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Nor must I omit to mention the assistance which I have derived from written sources. In recent times it has been a favourite amusement with Greeks of some education to compile little histories of the particular district or island in which they live, and many of these contain a chapter devoted to the customs and superstitions of the locality. From these, as also from the records of travel in Greece, particularly those of French writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I have culled much that is valuable.

Nearly ten years have passed since my return from Greece, and such leisure as they have allowed has been devoted to co-ordinating the piecemeal information which I personally obtained or have gathered from the writings of others, and to examining its bearing upon the life and thought of Ancient Greece. In the former half of this task I have but followed in the steps of Bernhard Schmidt and of Polites, who had already presented a coherent, if still incomplete, account of the folklore of Modern Greece, and my work has been mainly to check, to correct, and to amplify; but for the latter half I would ask the indulgent consideration which may fairly be extended to a pioneer. Analogies and coincidences in the beliefs and customs of modern and of ancient Greece have indeed been pointed out by others; but no large attempt has previously been made to trace the continuity of the life and thought of the Greek people, and to exhibit modern Greek folklore as an essential factor in the interpretation of ancient Greek religion.