Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/279

 which, by leaving untouched the honey-cake with which it was fed every month, proved to the Athenians, when the second Persian invasion was threatening them, that their tutelary deity had departed from the acropolis, and decided them likewise to evacuate the city. Thus the few facts that are recorded about this belief in antiquity accord so exactly with modern observations, that from the minuter detail of the latter the outlines of the former may safely be filled in.

The genii of churches most commonly are seen or heard in the form of oxen—bulls for the most part, but also steers and heifers. They appear, like all genii, most frequently at night, and, according to one authority, 'are adorned with various precious stones which diffuse a brightness such as to light the whole church.' 'They are seldom harmful,' continues the same writer ; 'the few that are so—called simply [Greek: kaka]—do not dare to make their abode within the churches, but have their lairs close to them in order to do hurt to church-goers Near Calamáta, on a mountain-*side, there is a chapel of ease dedicated to St George. The peasants narrate that at each annual festival held there on April 23rd a genius used to issue forth from a hole close by and to devour one of the festal gathering. After some years the good people, seeing that there was no remedy for this annual catastrophe, decided to give up the festival. But a week before the feast St George appeared to them all simultaneously in a dream, and assured them that they should suffer no hurt at the festival, because he had sealed up the monster. And in fact they went there and found the hole closed by a massive stone, on which was imprinted the mark of a horse's hoof; for St George, willing that the hole should remain always closed, had made his horse strike the stone with his hoof. Thenceforth the saint has borne the surname [Greek: Petalôtês] (from [Greek: petalon] the 'shoe' or 'hoof' of a horse) and up to this day is shewn the hoof-mark upon a stone.'

Harmless genii however are more frequently assigned to churches, exercising a kind of wardenship over them and taking an interest in the parishioners. At Marousi, a village near Athens, there is a church which is still believed to have a.], [Greek: Meletê], p. 134.], l. c.]