He also told the story of a woman defending her tower against a Turkish force while covering the escape of a servant and her two children through a back door. In fact, the courage and fighting ability of women in the Mani was indisputable and the Earl of Carnarvon acknowledged this when he wrote about meeting Petrobey Mavromichalis's mother, "a most interesting person, who had with her own hand fought against the Turks, and on more than one occasion had defeated them." 
There was another side of Maniat life which appears to be almost a contradiction of the fierce reputation acquired by the Maniats as pirates, mercenaries and brigands - the tradition of hospitality. "Nor less sacred was the virtue of hospitality." wrote the Earl of Carnarvon, "Poor themselves, and barely deriving a subsistence from their rugged soil, they would accept any privation or make any sacrifice for the humblest stranger who might claim their assistance." Leake also encountered unreserved hospitality wherever he went and none more so than when he met an old priest at Kiparissos, "whose only costume is a jacket with a pair of wide trowsers of course blanketing of Maniat manufacture, receives me with an air of cheerfulness and hospitality;" After describing his obvious poverty, Leake goes on to say, "He points, however, without hesitation, to the only fowl he possesses, as he desired us to "take off its head", imitating the action of a Pasha ordering an execution."
Another facet of Mani culture was superstition and The Earl of Carnarvon records many examples of this. It may seem logical that men who held life so cheap might well be haunted by the ghosts of their victims but this is not the case - as Carnarvon takes pains to point out. They were not haunted by their deeds and held in disdain any ghost of a victim of theirs - "Why should we care for the ghost of an enemy." are the words of a Maniat soldier as recorded by the Earl.
Superstition in the Mani mainly took the form of demons which haunted certain places and the activities of witches. For instance, the Earl wrote of an incident where he picked up a fresh egg at the road side and offered it to a soldier in his escort who took it willingly and then returned it very quickly. The reason given for this was that it may have been  bewitched by an old hag and whoever ate it might be forced to marry her! 
The superstition which I find the most surprising was the belief in Vampires which, like their Transylvanian cousins, sucked the blood from the living and eventually caused their death. Carnarvon was shown a house where the owner, a shoemaker, had returned from the grave every night except Saturday night and, as well as making a few shoes, had made his wife pregnant! When accused of infidelity to her husband's memory, she told them the cause. "At this horrifying disclosure," wrote the Earl, "the villagers sallied forth to attack the Vampire in his tomb, undertaking the enterprise on a Saturday morning, on which day alone the Vampire's devil-imparted strength forsakes him, and the grave has power to hold his body.
They found him working in his grave, making shoes. "How did you know I was  a Vampire?" exclaimed the still living tenant of the tomb. A villager, in answer, pointed to a youth whose cheek a month before had been bright with health, but on which the ghastly paleness of disease and coming death had fixed its mark. The Vampire immediately spat at him. The moisture from those accursed lips burnt the man's capote (jacket) as though it had been fire, but it could not hurt the man himself, because it was blessed Saturday."
The Earl continues the story with the Vampire threatening the entire village with vengeance so the villagers tore him to pieces, cut out his heart and divided it into portions which were distributed and eaten by the villagers - this being the sure and proven method of disposing of his kind.
An earlier superstition, which was recorded in a letter from the Bishop of Monemvasia to the then Byzantine Emperor, prior to his visit to the Peloponnese in 1415, was the practice of severing the finger of a murdered man and soaking this in a glass of wine to ward off evil spirits. Superstition still exists but, as far as I know, in less drastic form - rather like "walking under a ladder" or Friday 13^th. I once gave a lift in my car to three Papas or Priests and when I told a Greek friend, he was horrified. Giving a lift to one Priest was inviting bad luck and he hated to think what could happen to me after having three in my car! I don't know why Priests are considered unlucky but Patrick Leigh Fermor in his book about the Mani talks of the possible bad luck when a priest boarded the same boat that he was on and the effect this had on other passengers and crew.  "Gorgons and Centaurs" - Chapter 13 of the book -  is a fascinating study in which he  attributes superstition to a continuation of the pagan beliefs of Ancient Greece. 
The violent lifestyle of the Mani meant that death was a constant companion  and in virtually every household or family there would be a widow wearing black. In this harsh landscape, death served to perpetuate a tradition as old as Greece herself - the funeral dirge or Miroloyia - which is still practised today. I have no experience of these dirges but D. Eliopoulou Rogan explains them very clearly in her book "Mani: History and Monuments". (Out of print) - as does Patrick Leigh Fermor in "Mani".