In a review of Mr. M. G. Mikhailidis-Nouaros' Λαογραφικὰ ∑ύμμεικτα Καρπάθου, published in Vol. LII (1932) of this Journal, p. 335, I noticed as remarkable and interesting his statement that people in that island, when writing to their friends and relations abroad, will often compose the letter, either entirely or at all events for the most part, in μαντινάδες, those distichs which, half improvised and half traditional, are sung at most of the greater occasions of village life in the Greek islands. That is to say, they avoid prose composition. Such a letter can hardly contain much news in our sense of the word: it serves, however, to transmit the feelings of the writer in the only form in which he or she has learned to express them. Of these letters the author gives a couple of recent examples. The point has a certain interest, because it has been remarked that the most primitive literary composition is apt to be in verse, and that prose is an art coming later.