Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/297

 the bottom. Having walked down forty steps, he entered a large room where sat the ox-headed man, who talked with him and told him that he was waiting there for a princess who came not. The boy then returned without hurt, and on his way home had to pass the inn. Having turned in there, he was asked by the princess to tell her something amusing. He replied however that he knew no stories, but would recount to her an adventure which had just befallen him. In the course of the story the princess recognised that what the boy called the genius of the river ([Greek: to stoicheio tou potamou]) could be no other than her lover, and having been straightway conducted to the spot, found and married the ox-headed man, and in his palace under the river lived happily ever afterwards—"but" (as Greek fairy-tales often end) "we here much more happily."

It is curious that Santorini of all places should be the source of this story; for the island does not possess a stream. Locally however certain gullies by which the island is intersected are known as rivers ([Greek: potamoi]), and after unusually heavy rain they might perhaps form torrents; at any rate one known as 'the evil river' ([Greek: ho kakos potamos]) is frequently mentioned in popular traditions as a real river. Possibly the tradition is accurate; for the volcanic nature of the island would readily account for the disappearance of a single stream. But the importance of the story lies in the mention of an ox-headed man as genius of a river. The fact that he is made the son of a peasant-woman need not concern us; the first part of the story is probably adapted from some other folk-tale with a view to account for the wooing of a princess by so ill-favoured a suitor. In the latter part we have a more ancient motif, the wedding of a mortal maid with a river-god. If only it were mentioned in this tale that, besides the power of performing miraculous tasks, the bull-headed man had the faculty, which modern genii possess, of transforming himself into other shapes, we should have a complete parallel (save in the princess' willingness to wed) with the wooing([Greek: to]).]