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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 Hence there has been nothing to restrain the extension of the term Νεράϊδα, and it has entirely superseded, in this sense, the ancient νύμφη, which in modern speech can only mean ‘a bride.’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