Note 2 — Chapter I · THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.

But, besides these forms of religion which were directly imported from foreign lands, there remained a stratum of local beliefs which even after twenty centuries of Christianity still flourish, discredited though they may be by priests and placed under the ban of the official creed. Thus in Greece, while the high gods of the divine race of Achilles and Agamemnon are forgotten, the Nereids, the Cyclopes and the Lamia still live in the faith of the peasants of Thessaly.2 So in modern Tuscany there is actually as much heathenism as catholicism, and they still believe in La Vecchia Religione—“the old religion;”—and while on great occasions they have recourse to the priests, they use magic and witchcraft for all ordinary purposes.3