Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/156

 does not appear. Ancient art has left to us several representations 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 ([Greek: krêdemnon ambroton]) 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'. 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 [Greek: mpolia], or scarf worn about the head, which alone is believed to invest Nereids with their distinctive qualities ; 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 —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 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, p. 123.], a loose pleated robe falling from the shoulders and widening as it falls, so that their figures resemble a fluted column too broad at the base and too tapering at the top.], p. 69.]