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Excerpt from The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks 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 frpm the mainland by way of Euboea. The northern portion of this island is exclu sively Albanian ln speech, manners, and customs. The Greeks in the south are highly inuenced by this inter mixture, 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 inuence 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 inuence 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format