Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/280

 genius, in the form of a bull, lurking in its foundations; and when any parishioner is about to die, the bull is heard to bellow three times at midnight. A church in Athens used to claim the same distinction, and the bellowing of the bull there is said to have been heard within living memory at the death of an old man named Lioules. Other churches also in Athens, not to be out-*done, pretended to the possession of genii in the shapes of a snake, a black cock, and a woman, who all followed the bull's example and emitted their appropriate cries thrice at midnight as a presage of similar events.

Why the genii of churches in particular appear mostly as bulls, I cannot determine. When the genius of a river manifests itself in that form, the connexion with antiquity is obvious; for river-gods, who ex vi termini are the genii of the rivers whose name they share, were constantly pourtrayed of old in the form of bulls. All that can be said is that the type of genius is old, though its localisation is new and difficult to explain.

The genii of bridges cannot properly, I suppose, be distinguished from the genii of those rivers or ravines which the bridges span. They are usually depicted as dragons or other formidable monsters, and they are best known for the cruel toll which they exact when the bridge is a-building. The original conception is doubtless that of the river-god demanding a sacrifice, even of human life, in compensation for men's encroachment upon his domain. The most famous of the folk-songs which celebrate such a theme is associated with 'the Bridge of Arta,' but many versions of it have been published from different districts, and in some the names of other bridges are substituted; in Crete the story is attached to the 'shaking bridge' over a mountain torrent near Canea ; in the Peloponnese to 'the Lady's bridge' over the river Ladon ; in the neighbourhood of Thermopylae to a bridge over the river Helláda ; in the island of Cos to the old bridge of Antimachia. The song, in the version which I select, runs thus:, [Greek: Hist. tôn Athên.] p. 155.], op. cit.  226.], [Greek: Krêtêïs], p. 247 (from [Greek: Politês], op. cit. p. 141).], ibid.], [Greek: Syllogê dêmot. asmatôn], pp. 28-30 ([Greek: Politês], ibid.).], [Greek: Asmata dêmotika tês Hellados], p. 757.]