And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,

Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire at every turn.”

It was this spectral being that was said to appear to those who performed the sacrifices to the dead, to men overwhelmed with misfortune,[[444]] and travellers in remote and dismal roads; as happened to the companions of Apollonios of Tyana who, in journeying on a bright moonlight night, were startled by the appearance of Empusa, which having stood twice or thrice in their way, suddenly vanished.[[445]] To protect themselves against this demon the superstitious were accustomed to wear about them a piece of jasper, either set in a ring, or suspended from the neck.[[446]]

The Lamia, too, fierce and beautiful, the ancestress of our “White ladies,” and of the Katakhanas or Vampire of the modern Greeks, roamed through solitary places to terrify, delude, or destroy good folks, big or little, who might lose their way amid moonlit crags or shores made white with bones and sea-shells. They loved to relate “around the fire o’ nights,” how Lamia had once been a beautiful woman caressed and made the mother of a fair son by Zeus; how Hera through jealousy had destroyed the boy; and how, thereupon Lamia took to the bush and devoted her wretched immortality to the destroying of other women’s children.[[447]] According to another form of the tradition there were many Lamiæ, so called from having capacious jaws, inhabiting the Libyan coast,[[448]] somewhere about the Great Syrtis, in the midst of sand hills, rocks, and wastes of irreclaimable aridity. Formed above like women of surpassing beauty, they terminated below in serpents. Their voice was like the hissing of an adder, and whatever approached them they devoured.[[449]]

Another race of wild and grotesque spirits were the Kobaloi,[[450]] companions of Dionysos, who doubtless subsist still in our woods and forests under the name of goblins and hobgoblins. Our Elves and Trolls and Fairies appear likewise to belong to the same brood, though in these northern latitudes, they have become less mischievous and more romantic, delighting the eyes of the wayfarers by their frolics and gambols, instead of devouring him.

“Fairy elves,

Whose midnight revels, by a forest side,

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,

Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth