A very characteristic anecdote is told of Anacreon apropos of nurses.[437] A good-humoured wench with a child in her arms happening one day to be sauntering _more nutricum_, through the Panionion, or Grand Agora of Ionia, encountered the Teïan poet, who returning from the Bacchic Olympos, found the streets much too narrow for him, and went reeling hither and thither as if determined to make the most of his walk. The nurse, it is to be presumed, felt no inclination to dispute the passage with him; but Anacreon attracted, perhaps, by her pretty face, making a timely lurch, sent both her and her charge spinning off the pavement, at the same time muttering something disrespectful against “the brat.” Now, for her own part, the girl felt no resentment against him, for she could see which of the divinities was to blame; but loving, as a nurse should, her boy, she prayed that the poet might one day utter many words in praise of him whom he had so rudely vituperated; which came to pass accordingly, for the infant was the celebrated Cleobulos, whose beauty the Teïan afterwards celebrated in many an ode.[438] Footnote 437: See in the Mus. Cortonens. pl. 35. the figure of a nurse bearing the infant Bacchos. Footnote 438: Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 132. Traces of the remotest antiquity still linger in the nursery. The word baby, which we bestow familiarly on an infant, was with little variation, in use many thousand years ago among the Syrians, in whose nursery dialect _babia_[439] had the same signification. _Tatta_, too, _pappa_ and _mamma_[440] were the first words lisped by the children of Hellas. And from various hints dropped by ancient authors, it seems clear that the same wild stories and superstitions that still flourish there haunted the nursery of old. The child was taught to dread Empusa or Onoskelis or Onoskolon,[441] the monster with one human foot and one of brass, which dwelt among the shades of night and glided through dusky chambers and dismal passages to devour “naughty children.” The fables which filled up this obscure part of Hellenic mythology, were scarcely less wild than those the Arabs tell about their Marids, their Efreets, and their Jinn; for Empusa, the phantom minister of Hecate,[442] could assume every various form of God’s creatures, appearing sometimes as a bull, or a tree, or an ass, or a stone, or a fly, or a beautiful woman.[443] Shakspeare, having caught, perhaps, some glimpse of this superstition, or inventing in a kindred spirit, attributes a similar power of transformation to his mischievous elf in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, located on Empusa’s native soil. “I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about, around, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar. Sometimes a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire, And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire at every turn.” Footnote 439: