THE ISLANDS of the Aegean Sea offer plenty of scope for the study of Hellenic archaeology, but they are more particularly rich in the preservation of manners and customs which have survived the lapse of years; and the result of a special study of both these points, made during two winters passed by my wife and myself amongst the islanders in their distant hamlets, and in their towns by the sea-coast, I here place before the public.

The causes which have conduced to making the Cyclades a favourable field for the study of Hellenic folklore are these; First, the islands were never, like the mainland, subject to the incursions of barbarous tribes; this fact is especially noticeable in the island of Andros, the most northern and the most accessible of the Cycladic group from the mainland by way of Euboea. The northern portion of this island is exclusively Albanian in speech, manners, and customs. The Greeks in the south are highly influenced by this intermixture, which has in a measure destroyed the identity of the continental Greeks; but here the Albanian wave has ended, there is not a trace of it in any other of the Cyclades.

Secondly, the Italian influence which was dominant in the Middle Ages in the Cyclades has left traces which extend little beyond the towns on the sea-coast. The Latin rule seems to have been a mild one, but unpopular amongst the Greeks; religious feeling between East and West ran high, and each party throughout retained their customs and their cult. At Naxos, for example, there are still existing many families of Italian origin who retain their religion; they reside almost exclusively in the chief town. The sailors, in their dialect, have quantities of Italian words, but up in the mountains of Naxos, a few hours’ distance from the town, the villages are inhabited by Greeks of the most undoubted pedigree. It is the same at Santorin, where the Italian influence was equally pronounced. If you leave the towns and go into the villages, you find customs existing the very nature of which stamps them as Hellenic.

Thirdly, during the Turkish times the Cyclades were hardly ever interfered with, and if they annually sent their tribute to the Kapitan Pasha when he anchored off Cape Drio of Paros to collect the revenues, the islanders were practically allowed self-government. It was not so with the Sporades, which are far more productive and easier of access. Chios, Lesbos, Samos and others are perfect gardens as compared with the Cyclades; and to the smaller islands of the Cycladic group, such as Ios, Sikinos, Pholygandros, some of which appear to have been uninhabited, or nearly so, during the Latin rule, refugees came and settled about this time from all parts of Greece. The Cretans, the Peloponnesians, and the inhabitants of Asia Minor, to escape from Turkish oppression, built walled villages up on the hills to protect themselves from pirates, and there they have maintained their customs undisturbed ever since.

From these facts it will be obvious that these islands, especially the smaller ones, offer unusual facilities for the study of the manners and customs of the Greeks as they are, with a view to comparing them with those of the Greeks as they were. The mainland of Greece has been overrun by barbaric tribes: the Ionian islands have been thoroughly Italianised: Greece in Asia Minor, and the islands adjacent to the coast have been swamped in Islamism: yet the Cyclades have remained more or less as they were, thanks to their insignificance and unproductive soil.

I did not find much literature to assist me in my researches. Tournefort’s ‘Travels in the East’ was a pleasant companion, adducing quaint historical facts and showing us what the islands were like at the end of the seventeenth century. Ludwig Ross, in his Inselreisen, guides the traveller to the principal points of antiquity, which were discovered fifty years ago. Bernard Schmidt’s Volksleben der Neugriechen formed an excellent basis on which to start inquiries about the manners and customs; but as his material was chiefly culled from the Ionian islands and the mainland, I found a vast difference existing between the customs he has collected and those of the Cyclades. Von Hahn’s collection of fables, Wachsmuth’s work on Greek folklore, and one or two others of minor importance, I found very useful for suggesting remarks, and these invariably provoked a discussion whence the genuine local customs were learnt.

But personal intercourse with the islanders in all grades of society, at their work and at their board, proved to us the most infallible method of understanding their life and their superstitions as they exist to-day; and the kindly hospitality with which they received us, and the surprise they evinced at seeing for the first time amongst them an English lady, will remain for ever fixed on our memories. My first experiences were made with the assistance of a dragoman; but, on better acquaintance with the language, I learnt to despise his services, and took as servant a native of one of the islands, who became invaluable in assisting me to discover points of folklore which without him it would have been impossible to arrive at.

J. THEODORE BENT.

13 GREAT CUMBERLAND PLACE, W.
November 1884.

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I beg leave here to acknowledge the kindness of Messrs. Macmillan, who have allowed me to reprint, under a slightly enlarged form, my articles entitled, ‘A Panhellenic Festival,’ ‘Easter Week in Amorgos,’ ‘The Capital of the Cyclades,’ which appeared in their magazine, and the article which has been published by them in the Hellenic Journal respecting my excavations at Antiparos; also that of Messrs. Chatto & Windus, for allowing me to republish an article which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine under the title of ‘In Greek Waters.’