These beings then are not the mere fanciful figures of old wives’ fables, but have a real hold upon the peasant’s belief and a firm place in his religion. To the objects of Christian worship or veneration--God and Christ and the Virgin together with the archangels and all the host of saints--have been accorded the highest places and chiefest honours: but beside them, or rather below them, yet feared and honoured too, stand many of the divine personalities of the old faith, recognised and distinguished still. Artemis, Demeter, and Charon, as well as Nymphs and Gorgons, Lamiae and Centaurs, have to be reckoned with in the conduct of life; while in folk-stories the memory at least of other deities still survives. To these remnants of ancient mythology the next chapter will be devoted; the purely pagan element in the modern polytheism may be sufficiently illustrated here by a few curious cases of the use even of the word ‘god’ (θεός) in reference to other than the God of Christendom. In Athens, down to recent times, there was a fine old formula of blessing in vogue--and who shall say but that among the simpler people it may still be heard?--which combined impartially the one God and the many:--νὰ ς’ ἀξιῶσῃ ὁ Θεὸς νὰ εὐχαριστήσῃς θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους[78], ‘God fit thee to find favour with gods and men!’ In the island of Syra, according to Bent[79], it was ‘a common belief amongst the peasants that the ghosts of the ancient Greeks come once a year from all parts of Greece to worship at Delos, ... and even to-day they will reverently speak of the “god in Delos.”’ Another writer mentions a similar expression as used in several parts of the mainland, though only it would seem as an ejaculation, θεὲ τῆς Κρήτης or γιὰ τὸ θεὸ τῆς Κρήτης ‘by the god of Crete[80]!’ In the island of Santorini (the ancient Thera) I personally encountered a still more striking case of out-spoken polytheism. I chanced one day upon a very old woman squatting on the extreme edge of the cliff above the great flooded crater which, though too deep for anchorage, serves the main town of the island as harbour--a place more fascinating in its hideousness than any I have seen. Wondering at her dangerous position, I asked her what she was doing; and she replied simply enough that she was making rain. It was two years since any had fallen, and as she had the reputation of being a witch of unusual powers and had procured rain in previous droughts, she had been approached by several of the islanders who were anxious for their vineyards. Moreover she had been prepaid for her work--a fact which spoke most eloquently for the general belief in her; for the Greek is slow enough (as doubtless she knew) to pay for what he has got, and never prepays what he is not sure of getting. True, her profession had its risks, she said; for on one occasion, the only time that her spells had failed, some of her disappointed clients whose money she had not returned tried to burn her house over her one