All the picturesque implements of country life are hers;
the poppy also, emblem of an inexhaustible fertility, and full of
mysterious juices for the alleviation of pain. The countrywoman who
puts her child to sleep in the great, cradle-like, basket, for
winnowing the corn, remembers Demeter Courotrophos, the mother of
corn and children alike, and makes it a little coat out of the dress
worn by its father at his initiation into her mysteries. Yet she is
an angry goddess too, sometimes--Demeter Erinnys, the goblin of the
neighbourhood, haunting its shadowy places. She lies on the ground
out of doors on summer nights, and becomes wet with the dew. She
grows young again every spring, yet is of great age, the wrinkled
woman of the Homeric hymn, who becomes the nurse of Demophoon. Other
lighter, errant stories nest themselves, as time goes on, within the
greater. The water-newt, which repels the lips of the traveller who
stoops to drink, is a certain urchin, Abas, who spoiled by his
mockery the pleasure of the thirsting goddess, as she drank once of a
wayside spring in her wanderings. The night-owl is the transformed
Ascalabus, who alone had seen Persephone eat that morsel [106] of
pomegranate, in the garden of Aidoneus.
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