Folklore from the Southern Sporades. 151
Mr. Jacobus Zarraftes, who knows the dialects, poems, stories, and customs of the island as probably no other man does.
In addition to this, I have made use of four manuscripts which lately came into my possession in the same neigh- hourhood. Three of them are bodies of ecclesiastical canon law.' The fourth is a very curious manuscript of charms and incantations, piety and astrology, compiled just a hundred years since by a certain Georgios, who was the great-grandfather of Mr. Zarraftes, whom I have already mentioned.
1 shall first give the extracts from these MSS., which touch upon our subject. Next will come a chapter on hobgoblins, with a batch of notes on times and seasons and other small matters ; and finally a poem which embodies the legend of human sacrifice.
/. — Magic and Divination.
As the Fathers of the Church, and the holy synods, for- tunately for us, denounced the works of the devil in some detail, they have preserved a good deal of information for our benefit. I hope some day to be able to go though the whole of the No/xo/caf oi^e? ; for the present I shall confine myself to my own three MSS. In one of them^ those persons are accused who believe in such things as a witch, or a More, or a Gylou, and love them. The Gyloudes are explained to be "women who suck the blood of babes and kill them." The name and the belief go back as far at
' (i.) One appears to be in a fifteenth-century hand ; (ii.) another is dated, from internal evidence, 1560; (iii.) the third is probably a little later.
2 Nojiioicaj^w J' No. III. fol. 85 b. : e'tTrep eiViv Xeyovres on orTpiyK-Xeet [sk for (T-piyXai] elatv ») /dopij Kal yeXoiibes, Kal tnepyovTai avra. Ibid. : yvyalKes Xeyo/xeve yvXovbes, Kal uvapcKpuiaai to a'ljia riov (ipefibv Kal tiauuTovaiv avTU. In quoting from these MSS. I keep the spelling, but write the accents and aspirates according to rule.
