A typical story—typical save only for the absence of tragedy, since the Naiads are wont to drown by mistake those whom they carry off—was heard by Leo Allatius[405] from what he considered a trustworthy source. ‘Some well-to-do people of Chios were taking a summer holiday in the country en famille, when a pretty little girl of the party got separated from the rest and ran off to a well at a little distance. Amusing herself, as children will, she leant forward over the well, and as she was looking at the water in it, was, without perceiving it, insensibly lifted by some force and pushed into the well. Her relations saw her carried off, and running up, perceived the girl amusing herself on the top of the water as if she were seated on a bed. Thereupon her father, emboldened by the sight, tried to climb down into the well, but was pulled in by some force and set beside his child. In the meantime some of the others had brought a ladder, which they lowered into the well and bade the man ascend. Catching up his daughter in his arms, he mounted the ladder safe and sound, and to the amazement of all, though father and daughter had been all that time in the water, they came out with clothes perfectly dry, without so much as a trace of dampness. The seizure of the girl and her father they attributed to Nereids, who were said to haunt that well. The girl too herself asserted that while she was hanging over the well, she had seen women sporting on the surface of the water with the utmost animation, and at their invitation had voluntarily thrown herself in.’
This story, though it ends happily, bears a marked resemblance to that of Hylas. It is specially noted that the child had a pretty face, and this without doubt is conceived as impelling the Nereids to seize her. It is of little consequence that their home is, in this case, a mere well instead of ‘a spring,’ as Theocritus[406] pictures it, ‘in a hollow of the land, whereabout grew rushes thickly and purple cuckoo-flower[407] and pale maidenhair and bright green parsley and clover spreading wide’; for the ancients also attributed nymphs to their wells[408].
Such stories are sometimes causes, sometimes effects, of the not uncommon place-names νεραϊδόβρυσι, νεραϊδόσπηλῃ͜ο[409], ‘Nereid-spring,’ ‘Nereid-cave.’
Two such caves, to which the additional interest attaches of having been in classical times also regarded as holy ground, are found on Parnassus and on Olympus. The former is the famous Corycian cave sacred in antiquity to Pan and the Nymphs[410] and still dreaded by the inhabitants of the district as an abode of Nereids[411]. The latter is thought to be the ancient sanctuary of the Pierian Muses, and the peasants of the last generation held the place in such awe that they refused to conduct anyone thither for fear of being seized with madness[412]. It is right to add that the tenants of this cavern were called by the vague name ἐξωτικαίς, which would comprise not only Nereids, but presumably the Muses also, if any remembrance of them survives in the district; but the fear of being seized with madness suggests the ordinary conception of nymphs. In neither of these instances of course can it be claimed that Naiads rather than Oreads are the possessors of the cave; but as I have said the peasants generally employ the wide appellation ‘Nereids’ or some yet vaguer name, and do not discriminate between the looks and the qualities of the several orders of nymphs. It is only by observing local and occasional distinctions that I have been able to trace some survivals of the four main ancient classes. In general the ‘Nereid’ of to-day is simply the ‘Nymph’ of antiquity.
§ 10. The Queens of the Nymphs.
Travelling once in a small sailing-boat from the island of Scyros to Scopelos I overheard an instructive conversation between one of my two boatmen and a shepherd whom we had taken off from the small island of Skánzoura. The occasion of our touching there, namely pursuit by pirates (from whom the North Aegean is not yet wholly free, though their piracies are seldom of a worse nature than cattle-lifting from the coasts and islands), had certainly had an exciting effect upon my boatman’s nerves, and, as darkness fell, the shepherd responded to his companion’s mood, and their talk ranged over many strange experiences. Very soon they were exchanging confidences about the supernatural beings with whom they had come into contact; and among these figured two who are the queens respectively of the nymphs of land and of sea. Of these deities one only was known to each of the speakers, but on comparing notes they agreed that the two personalities were distinct.
The landsman told of one whom he named ‘the queen of the mountains’ (ἡ βασίλισσα τῶν βουνῶν) who with a retinue of Nereids was ever roaming over the hills or dancing in some wooded dell. In form she was as a Nereid, but taller and more glistening-white than they; and as she surpassed her comrades in beauty, so did she also excel in cruelty towards those who heedlessly crossed her path. The sailor on the other hand had both seen and heard one whom he called ‘the queen of the shore’ (ἡ βασίλισσα τοῦ γιαλοῦ). Most often she stands in the sea with the water waist-high about her, and sings passionate love-songs to those who pass by on the shore. Then must men close fast their eyes and stop their ears; for, if they yield to her seductions, the bridal bed is in the depths of the sea and she alone rises up again to tempt yet others with her fatal love.
The former is without question she of whom Homer sang, ‘In company with her do mirthful nymphs ... range o’er the land.... High above them all she carries her head and brow, and full easily is she known, though they all be beautiful’[413].
Nigh on three thousand years ago was composed this graceful epitome of beliefs still current to-day; for, though the name of Artemis is no longer heard, her personality remains. The peasants in general describe rather than name her. In Zacynthos she is called ‘the great lady’ (ἡ μεγάλη κυρά)[414]; in Cephalonia and in the villages of Parnassus she is distinguished simply as ‘the chief’ or ‘the greatest’ of the Nereids[415]; in either Chios or Scopelos (I cannot say which, for my shepherd had been born in the former but was then living in the latter) her title is ‘Queen of the mountains.’ In Aetolia however I was fortunate enough to hear an actual name assigned, ἡ κυρὰ Κάλω, ‘the lady Beautiful,’ where the shift of the accent in Κάλω as compared with the adjective καλός is natural to the formation of a proper name, and the feminine termination in -ω, almost obsolete now, argues an early origin. The name therefore in its present form may have come down unchanged from classical times; but, whatever its age, we may at least hear in it an echo of the ancient cult-title of Artemis, Καλλίστη, ‘most beautiful’[416]. The same deity, I suspect, survived also until recently, under a disguised form but with a kindred name, in Athens: for the folk there used to tell of one whom they named ‘Saint Beautiful’ (ἡ ἅγι̯α Καλή), but to whom no church was ever dedicated[417]; her canonisation was only popular.
The account which I received in Aetolia of this ‘lady Beautiful’ agreed closely with the description already given of ‘the queen of the mountains.’ In appearance and in character she is but a Nereid on a larger scale. All the beauty and the frowardness so freely imputed to the nymphs are superlatively hers; there is no safety from her; on hillside, in coppice, by rivulet, everywhere she may be encountered; the tongue that makes utterance in her presence is thenceforth tied, and the eyes that behold her are darkened. The punishment that befell Teiresias of old for looking upon Athena as she bathed still awaits those who stray by mischance beside some sequestered pool or stream where the Nereids and their queen are wont to bathe in the heat of noon.