“Go we to fetch a bride, a lady bride,From the steep rock, a bride that is alone.”
“Go we to fetch a bride, a lady bride,From the steep rock, a bride that is alone.”
“Go we to fetch a bride, a lady bride,From the steep rock, a bride that is alone.”
“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 ofδιαβόλισσαις, ‘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 seenonly 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 Macedoniaἀνεμικαίς, in Gortyniaἀνεμογαζοῦδες[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 repeatingμέλι 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 whichI 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.
The memory of the tree-nymphs is still green throughout Greece. From Aegina their ancient nameδρυάδεςis recorded as still in use[368]; and in parts of Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, as well as in several islands of the Aegean Sea, Chios, Cimolos, Cythnos, and others, there is a word employed which is, I believe, formed from the same root and once denoted the same class of beings. This word is found in the formsδρύμαις[369],δρύμιαις[370],δρύμναις[371],δρύμνιαις[372]and, in Chios, in a neuter formδρύματα[373].
It has been suggested indeed by one writer[374]that this word has nothing to do with Dryads, but that its root isδρυμ-(better perhaps writtenδριμ-as in the ancientδριμύς, since, so far as the sound of the vowel in modern Greek is concerned, the philologist may writeη, ι, υ, ει, οι, orυι, as seemeth him best), in the sense of ‘fierce,’ ‘bitter’; and support for this derivation is sought in a somewhat vague statement of Hesychius who explains the wordδρυμίουςby the phraseτοὺς κατὰ τὴν χώραν κακοποιούς, ‘theevil-doers in the country’: but whether he tookδρυμίουςto be the proper name of some class of demons, or an adjective synonymous withκακοποιός, does not appear.
But even on the grounds of form alone (which grounds will be considerably strengthened when we come to consider signification), it appears better to derive this group of words fromδρῦςor more immediately fromδρυμός, ‘a coppice’; for in ancient literature mention is made of ‘Artemis of the coppice’ and ‘nymphs of the coppice’ (Ἄρτεμις δρυμονία[375]andδρυμίδες νύμφαι)[376], of a particular nymph named Drymo[377], of aΖεὺς δρύμνιος[378]worshipped in Pamphylia, and of Apollo invoked at Miletus under the titleδρύμας[379]. In the last two instances the title may be supposed to have had reference merely to the surroundings of a particular sanctuary; but in relation to Artemis and the nymphs the epithet clearly suggests their woodland haunts.
In present-day usage the words which we are considering almost universally denote, not nymphs or any other supernatural beings, but the first few days of August, which are observed in a special way. The number of these days varies from three in Sinasos[380], in Carpathos[381], and in Syme (an island north of Rhodes), to five in Cythnos[382]and Cyprus[383], and six in most other places where they are specially observed. There are two rules laid down for this observance, though in some places only one of the two is in force: no tree may be peeled or cut (this is the usual practice for obtaining mastic and resin); and the use of water for washing either the person or clothes is prohibited; neither is it permitted to travel by water during this period. In the interests of personal cleanliness it is unfortunate that the month of August should have been selected for this abstention; by that time even the Greeks find the sea tepid enough to admit of bathing without serious risk of chill, and it is a pity therefore that a penalty should be inflicted upon bathers during the first week of the only month in which ablutions extend beyond the pouring of a small jug of water over the fingers. Howbeit thedecrees stand, and as surely as there is transgression thereof, skin will blister and peel off, clothes will rot[384], and trees will wither. The severity of these pains has in Cyprus changed the name of these days fromδρύμαιςintoκακαουσκιαίς, ‘the evil days of August[385].’
Now among a people so superstitious as the Greeks it is reasonable to suppose that days thus marked by special abstinences were originally sacred to some deities. Washing and tree-cutting at this season must, we may assume, have been offences against some supernatural persons whose festival was then observed and who avenged its profanation; and the supernatural persons most nearly concerned would naturally be the tree-nymphs and the water-nymphs.
The association or even confusion of these two classes of nymphs is very common both in ancient literature and in modern belief, and is indeed a natural consequence of the fact that the finest trees, such as that plane under which sat Socrates and Phaedrus, grow only in the close vicinity of water. It would have puzzled even Socrates to say whether the Nymphs by whom he might be seized would be more probably Dryads or Naiads. Homer himself, to go yet further back, suggests the same association, for he tells of ‘a spreading olive-tree and nigh thereto’ the cave of the Naiads in Ithaca. Again in later times we find a dedication by one Cleonymus to ‘Hamadryads, daughters of the river’[386]; and though an ingenious critic would replaceἉμαδρυάδεςbyἈνιγριάδες(nymphs of the Arcadian river Anigrus), I believe the fault to lie with Cleonymus and not with the manuscript; for the place where he makes his dedication is beneath pine-trees (ὑπαὶ πιτύων). At the present day the same tendency towards confusion of the two classes is common. This was well illustrated to me by some peasants of Tenos. Ten minutes’ walk from the town there is a good spring from which a remarkable subterranean passage cut through the solid rock carries the waterto supply the town. The spring is within a cave, artificially enlarged at the entrance, over which stands a fine fig-tree. Standing outside while a companion entered first, I noticed that our guides (for several persons had escorted us out of curiosity or hospitality) were distinctly perturbed, and I heard one say to another, ‘See, he is going in, he is not afraid.’ Inferring thence that the place was haunted, and remembering that mid-day, the hour at which we happened to be there, was fraught with special peril, I determined to test my guides, and so sat down under the fig-tree. Then remarking that the sun was hot at noon, I invited them to come and sit in the shade and smoke a cigarette. But the bait was insufficient; they would stand in the sun rather than approach either the spring or the tree, though they were ready enough to accept cigarettes when I moved out of the zone of danger. Afterwards by enquiries made elsewhere I learnt that the spot was the reputed home of Nereids—but whether their abode was tree or water, who should say? Close neighbours in their habitations, indistinguishable in their appearance and attributes, it is pardonable to confuse those sister nymphs,
‘Centum quae siluas, centum quae flumina seruant[387].’
‘Centum quae siluas, centum quae flumina seruant[387].’
‘Centum quae siluas, centum quae flumina seruant[387].’
‘Centum quae siluas, centum quae flumina seruant[387].’
It is exactly this kind of confusion of the two classes of nymphs which has produced the twofold injunctions for the observance of the days known asδρύμαις: for evidence is forthcoming that this word originally denoted a class of nymphs and not, as generally now, their August festival. From Stenimachos in Thrace comes the statement that byδρύμιαιςthe people there understand female deities who live in water and are always hostile to man, but specially dangerous only during the first six days of August[388]. Here the nameδρύμιαις, if the derivation which I prefer is right, points to the identification of these beings with the ancient Dryads; while their watery habitations proclaim them rather Naiads. Reversely again in Syme, where the wordδρύμαιςis not in use, there are certain nymphs known asἈλουστίναιwho live in mountain-torrents, in trees, and elsewhere, and who are seen only at mid-day and at midnight during the first three days of August; but, far from being hurtful to men, they may even themselves be captured by certain magical ceremonies and employed asservants in the house for a period, after which the spell is broken and they return again to their homes. Their nameἈλουστίναι[389], said to be formed fromἈλούστος[389], the local name for the month of August, clearly means ‘anti-washing,’ and at once identifies them with those Naiads whose festival, as I believe, has rendered the waters sacred and therefore harmful if disturbed during these days; but on the other hand their dwelling-places include trees. These two pieces of evidence from places so wide apart as Stenimachos and Syme are reinforced by a popular expression formerly, and perhaps still, in use,τὸν ἔπι̯ασαν ᾑ δρύμαις[390], ‘the “drymes” have seized him’; where the word denoting ‘seizure’ is one of those already noted as proper to ‘seizure’ by nymphs.
From the usage of the word therefore as well as from its formation we may conclude that the wordδρύμαιςis the modern equivalent of the ancientδρυάδες: and the widely-spread custom of abstaining both from tree-cutting and from the use of water during the early days of August is a survival of an old joint festival of wood-nymphs and water-nymphs.
But it is not in the relics of ancient worship only that traces of the Dryads are now to be found. The traveller in Greece will commonly hear that such and such a tree is haunted by a Nereid. Particularly famous in North Arcadia is a magnificent pine-tree on the path from the monastery of Megaspélaeon to the village of Solos. My muleteer enthusiastically compared it to the gigantic tree which is believed to uphold the world; and piously crossed himself, as we passed it, for fear of the nymph who made it her home. In general the trees thus reputed are the fruit-bearing trees which were comprehensively denoted by the termδρῦς, from which the Dryads took their name—the fig-tree, the olive, the holly-oak[391], and the plane. Such trees, especially when conspicuous for age or for luxuriance, are readily suspected to be the abode of Nereids. One Nereid only, it would seem, is assigned to each tree (though, if her retreat be violated, she may swiftly call othersof her kind to aid her in taking vengeance), and with the life of the tree her own life is bound up.
For a nymph is not immortal. Her span of life far exceeds that of man, but none the less it is measured. ‘A crow lives twice as long as a man, a tortoise twice as long as a crow, and a Nereid twice as long as a tortoise.’ Such is a popular saying which I heard from an unlettered peasant of Arcadia, to whom evidently had been transmitted orally through many centuries a version of Hesiod’s lines, ‘Verily nine times the age of men in their prime doth the croaking raven live; and a stag doth equal four ravens; and ’tis three lives of a stag ere the crow grows old; but the phoenix hath the life of nine crows; and ye, fair-tressed Nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, do live ten times the phoenix’ age[392].’ Commenting on this passage, Plutarch takes the wordγενεάin the phraseἐννέα γενεὰς ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων, which I have rendered as ‘nine times the age of men in their prime,’ to be used as the equivalent ofἐνιαυτός, a year; and, making a sober computation on this basis, discovers that the limit of life for nymphs anddaemonesin general is 9720 years. But he then admits that the mass of men do not allow so long a duration, and quotes by way of illustration a phrase from Pindar,νύμφας ... ἰσοδένδρου τέκμωρ αἰῶνος λαχούσας, according to which the nymphs are allotted a term of life commensurate with that of a tree; hence, it is added, the compound nameἉμαδρυάδες, Dryads whose lives are severally bound up with those of the trees which they inhabit[393]. Other ancient authorities concur. Sophocles markedly calls the nymphs of Mt Cithaeron ‘long-lived’ (μακραιῶνες), not ‘immortal’[394]: Pliny certifies the finding of dead Nereids on the coasts of Gaul during the reign of Augustus[395]: Tzetzes cites from the works of Charon of Lampsacus the story of an Hamadryad who was in danger of being swept away and drowned by a swollen mountain-torrent[396]: and, to revert to yet earlier authority, in one of the Homeric Hymns Aphrodite rehearses to Anchises the whole matter[397]. Speaking of the son whom she will bear to him, she says: ‘So soon as he shall see the light of the sun, he shall be tended bydeep-bosomed nymphs of the mountains, even those that dwell upon this high and holy mount. These verily are neither of mortal men nor of immortal gods. Long indeed they live and feed on food divine, and they have strength too for fair dance amid immortals; yea, and with them have the watchful Slayer of Argus and such as Silenus been joined in love within the depths of pleasant grots. But at the moment of their birth, there spring up upon the nurturing earth pines, may be, or oaks rearing high their heads, good trees and luxuriant, upon the mountain-heights. Far aloft they tower; sanctuaries of immortals they are called, and men hew them not with axe[398]. But so soon as the doom of death stands beside them, first the good trees are dried up at the root and then their bark withers about them and their branches fall away, and therewith the soul of the nymphs too leaves the light of the sun.’
So my Arcadian friend was true to ancient tradition both in his estimate of the life of Nereids and in his belief, thereby implied, that they are mortal. Nor is other modern testimony wanting. There are popular stories still current concerning Nereids’ deaths. One has been recorded in which a Nereid is struck by God with lightning and slain as a punishment for stealing a boy from his father, and her sister nymphs in terror restore the child[399]. A pertinent confession of faith has also been heard from the lips of a Cretan peasant. In explanation of the nameΝεραϊδόσπηλος, ‘Nereid-grot,’ attached to a cave near his village, he had related a story of a Nereid who was carried off from that spot and taken to wife by a young man, to whom she bore a son; but as she would never open her lips in his presence, he went in despair to an old woman who advised him to heat an oven hot and then taking the child in his arms to say to the Nereid, ‘Speak to me; or I will burn yourchild,’ and so saying to make show of throwing the child into the oven. He did as the old woman advised; but the Nereid saying only, ‘You hound, leave my child alone,’ seized it from him and disappeared. And since the other Nereids would not admit her again to their company in the cave, as being now a mother, she took up her abode in a spring close by; and there she is seen two or three times a year holding the child in her arms. ‘After hearing this tale,’ says the recorder of it, ‘I asked the old peasant who told it me, how long ago this had happened.’ He replied that he had heard it from his grandfather, and guessed it to be about a hundred and sixty years. ‘My good man,’ said the other, ‘would not the child have grown up in all that time?’ ‘What do you suppose, sir?’ he answered; ‘are those to grow up so easily who live from a thousand to fifteen hundred years?[400]’
How this period was computed by the Cretan peasant, or whether it was computed at all on any system known to him, is not related; but very probably the longevity of trees was the original basis of the calculation; for the peasants will often point out some old contorted olive-trunk as a thousand or more years old; I was once even taken to see a tree reputed to have been planted by Alexander the Great. But at any rate it is clear that both in ancient and in modern times the nymphs have always been believed to be subject to ultimate death, and however the tenure of life may be determined in the case of the others, the Dryads have without doubt been generally reckoned coeval with the trees that are their homes.
An exception to this rule must however be made in the case of Nereid-haunted trees which do not die a natural death, but are felled untimely. A Nymph’s life is not to be cut short by a humanly-wielded axe. In the Homeric Hymn indeed, which I have quoted, we learn that men hew not such trees with steel; and the same might, I think, be said at the present day with certainty of those trees which are known to be haunted. But the unknown is ever full of risk; and the woodcutter of the North Arcadian forests, mindful of the sacrilege which he may commit and fearful of the vengeance wherewith it may be visited, takes such precautions as piety suggests. With muttered appeals to the Panagia or his own patron-saint and with much crossing of himself he fills up themoments between each bout of hewing at any suspected tree (unfortunately the finest timber on which he plies his axe is also the most likely to harbour a Nereid) and finally as the upper branches sway and the tree trembles to its fall, he runs back and throws himself down with his face to the ground, in silence which not even a prayer must break, lest a Nereid, passing out from her violated abode, hear and espy and punish. For, as has been said before, nothing is more sure than that he who speaks in the hearing of a Nereid loses from thenceforth the power of speech; while the practice of hiding the face in the ground is not a foolish imitation of the ostrich, but is prompted by the belief that a Nereid is most prone to injure those who by look, word, or touch have of their own act, though not always of their own will, placed themselves in communication or contact with her[401].
These precautions appertaining to the lore of modern Greek forestry indicate a belief that, when a tree is hewn down, its death does not involve the death of the Nereid within it, but that she escapes alive and vengeful. And herein once more there is agreement between the beliefs of modern and of ancient Greece. Apollonius Rhodius tells the story of the want and penury which befell Paraebius for all his labours. ‘Verily he was paying a cruel requital for the sin of his father; who once when he was felling trees, alone upon the mountains, made light of the prayers of an Hamadryad. For she with tears and passionate speech strove to soften his heart, that he should not hew the trunk of her coeval oak, wherein she lived continuously her whole long life; but he right foolishly did fell the tree, in pride of his young strength. Wherefore the Nymph set a doom of fruitless toil thereafter on him and on his children[402].’
The Naiads, of whose ancient name, so far as I know, no trace remains in the dialects of to-day, are not less numerous than other nymphs and as much to be feared. The peasants speak of them usually as ‘Nereids of the river’ or ‘of the spring’ (νεράϊδες τοῦ ποταμίουorτῆς βρύσης); and only in one place, Kephalóvryso (‘Fountain-head’) in Aetolia, did I find a distinctive by-name forthem. This was the wordξεραμμέναις[403], which I take to be a half-humorous euphemism meaning ‘the Parched Ones’; but, so far as sound is concerned, it would be equally permissible to write’ξεραμέναις(past participle of’ξερνῶ= Latinrespuo) and to interpret therefore in the sense of ‘the Abominable Ones.’ The latter appellation however seems to me too outspoken in view of the awe in which the Naiads are everywhere held.
Wherever fresh water is, whether in mountain-torrent or reservoir, in river or village-well, there is peril to be feared; no careful mother will send her children at noontide to fetch water from the spring, or, if they are sent, they must at least spit thrice into it before they dip their pitchers, nor will she suffer them to loiter beside a stream when dusk has fallen; no cautious man will ford a river without crossing himself first on the brink.
The actual dwelling-place of these nymphs may be either the depths of the water itself or some cave beside the stream. Homer gave to the Naiads of Ithaca for their habitation a grotto, wherein were everflowing waters[404]; and though in some cases the nymphs who haunt the mountain caves may as well be Oreads as Naiads, I have preferred to deal with them in this place; for usually it is river-gods who have hollowed out these rocky homes for their daughters, and in many such caves may be seen the everflowing waters that attest the Naiads’ birthright.
Some such places, whether springs or caves, have, as might be expected, attained greater fame or notoriety than others; some special incident starts a story about them which from generation to generation rolls on gathering it may be fresh volume.
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 countryen 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 forceand 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-namesνεραϊδόβρυσι, 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]andstill 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 nameἐξωτικαίς, 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.