fabulous, taking its start from a point, if my memory serves me rightly, many centuries earlier than the Deluge; but the reference to contemporary superstitions may I think be trusted.
Previously to the passage which I translate, the writer has been telling the tale of the building of a wonderful tower by king Scelerion of Chios, wherein to guard his daughter Omorfia (Beauty) and three maids of honour with her until such time as he should find a husband worthy of her; how the workmen never left the tower till it was finished; how the master-mason threw down his implements from the top and himself essayed to fly down on wings of his own contrivance, which however failed to work as he had hoped, with the result that he fell into the river below the castle and was drowned; and how his ghost was seen there every first of May at midday. This story, which may be taken as a fair type of the whole 'history,' leads, by its mentions of apparitions on May 1st, to the following passage[1]:—
'They have also another foolish belief, that near the tower are to be seen three youthful women, clothed in white, who invite passers-by to throw themselves into the river and get some cups of gold and silver which by diabolical illusion are seen floating on the water, in the hope that going into the river they may be drowned in a whirlpool called by the Greeks Chiroclacas, the water of which penetrates beneath the mountain as far as the precipice where the princess still shows herself. Further, there is no manner of doubt that the three ladies who appear to the inhabitants of the place are those spirits who make their dwelling in the water, assuming the form of women, and called by the ancients Nereides or Negiardes; the good women are so abused by these illusions that on the first of May they are wont to make crosses on their doors, saying that the goddess of their mountains is due to come and visit them in their houses, and that without this mark she would not come in; likewise they say that she would slay any one who should go to meet her. And so they give her the
- [Footnote: of the British School of Archaeology at Athens is found a note by Finlay as
follows:—'Joh. Wilh. Zinkeisen in Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa (Gotha, 1854), vol. ii. p. 90, note 2, mentions a second printed copy as existing in the Mazarine Library at Paris, and a manuscript copy in possession of Justiniani family at Genoa. The date according to Zinkeisen should be not MDVI but MDCVI.' There is no designation of the press or place from which the volume issued.]
- ↑ op. cit. bk vi. p. 59.
