Note 150 — Chapter V

The Furies. These goddesses were worshipped with mysterious veneration by the Athenians, who held it an ill omen to call them by their proper name, and spoke of them as the venerable goddesses (σεμνὰι θεὰι), or the Eumenides, because they had been propitious (ἐυμενεῖς) to Orestes after his acquittal by the court of Areopagus. This was owing partly to a general dislike of alluding to gloomy subjects, which led them, among other things, to avoid speaking openly of death or the dead (hence the phrases ὁι καμόντες, ὁι κατοιχόμενοι, those who are worn out, the departed, &c.); partly to wishing to propitiate an object of dread by fair words, as the Highlanders called fairies “men of peace,” especially on a Friday, when their power was greatest, and the Lowlanders entitled them “good neighbours,” and the devil himself the “goodman,” keeping reverentially out of sight his territorial designation.