Greek folklore represents these nymphs as tall and slim, clad in white, with flowing golden hair, and divinely beautiful, so much so that the highest compliment that can be paid to a Greek maiden is to compare her in loveliness to a Neraida. Such beauty, however, is fatal to the beholder and many a story is related of people who having exposed themselves to its fascination were bereft of speech or suffered otherwise. A single illustration will suffice. In the island of Chios is a bridge called the Maid’s Bridge, which is popularly believed to be haunted by a water-spirit. Early one morning a man was crossing the bridge on his way from the village of Daphnona to the capital city, when he met a tall young woman dressed in white. She took him by the hand and made him dance with her. He was foolish enough to speak and was immediately struck dumb. He recovered, however, some days after, thanks to the prayers and exorcisms of a priest. So too the sirens frequent an island near the coast of Italy and entice seamen by the sweetness of their song which is so bewitching that the listeners forget everything and die of hunger. In Homeric mythology there were only two sirens, later writers named three, and the number has since been augmented by those who loved “lords many and gods many.” Plato says there are three kinds of sirens—the celestial, the generative and the cathartic. The first are under the government of Jupiter, the second under the government of Neptune, and the third under the government of Pluto. When the soul is in heaven, the sirens seek, by harmonic motion, to unite it to the divine life of the celestial host; and when in Hades, to conform them to the infernal regimen, but on earth they produce generation, of which the sea is emblematic. We may tarry a little here to greet a beneficent class of sea-nymphs. These are the Nereids, fifty in number, named after Nereid, daughter of Nereus, the sea-god whose sway extended over the Ægean Sea. Camoens, in his _Lusiad_, has spiritualised their office, and he makes them the sea-guardians of the virtuous. According to a legend they went before the fleet of Vasco da Gama, and when the treacherous pilot supplied by the King of Mozambique steered his ship towards a sunken rock, these guardian nymphs pressed against the prow, lifting it from the water and turning it round. To turn back to the malevolent spirits. At Dervinato, a village in the island of Chios, there is a fountain-head, or “water mother,” the common Greek expression for a spring, called Plaghia, which is reputed to be the haunt of a Black Giant. This monster is a crafty demon of Oriental origin who lures the guileless to destruction by various stratagems, generally by assuming the form of a fair maid. He is a being mortally dreaded by the peasantry, and is not so often met with as the water-spirit.