The Oreads are no longer known under their old name, but their existence is still recognised throughout the mainland of Greece. Their change of name is the result merely of a change in the ordinary word for ‘mountain.’ Anciently ὄρος was usual, βουνός rare; now the peasant uses commonly βουνό, and ὄρος although understood everywhere and occurring in popular poetry comes less readily to his lips. Hence the Oreads are now called ᾑ Βουνήσι̯αις[352] (sc. νεράϊδες) or τὰ κουρίτσια τοῦ βουνοῦ[353] (‘the mountain-nymphs’ or ‘the maidens of the mount’). These mountain-nymphs delight in dance and merriment even more than their kin of the rivers and of the sea. In Maina indeed they seem to have become infected with the pugnacious character of the people, for as we have seen they there do battle with the sea-nymphs each Saturday night. But in general frolic is more to their taste than fighting. On the heights of Taÿgetus are three Oreads, well known to the dwellers in the plain of Sparta, who dance together without pause. On the summit of Hymettus too there is a flat space, called in the modern Attic dialect a πλάτωμα and in shape ‘round like a threshing-floor,’ where Nereids of the mountain dance at midday[354]. Above all in the uplands of Acarnania and Aetolia many are the hollows or tree-encircled level spaces which the shepherds will point out as νεραϊδάλωνα, ‘threshing-floors’ where the nymphs make merry; for a threshing-floor, it must be remembered, is the usual resort for dancing, wrestling, and all those amusements for which a level space is required.
Nymphs of the same kind are known also in Crete. A curious story of a wedding procession in which they took part was there narrated to Pashley[355], and his informant’s words are recorded by him in the original dialect. ‘Once upon a time a man told me that two men had once gone up to the highest mountain-ridges, where wild goats live, and sat by moonlight in a grassy hollow[356] (διασέλι), in the hopes of shooting the goats. And there they heard a great noise, and supposed that there were men come to get loads of snow to carry to Canea. But when they drew nearer, they heard violins and cithers and all kinds of music, and such music they had never heard. So they knew at once that these were no men but an assemblage of divine beings (δαιμονικὸ συνέδριον). And they watched them and saw them pass at a short distance from where they were sitting, clothed in all manner of raiment, and mounted some on grey horses and some on horses of other colours, and they could make out that there were men and women, afoot or riding, a very host. And the men were white as doves, and the women very beautiful like the rays of the sun. They saw too that they were carrying something in the way that a dead body is carried out. Forthwith the mountaineers determined to have a shot at them as they passed before them. They had heard also a song of which the words were
“Go we to fetch a bride, a lady bride,
From the steep rock, a bride that is alone.”
And they made up their minds and fired a shot at them. Thereupon those that were in front cried out with one voice, “What is it?” and those behind answered, “Our bridegroom is slain, our bridegroom is slain.” And they wept and cried aloud and fled.’
In regard to this story it may be noted that a male form of Nereid (Νεραΐδης) is sometimes mentioned, and here such are undoubtedly implied. The necessity of finding husbands for the Nereids naturally presents itself to the minds of the old women who are the chief story-tellers, and the demand is met by an assorted supply of young men, male Nereids, and devils. As consorts of the last-mentioned, the Nereids enjoy in many places the title of διαβόλισσαις, ‘she-devils’; and it was on the ground of such unions that a peasant-woman of Acarnania once explained to me the belief, held in her own village, that Nereids were seen only at midday. How should the devils their husbands let such beautiful women be abroad at night?
It is on the mountain-nymphs also that the peasants most frequently lay the responsibility for whirlwinds[357], by which children or even adults are said to be caught up and carried from one place to another[358], or to their death. Some such fate, we must suppose, in ancient times also was held to have befallen a seven-year-old boy on whose tomb was written, ‘Tearful Hades with the help of Oreads made away with me, and this mournful tomb that has been builded nigh unto the Nymphs contains me[359].’ The habit of travelling on a whirlwind, or more correctly perhaps of stirring up a whirlwind by rapid passage, has gained for the nymphs in some districts secondary names—in Macedonia ἀνεμικαίς, in Gortynia ἀνεμογαζοῦδες[360]—which might almost seem to constitute a new class of wind-nymphs. But so far as I know the faculty of raising whirlwinds, though most frequently exercised by Oreads, is common to all nymphs.
In Athens whirlwinds are said to occur most frequently near the old Hill of the Nymphs[361]: and women of the lower classes, as they see the spinning spiral of dust approach, fall to crossing themselves busily and to repeating μέλι καὶ γάλα ’στὴ στράτα σας[362] (or ’στο δρόμο σας), ‘Honey and milk in your path!’ This incantation is widely known as an effective safeguard against the Nereids in their rapid flight, and must in origin, it would seem, have been a vow. This supposition is confirmed by the fact that in Corfu[363] a few decades ago the peasantry used to make actual offerings of both milk and honey to the Nereids, and that Theocritus also associates these two gifts in vows made to the nymphs and to Pan. ‘I will set,’ sings Lacon, ‘a great bowl of white milk for the nymphs, and another will I set full of sweet oil’; to which Comatas in rivalry rejoins, ‘Eight pails of milk will I set for Pan, and eight dishes of honey in the honeycomb[364].’ The gift of honey is of special significance. In every recorded case which I know of offerings to Nereids in modern Greece honey is expressly mentioned, and seems indeed to be essential; and it is probably from their known preference for this food that at Kastoria in Macedonia they have even received the by-name, ᾑ μελιτένιαις, ‘the honeyed ones[365].’ And if we look back over many centuries we may find a hint of the same belief in Homer’s description of the cave of the Naiads in Ithaca, wherein ‘are bowls for mixing and pitchers of stone, and there besides do bees make store[366].’ For it is well established that honey was the special offering made to the indigenous deities of Greece before the making of wine such as Homer’s heroes quaff had yet been discovered[367]. Perchance then even in distant pre-Homeric days men vowed, as now they vow, honey and milk to the nymphs whose swift passing was the whirlwind, and felt secure.