Читать книгу Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals онлайн

194 страница из 204

Such was the view taken by a Greek priest and his wife concerning the cause of their daughter’s death about two generations ago; and at the present day the traveller may hear of similar events in recent experience. An important point to notice is that the child’s death was thought to be due, not to any malevolence on the part of the Nereids, but to their desire to have her for their own, a desire more happily gratified in cases of which I have several times heard where the child has not died but has simply disappeared. Thus in Arcadia I was once assured that a small girl had been carried off by Nereids in a whirlwind, and had been found again some weeks after on a lonely mountain side some five or six hours distant from her home in a condition which showed that she had been well fed and well cared for in the interval.

But certainly the snatching away of children by the Nereids, whether this mean death or only disappearance, is still a well-accredited fact in the minds of many of the common-folk. They still remain too simple and too closely wedded to the beliefs of their forefathers to need the old exhortation[328],