Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/261

Rh hearts in the confessionals, but as the ministers of a ritual which alone can counteract the superstitious terrors with which the sunny and joyous mind of the Rhodian peasant is from time to time over-shadowed.

In the course of my journeys, I have collected the following curious particulars in reference to the local superstitions and customs. They are firm believers in certain supernatural beings called , anerades, and, or dæmons.

The anerades are female spirits, clad in white, who appear to unlucky benighted travellers when crossing rivers.

Their apparition portends speedy death to the hapless wight who sees them, unless a priest counter- acts the omen by reading verses from the Scriptures.

When a birth takes place, no person whatever is allowed to enter the house, except the midwife, till the child has been blest by a priest; and it is customary for forty days after the birth to close the house-door at sunset, and never to open it after that hour, for fear the anerades should enter and carry off the child.

The dæmons are met with in the forests. I asked a peasant what they were like. He said that he beheved them to have (the equivalent of, con rispetto parlato), goat's legs and tails, and said they were like the figures painted on Greek vases. He admitted, however, that he had never seen one himself Ross points that the word , which in the modern Greek still means "water," is the root from which must be derived and