Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/153

 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