Note 302 — Chapter II · THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN DEITIES. (continued 2)

An attempt has been made by one authority on the folk-lore of Athens (Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, I. pp. 218 and 222), to distinguish καλοκυρᾶδες from νεράϊδες. He maintains that in Athens the latter were never regarded as maleficent beings, and must therefore be distinguished from the dread καλοκυρᾶδες, whom he seeks to identify, on no better ground than the euphemistic name, with the Eumenides. A folk-story, however, which he himself records (ibid. p. 319), how a καλοκυρά was married to a prince, whose eyes she had blinded to all other women, and how after living with him for a while she disappeared finally in a whirlwind, reveals in her all the usual traits of a Nereid, and thus defeats the writer’s previous contention. But apart from this a little enquiry on the subject outside the limits of Athens would have set at rest his doubts as to the identity of the two. It is quite possible that formerly in Athens, as now elsewhere, it was usual to employ the euphemism καλοκυρᾶδες in referring to the Nereids in their more mischievous moods; only in that way can I explain his idea that the Nereids were never maleficent.