery, no peasant

would commit the mistake of confounding his Demeter with his Artemis.

Between majestic loneliness and frolicsome throng, between dignified

beauty and bewitching loveliness, between gentleness and lightness,

between love of good and wanton merriment, between justice and caprice,

the gulf is wide.

But while the modern Artemis is the leader of her nymphs in mischief

and even in cruelty, it must not be thought that she is always a foe

to man. In Aetolia ‘the lady Beautiful’ is quick to avenge a slight or

an intrusion; but for those who pay her due reverence she is a ready

helper and a giver of good gifts. Health and wealth lie in her hand,

to bestow or to withhold, as in the hands of the Nereids. Hence even

he whom her sudden anger has once smitten may regain her favour by

offerings of honey and other sweetmeats on the scene of his calamity.

And probably peace-offerings with less definite intent have been or

still are in vogue; for it is reported that presents used to be brought

to the cross-roads in Zacynthos at midday or midnight simply to appease

‘the great lady’ and her train[433], a survival surely of the ancient

banquets of Hecate surnamed Τριοδῖτις, ‘Goddess of the Cross-roads.’

In some cases hesitation may be felt in pronouncing an opinion whether

it is for Artemis and the nymphs or for the Fates[434] (Μοῖραι) that

these gifts are intended; and in the category of the doubtful must

be included all those cases where the dedication of the offerings

is merely to the καλαὶς κυρᾶδες[435], ‘good ladies,’ no further

information being vouchsafed. Several writers, including the German

Ross and the Greek Pittakis, appear to have assumed without sufficient

enquiry that none but the Nereids could be thus designated; but as a

matter of fact, the same euphemistic title is occasionally given also

to the Fates[436]; and while I incline to trust the experience and

judgement of Ross in the general statement which he makes concerning

such offerings at Athens, Thebes, and elsewhere[437], the accuracy of

Pittakis[438] on the other hand is challenged by the actual spot which

he is describing when he identifies the ‘good ladies’ with the Nereids;

for the place was none other than the so-called ‘prison of Socrates,’

which the testimony of many travellers concurs in assigning to the

Fates.

But, though some of the evidence concerning offerings demands closer

scrutiny before it can have any bearing upon the continued belief in

the existence of Artemis, there are certainly some corners of Greece in

which that goddess is still worshipped. ‘The great lady,’ ‘the Queen of

the mountains,’ ‘the lady Beautiful’ are the various titles of a single

goddess whose beauty and quick anger have ever since the heroic age

held the Greek folk in awe and demanded their reverence; and until the

inroads of European civilisation destroy with the weapon of ridicule

all that is old in custom and creed, Artemis will continue to hold some

sway over hill and stream and woodland.

* * * * *

The other queen, of whom my boatman spoke, ‘the Queen of the Shore,’

she who stands in the shallows and by her beauty and sweet voice

entices the unwary to share her bed in the depths of the sea, must

I think be identified with a being who is more commonly called ‘the

Lamia of the Sea’ or ‘the Lamia of the Shore.’ A popular poem[439] from

Salonica, in which these two titles are found side by side, tells of a

contest between her and a young shepherd. One day, in disregard of his

mother’s warning, he was playing his pipes upon the shore, when the

Lamia appeared to him and made a wager with him that she would dance

longer than he would go on playing. If he should win, he should have

her to wife; if she should win, she was to take all his flocks as the

prize. Three days the shepherd played, three whole nights and days;

then his strength failed him, and the Lamia took his sheep and goats

and left him destitute.

This poem has some points in common with a belief said to be held in

the district of Parnassos, that if a young man--especially one who is

handsome--play the flute or sing at mid-day or midnight upon the shore,

the Lamia thereof emerges from the depths of the sea, and with promises

of a happy life tries to persuade him to be her husband and to come

with her into the sea; if the young man refuse, she slays him[440]; and

presumably, though this is not mentioned, if he consent, she drowns him.

The same Lamia, it is recorded[441], is also known on the coasts of

Elis as a dangerous foe to sailors; for her work is the waterspout and

the whirlwind, whereby their ships are engulfed. Among the Cyclades too

the same belief certainly prevails (though I have never obtained there

any details concerning the character of the Lamia); for on seeing a

waterspout the sailors will exclaim, ‘the Lamia of the Sea is passing’

(περνάει ἡ Λάμια τοῦ πελάγου), and sometimes stick a black-handled

knife into the mast as a charm against her[442].

In these somewhat meagre accounts of the Lamia of the Sea, there are

several points in harmony with the general conception of Nereids.

She is beautiful; she seeks the love of young men, even though that

love mean death to them; she is sweet of voice and untiring in dance;

and she passes to and fro in waterspout or whirlwind. It is not

surprising then to find that in Elis she is actually named queen of the

Nereids[443], that is, without doubt, of the sea-nymphs only, since

she herself has her domain only in the sea. And the title ‘queen of

the shore’ which I learnt of my boatman from Scyros points to the same

belief; for as we found Artemis, ‘queen of the mountains,’ to be the

leader of all the Nereids of the land, so should ‘the queen of the

shore’ be ruler over the Nereids of the sea.

How far this conception of the Lamia of the Sea accords with classical

tradition, it is impossible to decide. Only in one passage, a fragment

of Stesichorus[444], is there any evidence of the connexion of a Lamia

with the sea. There the marine monster, Scylla, was made ‘the daughter

of Lamia,’ a phrase which has given rise to the conjecture that the

ancients like the moderns, as we shall see in the next section,

recognised more than one species. A marine Lamia would supply the most

natural parentage for Scylla; and if her mother may be identified

with the modern Lamia of the Sea, the foe of ships and creator of the

waterspout, the character of Scylla is true to her lineage.

But the other traits in the character of the modern Lamia of the Sea

can hardly be hers by such ancient prescription. It is difficult to

suppose that Stesichorus pictured Scylla’s mother as a thing of beauty;

and the charm of the modern Lamia’s love-songs which seduce men to

their death is perhaps an attribute borrowed from the Sirens. It is

therefore in virtue of acquired rather than original qualities that the

Lamia of the Sea has come to be queen of the sea-nymphs.

§ 11. LAMIAE, GELLOUDES, AND STRIGES.

The three classes of female monsters, of whom the present section

treats, have ever since the early middle ages[445] been constantly

confounded, and the special attributes of each assigned promiscuously

to the others. This is due to the fact that all three possess one

pronounced quality in common, the propensity towards preying upon young

children; and wherever this horrible trait has absorbed, as it well

may, the whole attention of mediaeval writer or modern peasant, the

distinctions between them in origin and nature have become obscured.

Yet sufficient information is forthcoming, if used with discrimination,

to enable some account to be given of each class separately.

The Lamiae are hideous monsters, shaped as gigantic and coarse-looking

women for the most part, but, with strange deformities of the lower

limbs such as Aristophanes attributed to a kindred being, the

Empusa[446]. Their feet are dissimilar and may be more than two

in number; one is often of bronze, while others resemble those of

animals--ox, ass, or goat[447]. Tradition relates that one of these

monsters was once shot by a peasant at Koropíon, a village in Attica,

and was found to measure three fathoms in length; and her loathsome

nature was attested by the fact that, when her body was thrown out in

a desert plain, no grass would grow where her blood had dripped[448].

The chief characteristics of the Lamiae, apart from their thirst for

blood, are their uncleanliness, their gluttony, and their stupidity.

The details of the first need not be named, but would still furnish

a jest for Aristophanes in his coarser mood as they did of old[449].

Their gluttony is clearly proved by their unwieldy corpulence. Their

stupidity is best shown in their sorry management of their homes;

for even the Lamiae have their domestic duties, being mated usually,

according to the folk-tales[450], with dragons (δράκοι), and making

their abode in caverns and desert places. They ply the broom so poorly

that ‘the Lamia’s sweeping’ (τῆς Λάμιας τὰ σαρώματα) has become a

proverb for untidiness[451]; they are so ignorant of bread-making

that they put their dough into a cold oven and heap the fire on top

of it[452]; they give their dogs hay to eat, and bones to their

horses[453]. But they have at least the redeeming virtue of sometimes

showing gratitude to those who help them out of the ill plight to which

their ignorance has brought them[454].

Their stupidity also is regarded by the Greeks as a cause of honesty.

Though they are often rich, as being the consorts of dragons whose

chief function it is to keep guard over hidden treasure, they have not

the wit to keep their wealth, but foolishly keep their word instead.

Athenian tradition tells of a very rich Lamia (known by the name of ἡ

Μόρα, perhaps better written Μώρα, a proper name formed from μωρός,

‘foolish’), who used to walk about at night, seizing and crushing men

whom she met till they roared like bulls. But if her victim kept his

wits about him and snatched her head-dress from her, she would, in

order to get it back, promise him both life and wealth, and keep her

word[455].

Such aspects of the Lamiae however are by no means universally

acknowledged; nine peasants out of ten, I suspect, could give no

further information about their character than that they feed on human

flesh and choose above all new-born infants as their prey. Hence

comes the popular phrase (employed, it would appear, in more than one

district of Greece) in reference to children who have died suddenly,

τὸ παιδὶ τὸ ἔπνιξε ἡ Λάμια[456], ‘the Child has been strangled by the

Lamia.’

But in general I think the ravages of Lamiae have ceased to inspire

much genuine fear in the peasants’ minds. One there was, so I heard,

near Kephalóvryso in Aetolia, whose dwelling-place, a cave beside

a torrent-bed, was to some extent dreaded and avoided. But in most

parts the Lamia only justifies the memory of her existence by serving

to provide adventures for the heroes of folk-stories; by lending her

name, along with Empusa and Mormo (who still locally survive[457]),

as a terror with which mothers may intimidate naughty children, or by

furnishing it as a ready weapon of vituperation in the wordy warfare of

women.

The word Lamia, which has survived unchanged in form down to the

present day save that the by-forms Λάμνα, Λάμνια and Λάμνισσα are

locally preferred, did not originally it would seem indicate a species

of monster but a single person. Lamia according to classical tradition

was the name of a queen of Libya who was loved by Zeus, and thus

excited the resentment of Hera, who robbed her of all her children;

whereupon the desolate queen took up her abode in a grim and lonely

cavern, and there changed into a malicious and greedy monster, who

in envy and despair stole and killed the children of more fortunate

mothers[458].

But a plural of the word, indicating that the single monster had

been multiplied into a whole class, soon occurs. Philostratus[459]

in speaking of ‘the Empusae, which the common people call Lamiae and

Mormolykiae,’ says, ‘Now these desire indeed the pleasures of love,

but yet more do they desire human flesh, and use the pleasures of love

to decoy those on whom they will feast.’ A plural such as is here used

might of course be merely a studied expression of contempt for vulgar

superstitions; but the latter part of the quotation seems to give a

fair summary of the character of ancient Lamiae. This is illustrated

by a gruesome story, narrated by Apuleius[460], of two Lamiae who, in

vengeance for a slight of the love proffered by one of them to a young

man named Socrates, tore out his heart one night before the eyes of his

companion Aristomenes.

Of these two main characteristics of the ancient Lamiae, the one,

lasciviousness, has come to be mainly imputed in modern times to the

Lamia of the Sea, the single deity who rules the sea-nymphs; while the

craving for human flesh is the most marked feature of the terrestrial

tribe of Lamiae. But the latter certainly are the truest descendants

of the ancient Lamia, and occupy a place in popular belief such as she

held of old; for few, it would seem, stood then in any serious fear of

the Lamia; the testimony of several ancient writers[461] (the story of

Apuleius notwithstanding) proves that more than two thousand years ago

she had already fallen to the level of bogeys which frighten none but

children.

GELLOUDES.