Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/178

 FOLKLORE FROM THE SOUTHERN SPORADES.^

By W. H. D. Rouse, M.A.

{Read at Meeting of 20th December, i8g8.)

In a previous paper '-^ I set before the Folk-Lore Society some notes of the manners and customs of the people of Lesbos. I have uo^v another small budget of notes, chiefly from the island of Cos. The group of islands between Cos and Patmos is almost untouched ground. There exists no book about Cos, so far as I have been able to discover. Patmos is described in a Russian work which 1 have tried in vain to procure. Small pamphlets have appeared on one or two other of the islands thereabouts, but 1 am convinced that the harvest is still to be reaped. Patmos and Calymnos I must leave for another occasion, and I have plenty of material from the former at least to fill a paper.

I have not tried to complete the record by use of printed books, although I shall refer to one or two by the way.^ This would have increased my paper to a great bulk ; and besides, the books are not inaccessible. It seemed to me that it would be more useful to give what I had got at first hand ; and even if some of these things are already printed, a new and independent record has its value. However, very few of them are printed : such will be noted in their place. Most of the notes on Cos I owe to the kindness of

' I have to thank Mr. W. R. Paton and "Argyris Eftaliotis" for kindly looking through the proofs of this paper. They have enabled me to clear up many obscure points.

- Vol. vii. p. 142.

' E.g. Schmidt, Lebeti der Neiigriecheii : Thumb, Der Klidonas, Die Schick- sahgottinen (Ztsch. des Vereins f. Volkskunde, 1892, p. 392, 123); Kanellakis, ^tacct (Athens, 1890) ; ITpdypa/xjua tov kv AtytVy'EXX. ^Xo\. 1887-8 and 1889-90.