Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/87

 'angelic' as well as of 'demoniacal' possession; and Father Richard details the cruelties and tortures inflicted upon a woman suspected of the former in order to make the pernicious angelic spirit within her confess its name. The characters of [Greek: daimonia] and [Greek: angelika] are in fact the same, and the subtle theological distinctions which might be drawn between them are naturally lost on a people who see them treated even by the priests as equally baneful.

A few other local or dialectic names remain to be noticed. Two of them, [Greek: stoiche[i(]a] and [Greek: telônia], denote properly two several species of supernatural beings—the former being the genii of fixed places, and the latter aërial beings chiefly concerned with the passage of men from this world to the next —and are only loosely and locally employed in a more comprehensive sense. The name [Greek: smerdakia], recorded from Philiatrá in Messenia, is apparently a diminutive form from a root meaning 'terrible .' A Cretan word [Greek: kantanika] is of less certain etymology, but if, as has been surmised, it has any relation with the verb [Greek: kantaneuô]), 'to go down to the underworld,' and hence 'to fall into a trance,' ('entranced' spirits being thought temporarily to have departed thither,) it may denote either denizens of the lower world or beings who frighten men into a senseless and trance-like state. Next come the two words [Greek: zoumpira] and [Greek: zôntobola], of which I believe the interpretation is one and the same. Bernhard Schmidt , whose work I have constantly consulted in this and later chapters, would derive the former from a middle-Greek word [Greek: zombros], equivalent to the ancient [Greek: tragelaphos], a fantastic animal of Aristophanic fame; but it was explained to me in Scyros to be a jocose euphemism as applied to supernatural beings and to denote properly parasitic insects. The implied combination of superstitious awe in avoiding the name of supernatural things with a certain broad humour in substituting what is, to the peasant, one of the lesser annoyances of life is certainly characteristic of the Greek folk; and the accuracy of the explanation given; and [Greek: smerdos = lêma, rhômê, dynamis, hormêma].], p. 517.]