Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/160

 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 ,

'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' ([Greek: parmenos] or [Greek: piasmenos]) is the word applied to the victim. The compound [Greek: anaradoparmenos] , 'Nereid-seized,' also occurs, exactly parallel in form as well as equivalent in meaning to the ancient [Greek: nympholêptos] as used by Plato. 'Now listen to me,' says Socrates to Phaedrus, '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" ([Greek: nympholêptos genômai]), 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 of the dialogue.], p. 129. There are also compounds [Greek: exôparmenos] and [Greek: alloparmenos] with the same meaning.]