SIR,—Mr. Harold Nicolson quotes with scant respect the story that
"the caryatids of the Erechtheum shrieked so shrilly when Lord Elgin sought to transport them to London that the Athenian workmen fled in panic." There is better authority for the story than Ripley's New Believe it or Not, and in justice to the Greeks it is only fair to point out that the workmen who ran away were Turks. Mr. Ripley seems to have drawn from a muddied source, and the authentic version is found in a collec- tion of traditional stories made by G. N. Politis and quoted in A. Thumb's Handbook of the Modern Greek Vernacular. There it runs as follows: " When the Milord had carried off one of the six Maidens of the Castle' he sent -word to the Turks asking them to bring down the others at night. But the men who went to fetch them heard them lamenting woefully 'and calling out to:,their sister. The Turks fled terror-stricken and would not on any account attempt to bring them down. Many other people below the Castle heard the marble maidens weep at night for their sister who had been carried away."
Believe it or not, but let us recognise tat a moving piece of Hellenic imagination deserves a better fate than to be held up to ridicule together with Mr. Ripley's " wonders, miracles, freaks, monstrosities and almost
impossibilities."—Yours faithfully, S. HILLELSON. 4 Porchester Court, Porchester Gardens, W.2.
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