This ‘goddess of the mountains’ whom they call ‘good’ (i.e. probably
καλή) is beyond doubt the same who was known to Psellus and to
Allatius as ἡ καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων, ‘the beautiful lady of the mountains,’
and to my pastoral informant as ἡ βασίλισσα τῶν βουνῶν, ‘the queen of
the mountains’; and in general the conception of her is the same as
continues locally to the present day. One statement indeed I cannot
explain, namely that the women make crosses on their doors with the
purpose of attracting the goddess to their houses; for I have already
mentioned the same use of the symbol for the contrary purpose of
keeping the Nereids out[430]. Possibly as regards this detail of the
‘foolish belief’ the _grand seigneur_ was wrongly informed. But in
other respects, in the close association of the goddess with the Oreads
or other nymphs, in the fear which she inspired, in the belief that she
slew those who ventured upon her path, the Chian record is in complete
agreement with the description which I have given from oral sources. In
terror, as in charm, the Nereids’ queen is foremost.
A contrary view however is taken by Bernard Schmidt[431], who states
that she is pictured by the commonfolk as gentler and friendlier
to man than her companions, and even disposed to check their light
and froward ways. On such a point, I freely admit, local tradition
might well vary; but in this particular case I am inclined to think
that Schmidt fell into the error of confusing the wild-roaming,
nymph-escorted goddess of hill and vale and fountain with that other
goddess who dwells solitary in the heart of the mountain, dispensing
blessings to the good and pains to the wicked, and in the conception of
whom we found an aftermath of the ancient crop of legends concerning
Demeter and Kore. Surely this grand and lonely figure, ‘the Mistress
of the Earth and of the Sea,’ is in every trait different from the
lovely, capricious, cruel ‘Queen of the Mountains.’ Indeed the very
circumstance of both presentations being known in one and the same
district--as, to my own knowledge, in Aetolia, and, on Schmidt’s own
showing, in Zacynthos[432]--proves that two divine persons, in type
and in character essentially different, are here involved, and not
merely two accidental and local differentiations of the same deity.
Doubtless in the more ‘civilised’ parts of Greece (to use the word
beloved of the half-educated town-bred Greek), in the parts where old
beliefs and customs are falling into decay and contempt while nothing
good is substituted for them, even the lower classes have lost or are
losing count and memory of many of those powers whom their forefathers
acknowledged; but in the more favourably sequestered villages, let us
say, of Aetolia, where superstition still fears no mockery, no peasant
would commit the mistake of confounding his Demeter with his Artemis.
Between majestic loneliness and frolicsome throng, between dignified
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