Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/383

 Collectanea. 359

The Abbut of Arkadhi was also familiar with the " Bible and Key." His method api)arently was to balance the key on the finger and recite a certain Psalm. He seemed reluctant to specify the particulars to a foreigner, layman, and heretic.

Supernatural Beings. — An old man whom Mr. Dawkins and I came across in the village of Phaneromeni, in the Messara, declared that the Kamares cave itself was haunted, and he prophesied that we should do no good there. He had once been a shepherd on the hill and had gone into the cave, and there he had seen an Arabaizella, whose lower lip hung down to her waist. He had raised his gun and fired, and she disa|)peared, the bullet passing right through her and hitting the other side of the cave. We had, however, no ghostly trouble with workmen, and, at any rate when in company, these old men's tales are not taken very seriously by the younger generation.

The story is interesting as a projection of a spook out of folk- tales. Arabatzilla is the feminine diminutive of Araps, the black spirit corresponding to an ifrit, who regularly appears in Greek fairy tales. And in folk-tales of the Xear East these beings are consistently described as having an upper lip which reaches to heaven and a lower lip which touches the ground, a feature, I fancy, of Oriental origin introduced into Greek stories through the Turkish. It is interesting to notice that, when the old man saw a bogey, it should possess the stereotyped trait of the bogies of his folk-tales.

Drolls. — In the villages on the southern slopes of Mt. Ida and in the i)lain of the Messara Gotham stories are told about the village of Anogia, which is just the other side of the mountain. Nearly all the stories which the shepherds told us round the camp fire began, "Once upon a time there was a man of Anogia," and went on to tell how he was persuaded that his gourd had given birth to a hare, or how he tried to rake the moon from a well. As a matter of fact Anogia is a large and exceedingly prosperous village, and, to judge from their material success its inhabitants must be well above the average in intelligence and business capacity.

W. R. Hallid.\v.