This poem has some points in common with a belief said to be held in the district of Parnassos, that if a young man--especially one who is handsome--play the flute or sing at mid-day or midnight upon the shore, the Lamia thereof emerges from the depths of the sea, and with promises of a happy life tries to persuade him to be her husband and to come with her into the sea; if the young man refuse, she slays him[440]; and presumably, though this is not mentioned, if he consent, she drowns him.
The same Lamia, it is recorded[441], is also known on the coasts of Elis as a dangerous foe to sailors; for her work is the waterspout and the whirlwind, whereby their ships are engulfed. Among the Cyclades too the same belief certainly prevails (though I have never obtained there any details concerning the character of the Lamia); for on seeing a waterspout the sailors will exclaim, ‘the Lamia of the Sea is passing’ (περνάει ἡ Λάμια τοῦ πελάγου), and sometimes stick a black-handled knife into the mast as a charm against her[442].
In these somewhat meagre accounts of the Lamia of the Sea, there are several points in harmony with the general conception of Nereids. She is beautiful; she seeks the love of young men, even though that love mean death to them; she is sweet of voice and untiring in dance; and she passes to and fro in waterspout or whirlwind. It is not surprising then to find that in Elis she is actually named queen of the Nereids[443], that is, without doubt, of the sea-nymphs only, since she herself has her domain only in the sea. And the title ‘queen of the shore’ which I learnt of my boatman from Scyros points to the same belief; for as we found Artemis, ‘queen of the mountains,’ to be the leader of all the Nereids of the land, so should ‘the queen of the shore’ be ruler over the Nereids of the sea.
How far this conception of the Lamia of the Sea accords with classical tradition, it is impossible to decide. Only in one passage, a fragment of Stesichorus[444], is there any evidence of the connexion of a Lamia with the sea. There the marine monster, Scylla, was made ‘the daughter of Lamia,’ a phrase which has given rise to the conjecture that the ancients like the moderns, as we shall see in the next section, recognised more than one species. A marine Lamia would supply the most natural parentage for Scylla; and if her mother may be identified with the modern Lamia of the Sea, the foe of ships and creator of the waterspout, the character of Scylla is true to her lineage.