Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/179

 and pushed into the well. Her relations saw her carried off, and running up, perceived the girl amusing herself on the top of the water as if she were seated on a bed. Thereupon her father, emboldened by the sight, tried to climb down into the well, but was pulled in by some force and set beside his child. In the meantime some of the others had brought a ladder, which they lowered into the well and bade the man ascend. Catching up his daughter in his arms, he mounted the ladder safe and sound, and to the amazement of all, though father and daughter had been all that time in the water, they came out with clothes perfectly dry, without so much as a trace of dampness. The seizure of the girl and her father they attributed to Nereids, who were said to haunt that well. The girl too herself asserted that while she was hanging over the well, she had seen women sporting on the surface of the water with the utmost animation, and at their invitation had voluntarily thrown herself in.'

This story, though it ends happily, bears a marked resemblance to that of Hylas. It is specially noted that the child had a pretty face, and this without doubt is conceived as impelling the Nereids to seize her. It is of little consequence that their home is, in this case, a mere well instead of 'a spring,' as Theocritus pictures it, 'in a hollow of the land, whereabout grew rushes thickly and purple cuckoo-flower and pale maidenhair and bright green parsley and clover spreading wide'; for the ancients also attributed nymphs to their wells.

Such stories are sometimes causes, sometimes effects, of the not uncommon place-names [Greek: neraïdobrysi, neraïdospêlêo], 'Nereid-spring,' 'Nereid-cave.'

Two such caves, to which the additional interest attaches of having been in classical times also regarded as holy ground, are found on Parnassus and on Olympus. The former is the famous Corycian cave sacred in antiquity to Pan and the Nymphs andon the authority of a muleteer whom I hired at Olympia; the modern form is [Greek: chelidoni]. It may be added that in Greece the cuckoo-*flower is often of a dark enough shade to justify the epithet [Greek: kyaneon].], p. 69. [Greek: Deltion tês Histor. kai Ethnol. Hetairias tês Hellados], p. 122.]