'angelic' as well as of 'demoniacal' possession; and Father Richard details the cruelties and tortures inflicted upon a woman suspected of the former in order to make the pernicious angelic spirit within her confess its name. The characters of [Greek: daimonia] and [Greek: angelika] are in fact the same, and the subtle theological distinctions which might be drawn between them are naturally lost on a people who see them treated even by the priests as equally baneful.
A few other local or dialectic names remain to be noticed. Two of them, [Greek: stoiche[i(]a] and [Greek: telônia], denote properly two several species of supernatural beings—the former being the genii of fixed places[1], and the latter aërial beings chiefly concerned with the passage of men from this world to the next[2]—and are only loosely and locally employed in a more comprehensive sense. The name [Greek: smerdakia], recorded from Philiatrá in Messenia, is apparently a diminutive form from a root meaning 'terrible[3].' A Cretan word [Greek: kantanika] is of less certain etymology, but if, as has been surmised, it has any relation with the verb [Greek: kantaneuô]), 'to go down to the underworld,' and hence 'to fall into a trance,' ('entranced' spirits being thought temporarily to have departed thither,) it may denote either denizens of the lower world or beings who frighten men into a senseless and trance-like state[4]. Next come the two words [Greek: zoumpira] and [Greek: zôntobola], of which I believe the interpretation is one and the same. Bernhard Schmidt[5], whose work I have constantly consulted in this and later chapters, would derive the former from a middle-Greek word [Greek: zombros][6], equivalent to the ancient [Greek: tragelaphos], a fantastic animal of Aristophanic fame; but it was explained to me in Scyros to be a jocose euphemism as applied to supernatural beings and to denote properly parasitic insects. The implied combination of superstitious awe in avoiding the name of supernatural things with a certain broad humour in substituting what is, to the peasant, one of the lesser annoyances of life is certainly characteristic of the Greek folk; and the accuracy of the explanation given; and [Greek: smerdos = lêma, rhômê, dynamis, hormêma].], IV. p. 517.]
