Now, one of most marked differences between the Greek and the Roman modes of worship was that the Greeks worshipped with their heads uncovered, the Romans with heads covered, _velato capite_. Roman antiquaries explained the practice as due to fear lest the worshipper should see anything of evil omen during his prayer. But I submit that we must connect it with the folk-belief that fairies resent being seen by mortals. "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die." If fairies were originally departed souls, the fear and the danger of seeing them is at once explained. On the other hand, the Roman custom of worshipping _velato capite_ dates from a time before the introduction of polytheism, and must therefore have been attached originally to the worship of some beings other than gods. It is at least plausible, therefore, to conjecture that it was a precaution adopted in the worship of deceased ancestors and of spirits, which, like Genita Mana, are best explained as spirits of the departed. The conjecture is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Romans veiled their heads at the funeral of father or mother (_R. Q._ 14). V. GENII. No form of religion is easily or at once rooted out, even by a new religion. A _modus vivendi_ has to be found between the old faith and the new. The animal, which was once itself worshipped, is tolerated merely as the symbol of some divine attribute. The nixies continue to ply their old calling under the new name of Old Nick. The sacrifices to the dead, condemned by the Indiculus Superstitionum, are subsequently licensed by the Church as the Feast of All Souls.[45] Hence it comes about that what means one thing to the apostle of the new religion is long understood as something very different by the reluctant convert. The devil of folk-lore has attributes quite different from those assigned to him in any scheme of Christian theology. If, therefore, polytheism was, as I have suggested, an importation into Italy, forced by the State on a people not yet prepared for anything higher than animism and ancestor-worship, we should expect to find the borrowed worship of a Greek loan-god sometimes concealing a native Italian cult of very dissimilar nature. Instances of the kind are forthcoming, and this section will be devoted to some of them.