"The other day I beheld at our threshold a youth of lofty stature and threatening mien; he had out-stretched wings of gleaming white, and in his hand was a sword. 'Woman, is thy husband in the house?' 'Yes; he combs our Nicos' hair, and caresses him so he may not cry. Go not in, terrible youth; do not frighten our babe.' The white-winged would not listen; I tried to drive him back, but I could not; he darted past me, and ran to thy side, O my beloved. Hapless one, he smote thee; and here is thy little son, thy tiny Nicos, whom likewise he was fain to strike." ... So vivid was the impression created by the woman's fantasy that some of the spectators looked towards the door, half expecting the white-winged visitant to advance in their midst; others turned to the child, huddled by his mother's knees. She, coming down from flights of imagination to the bitter realities of her condition, exclaimed, as she flung herself sobbing upon the bier: "How can I maintain the children? How will they be able to live? What will they not suffer in the contrast between the rough lot in store for them and the tender care which guarded them in the happy days when their father lived?" At last, worn out by the force of her emotions, she sank senseless to the floor. The laments of widows, which are very rare in some localities, are often to be met with in Greece. In one of them we come upon an original idea respecting the requirements of spirits: the singer prays that her tears may swell into a lake or a sea, so they may trickle through the earth to the nether regions, to moisten those who get no rain, to be drink to those who thirst, and--to fill up the dry inkstands of the writers! "Then will they be able to chronicle the chagrins of the loved ones who cross the river, taste its wave, and forget their homes and their poor orphans." Every species of Grecian peasant-song abounds in classical reminiscences, which are easy to identify, although they betray some mental confusion of the attributes and functions belonging to the personages of antiquity. Of all the early myths, that of the Stygian ferryman is the one which has shown greatest longevity. Far from falling into oblivion, the son of Erebus has gone on diligently accumulating honours till he has managed to get the arbitrament of life and death into his power, and to enlist the birds of the air as a staff of spies, to give him prompt information should any unlucky individual refer to him in a tone of mockery or defiance. Perhaps this is not development but reversion. Charon may have been a great Infernal deity before he was a boatman. The Charun of the Etruscans could destroy life and torment the guilty--the office of conducting shades to the other world forming only one part of his duties.