The Callicántzari (Καλλικάντζαροι) are the most monstrous of all the creatures of the popular imagination, and none are better known to the Greek-speaking world at large; for even where educated men have ceased to believe in them, they still figure in the stories told and retold to children with each recurring New Year’s Day; and, among the peasants, many reach manhood or womanhood without outgrowing their early fears of them.

The name Callicantzaros itself appears in many dialectic and widely differing forms, and there are also a multitude of local by-names. Of the former I shall treat later in discussing the origin of the word Callicantzaros, while the by-names, being for the most part descriptive of the appearance or qualities of these monsters, will be mentioned as occasion requires. But even where other local names are in common use, some form of the word Callicantzaros is almost always employed as well, or at least is understood.

As in the nomenclature, so too in the description of the Callicantzari, one locality differs very widely from another. And this cannot be merely a result of the wide distribution of the belief in them; for the Nereids certainly are equally widely known, and yet their appearance and habits are, broadly speaking, everywhere the same. The extraordinary divergences and even contradictions in different accounts of the Callicantzari demand some other explanation than that of casual variation. That explanation, as I shall show later, lies in their identity with the ancient Centaurs. But before I discuss their origin, I must attempt as general a description of their appearance and habits as the vast variation of local traditions permits. In revising this description I have had the advantage of consulting Prof. Polites’ new work on the traditions of modern Greece[511], from which I have learnt some new facts, and have obtained on several points confirmation from a new source of what I had myself heard or surmised. I take this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging my indebtedness to him.

In describing the Callicantzari, although the diversities of their outward form are almost endless, two main classes of them must be distinguished, because corresponding with that physical division there is also a marked difference in character. The two classes differ physically in stature, and, while all Callicantzari are essentially mischievous in character, the mischief wrought by the larger sort is often of a malicious and even deadly order, while the smaller sort are more frolicsome and harmless in their tricks.

The larger kind vary from the size of a man to that of a gigantic monster whose loins are on a level with the chimneypots. They are usually black in colour, and covered with a coat of shaggy hair, but a bald variety is also sometimes mentioned. Their heads and also their sexual organs are out of all proportion to the rest of their bodies. Their faces are black; their eyes glare red; they have the ears of goats or asses; from their huge mouths blood-red tongues loll out, flanked by ferocious tusks. Their bodies are in general very lean, so that in some districts the word Callicantzaros is applied metaphorically to a very lean man[512]; but a shorter and thickset variety also occurs. They have the arms and hands of monkeys, and their nails are as long again as their fingers and curved like the talons of a vulture. They are sometimes furnished with long thin tails. They have the legs of a goat or an ass, or sometimes one human leg and one of bestial form; or again both legs are of human shape, but the foot so distorted that the toes come where the heel should be[513]. Hence it is not surprising that they are often lame, but even so they are swift of foot and terrible in strength. ‘They devour their road at the pace of Pegasus,’ wrote Leo Allatius[514]; and at the present day several by-names bear witness to their speed. In Samos they are called Καλλισπούδηδες[515], ‘those who make good speed’; in Cyprus Πλανήταροι[516], ‘the wanderers’; in Athens they have the humorous title Κωλοβελόνηδες, formed from the proverbial expression βελόνια ἔχει ’στὸν κῶλο του, ‘he has needles in his buttocks,’ said of any one who cannot sit still, but is always on the move[517]. Their strength also has earned them one by-name, reported from Kardamýle in Maina, τὰ τσιλικρωτά, said to be formed from the Turkish tselik (‘iron’), in the sense of ‘strong as iron[518].’

All or any of the features which I have mentioned may be found in the person of a single Callicantzaros; but it must be allowed also that no one of them is essential. For sometimes the Callicantzaros appears in ordinary human form without so much as a cloven hoof to distinguish him from ordinary mankind, or again completely in animal shape. In one place they are described as ἀγριάνθρωποι[519], savages but human in appearance, while in another they are ἄγρια τετράποδα[520], ‘savage quadrupeds.’

Yet in general the Callicantzari are neither wholly anthropomorphic nor wholly theriomorphic, but a blend of the two. In a story of some men at Athens who dressed themselves up as Callicantzari, it is said that they blacked their faces and covered themselves with feathers[521]. Again two grotesque and bestial clay statuettes from the Cabirium near Thebes and now in the National Museum at Athens, were identified by peasants as Callicantzari[522]; an identification I have also met with when questioning peasants about similar objects in local museums; in one case it was a Satyr and in another a Centaur which my guide identified as a Callicantzaros. On the whole I should say that the goat contributes more than any other animal to the popular conception of these monsters. Besides having the legs and the ears of goats, as was noted above, they are sometimes said to have their horns also; and in Chios their resemblance to goats is so clearly recognised that in one village they have earned the by-name of Κατσικᾶδες[523], which by formation should mean ‘men who have to do with goats (κατσίκια),’ though it has apparently been appropriated to the designation of beings who are in form half goat and half man. There are however districts, as we shall see later, in which some other animal than the goat forms the predominant element in the monstrous ensemble.

The smaller sort of Callicantzari is rarer than the large, but their distribution is at any rate wide. They are the predominant type in north-west Arcadia, in the district about Mount Parnassus, and at Oenoë[524] on the southern shore of the Black Sea. They are most often human in shape, but are mere pigmies, no taller than a child of five or six. They are usually black, like the larger sort, but are smooth and hairless. They are very commonly deformed, and in this respect the strange beasts on which they ride are like them. At Arachova[525], on the slopes of Parnassus, every one of them is said to have some physical defect. Some are lame; others squint; others have only one eye; others have their noses or mouths, hands or feet set all askew; and as a cavalcade of them passes by night through the village, one is to be seen mounted on a cock and his long thin legs trail on the ground as he rides; another has a horse no bigger than a small dog; another, the tiniest of them all, is perched on an enormous donkey’s back, and when he falls off cannot mount again; and others again ride strange unknown beasts, lame, one-eyed, or one-eared like their masters.

Callicantzari of this type are usually harmless to men. They play indeed the same boisterous pranks as their larger brethren, but perhaps owing to their insignificant size are an object of merriment rather than of fear. But, as I shall show later, there is reason to believe that they are not the original type of Callicantzari. It is only by a casual development of the superstition, that these grotesque hobgoblins have been locally substituted for the grim and gaunt monsters feared elsewhere. They form, as it were, a modern and expurgated edition of the larger sort of Callicantzari, to whom I now return.

The Callicantzari appear only during the δωδεκαήμερον or ‘period of twelve days’ between Christmas and Epiphany[526]. The rest of the year they live in the lower world, and occupy themselves in trying to gnaw through or cut down the great tree (or in other accounts the one or more columns) on which the world rests. Each Christmas they have nearly completed their task, when the time comes for their appearance in the upper world, and during their twelve days’ absence, the supports of the world are made whole again.

Even during their short visit to this world, they do not appear in the daytime. From dawn till sunset they hide themselves in dark and dank places—in caves or beneath mills—and there feed on such food as they can collect, worms, snakes, frogs, tortoises, and other unclean things. But at night they issue forth and run wildly to and fro, rending and crushing those who cross their path. Destruction and waste, greed and lust mark their course. Now they break into some lonely mill, terrify and coerce the miller into showing them his store, bake for themselves cakes thereof, befoul with urine all that they cannot use, and are gone again. Now they pass through some hamlet, and woe to that house which is not prepared against their coming. By chimney and door alike they swarm in, and make havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief they overturn and break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork, befoul all the water and wine and food which remains, and leave the occupants half dead with fright or violence. Now it is a wine shop that they enter, bind the publican to his chair, gag him with dung, break open each cask in turn, drink their fill, and leave the wine running. Now they light upon some belated wayfarer, and make sport of him as their fancy leads them. Sometimes his fate is only to dance all night with the Callicantzari and to be let go at cockcrow unscathed; for these monsters despite their uncouth shape delight in dancing, and to that end often seek the company of the Nereids; but more often men are sorely torn and battered before they escape, and women are forcibly carried off to be the monsters’ wives. In some accounts they even make a meal of their human prey.

The fact that the activities of the Callicantzari are always limited to the night-time has given them a special claim to the name Παρωρίταις or Νυχτοπαρωρίταις[527], formed from πάρωρα, ‘the hour before cockcrow,’ for then it is that their excesses and depredations have reached their zenith; but the word cannot correctly be called a by-name of the Callicantzari, for it is also, if more rarely, applied to other nocturnal visitants.

The only redeeming qualities in these creatures’ characters, from the point of view of men who fall into their clutches, are their stupidity and their quarrelsomeness. They have indeed a chieftain who sometimes tries to marshal and to discipline them, and who is at least wise enough to warn them when the hour of their departure draws near. But in general ‘the Great Callicantzaros[528],’ as he is called, or ‘the lame demon[529],’ is too like the rest of them to be of much avail; and indeed his place is not at the head of the riotous mob where he might control them, but he limps along, a grotesque and usually ithyphallic figure, in the rear. Thus in the popular stories it often happens that either the Callicantzari go on quarrelling about the treatment of some man or the possession of some woman whom they have captured, or else their prisoner is shrewd enough to keep them amused, until cock-crow brings release. For at that sound (or, to be more precise, at the crowing of the third cock, who is black and more potent to scare away demons than the white and red cocks who precede him[530]) they vanish away, like all terrors of the night in ancient[531] as well as modern times, to their dark lairs.

The tales told by the peasants about the Callicantzari are extremely numerous, though there is a certain sameness about the main themes. Three types of story however are deserving of notice, to illustrate the character of the Callicantzari and the ways in which they may be outwitted and eluded.

The first type may be represented by a tale told to me in Scyros in explanation of the name of a cave some half-hour distant from the town. Both the cave itself and that part of the path which lies just below it are popularly called τοῦ καλλικαντζάρου τὸ ποδάρι, ‘the Callicantzaros’ foot.’ My enquiries concerning the name elicited the following story, which seems incidentally to explain how the Great Callicantzaros came to be lame.

‘Once upon the eve of Epiphany a man of Scyros was returning home from a mill late at night, driving his mule before him laden with two sacks of meal. When he had gone about half-way, he saw before him some Callicantzari in his path. Realising his danger, he at once got upon his mule and laid himself flat between the two sacks and covered himself up with a rug, so as to look like another sack of meal. Soon the Callicantzari were about his mule, and he held his breath and heard them saying, “Here is a pack on this side and a pack on that side, and the top-load in the middle, but where is the man?” So they ran back to the mill thinking that he had loitered behind; but they could not find him and came back after the mule, and looked again, and said, “Here is a pack on this side and a pack on that side, and the top-load in the middle, but where is the man?” So they ran on in front fearing that he had hasted on home before his mule. But when they could not find him, they returned again, and said as before, and went back a second time towards the mill. And thus it happened many times. Now while they were running to and fro, the mule was nearing home, and it so happened that when the beast stopped at the door of the man’s house, the Callicantzari were close on his track. The man therefore called quickly to his wife and she opened the door and he entered in safety, but the mule was left standing without. Then the Callicantzari saw how he had tricked them, and they knocked at the door in great anger. So the woman, fearing lest they would break in by force, promised to open to them on condition that they should first count for her the holes in her sieve. To this they agreed, and she let it down to them by a cord from a window. Straightway they set to work to count, and counted round and round the outermost circle and never got nearer to the middle; nor could they discover how this came to pass, but only counted more and more hurriedly, without advancing at all. Meanwhile dawn was breaking, and so soon as the neighbours perceived the Callicantzari, they hurried off to the priests and told them. The priests immediately set out with censers and sprinkling-vessels in their hands, to chase the Callicantzari away. Right through the town the monsters fled, spreading havoc in their path and hotly pursued by the priests. At last when they were clear of the town, one Callicantzaros began to lag behind, and by a great exertion the foremost priest came up to him and struck him on the hinder foot with his sprinkling vessel. At once the foot fell off, but the Callicantzaros fled away maimed though he was. And thus the spot came to be known as “the Callicantzaros’ foot.”’

This story consists of three episodes. The first, in which the driver of the mule outwits the Callicantzari by lying flat on the animal’s back and making himself look like a sack of meal, occurs time after time in the popular tales with hardly any variation; indeed it often forms in itself the motif of a whole story, in which, as soon as the man reaches his home, the cock crows and the Callicantzari flee. The second episode in which the wife effects some delay by bargaining with the Callicantzari that they shall count the holes in a sieve, is also fairly common, but the difficulty which the monsters find, in every other version of which I know, is that they dare not pronounce the word ‘three,’ and so go on counting ‘one, two,’ ‘one, two’ till cock-crow[532]. The third episode in which the priests chase away the Callicantzari is not often found in current stories, but the belief that the ἁγιασμός or ‘hallowing’ which takes place on the morning of Epiphany is the signal for the final departure of the Callicantzari is firmly held throughout Greece. This ceremony consists primarily in ‘blessing the waters’—whether of the sea, of rivers, of village-wells, or, as at Athens, of the reservoir—by carrying a cross in procession to the appointed place and throwing it in; but in many districts also the priests afterwards fill vessels with the blest waters, and with these and their censers make a round of the village, sprinkling and purifying the people and their houses and cornfields and vineyards. The fear which the Callicantzari feel of this purification is embodied in some rough lines which they are supposed to chant as they disappear at Twelfth-night:

In the actual tales however as told by the people the intervention of the priests is not a common episode. More often the story ends in a rescue effected by neighbours armed with firebrands, of which the Callicantzari go in mortal terror, or simply with the crowing of the black cock.

The second type of story deals with the adventures of a girl sent by her wicked stepmother to a mill during the dangerous Twelve Days, nominally to get some corn ground, but really in the hope that she will fall a prey to the Callicantzari. Having arrived at the mill the girl calls in vain to the miller to come and help unload her mule, and entering in search of him finds him bound to his chair or dead with fright and the Callicantzari standing about him. They at once seize the girl, and begin to quarrel which shall have her for his own. But the girl keeps her wits, and says that she will be the wife of the one who brings her the best bridal array. So they disperse in search of fine raiment and jewels. Meanwhile she sets to work to grind the corn, and each time a Callicantzaros returns with presents, she sends him on a fresh errand for something more. Finally the corn is all ground, and she quickly loads the mule with two sacks, one on either side, clothes herself in the gold and jewels which the Callicantzari have brought, mounts the mule and lies flat on the saddle covered over with a sack, and eluding the Callicantzari who pursue her, like the muleteer in the previous story, reaches home in safety.

The wicked stepmother seeing that her plans have miscarried and that her stepdaughter is now rich while her own daughter is poor, determines to send the latter the next evening to the mill. She too finds the mill occupied by the Callicantzari, but not being so shrewd as her half-sister either falls a victim to the lust of the monsters, or is killed and eaten by them, or, in one version[534], is stripped of her own clothes, dressed in the skin of her mule which the Callicantzari have killed and flayed, and sent home with a necklace of the mule’s entrails about her neck.

The third type of story, one which is known all over Greece, introduces us to the domestic circle of a Callicantzaros. A midwife is roused one night during the Twelve Days by a furious rapping at her door, and, imagining that the call is urgent, slips on her clothes in haste without enquiring who it is that needs her services, and stepping out of her door finds herself face to face either with an unmistakeable Callicantzaros who seizes her and carries her off, or else with a man unknown to her who subsequently proves to be a Callicantzaros[535]. On their way to his home he bids her see to it that the child with which his wife is about to present him be male; in that case he will reward her handsomely; but if a female child be born, he will devour the midwife. Arrived at the cave or house where the Callicantzaros dwells, the midwife goes about her task, and the Callicantzaros’ wife is soon delivered of a child; but to the midwife’s horror it is female. Her wits however do not desert her, and she quickly devises a scheme for her escape. Taking a candle, she warms it and fashions from the wax a model of the male organs and fastens it to the child. Then calling the Callicantzaros, she tells him that a fine male child is born and holds up the infant for him to see. Thereat he is content and bids her swaddle it. This done, she craves leave to go home, and the Callicantzaros, true to his word, rewards her with a sack of gold and lets her go.

The conclusion of the story varies. In some versions, the fraud is discovered before the midwife reaches her home, the Callicantzaros curses the gold which he has given her, and when she opens her sack she finds nothing but ashes. In others, she reaches home in safety with the gold and by magic means breaks the power of the Callicantzaros over his gift; and when he arrives at her door in hot pursuit, she has already taken all precautions against his entrance and lies secure and silent within.

The wife of the Callicantzaros here mentioned is in some stories pictured as being of the same monstrous species as himself, in others as an ordinary woman whom he has seized and carried off. But, apart from these stories in which she is a necessary persona dramatis, she has no hold upon the popular imagination. A feminine word, καλλικαντζαρίνα or καλλικαντζαροῦ, has been formed in this case just as the word νεραΐδης[536] has been formed as masculine of Nereid (νεράϊδα), and female Callicantzari are as rare and local as male Nereids. Their existence is assumed only as complementary to that of their mates.

Security from the Callicantzari is sought by many methods, some of them Christian in character, others magical or pagan. Foremost among Christian precautions is the custom of marking a cross in black upon the house-door on Christmas Eve; and the same emblem is sometimes painted upon the various jars and vessels in which food is kept to ensure them against befouling by the Callicantzari, and even upon the forehead of infants, especially if they are unbaptised, to prevent them from being stolen or strangled[537] by the monsters. If in spite of these precautions the inmates of any house are troubled by them, the burning of incense is accounted an effectual safeguard. For out-door use, if a man is unfortunate enough to encounter Callicantzari, an invocation of the Trinity or the recitation of three Paternosters is recommended.

But precautions of a more pagan character are often preferred to these or combined with them. Ordinary prudence demands that the fire be kept burning through all the Twelve Days, to prevent the Callicantzari entering by the chimney, and the usual custom is to set one huge log on end up the chimney, to go on burning for the whole period. In addition to this a fire is sometimes kept burning at night close by the house-door. Certain herbs also, such as ground-thistle[538], hyssop, and asparagus[539], may be suspended at the door or the chimney-place, as magical charms. If even then there is reason to suspect that Callicantzari are prowling round the house, the golden rule is to observe strict silence and, above all, not to answer any question asked from without the door; for it is commonly believed that the Callicantzari, like the Nereids, can deprive of speech any who have once talked with them. At the same time it is wise to make up the fire, throwing on either something which will crackle like salt or heather[540], or something which will smell strong, such as a bit of leather, an old shoe, wild-cherry wood[541], or ground-thistle; for the stench of these is as unbearable to the Callicantzari as that of incense.

Such at any rate is the current explanation of the purpose of these malodorous combustibles; but in view of the notorious gullibility of the Callicantzari I am tempted to surmise that both the crackling and the smell were originally intended to pacify them for a while with the delusive hope that a share of the Christmas pork, their favourite food, was being prepared for them. For certainly even now propitiatory presents to the Callicantzari are not unknown. At Portariá and other villages of Mount Pelion it is the custom to hang a rib or other bone from the pork inside the chimney ‘for the Callicantzari,’ but whether as a means of appeasement or of aversion the people seem no longer to know: in Samos however the first sweetmeats made at the New Year are placed in the chimney avowedly as food for the Callicantzari[542], and in Cyprus waffles and sausages are put in the same place as a farewell feast to them on the Eve of Epiphany[543]. Moreover in earlier times the custom of appeasing them with food was undoubtedly more widespread; for in places where, so far as I know, the custom itself no longer exists, a few lines supposed to be sung by the Callicantzari on the eve of their departure are still remembered, in which they ask for ‘a little bit of sausage, a morsel of waffle, that the Callicantzari may eat and depart to their own place[544].’

But propitiation of the Callicantzari, in spite of this evidence of offerings made to them, is certainly not now so much in vogue as precautions against them; and it is perhaps simpler to suppose that the choice of crackling or odorous fuel was originally prompted by the intention of conveying to the Callicantzari a plain warning that the fire within the house was burning briskly; for apart from the Christian means of defence—crosses, incense, invocations and the general purification on the morning of Epiphany—it may be said that the one thing which they really fear is fire. Everywhere it is held that so long as a good fire is kept burning on the hearth the Callicantzari cannot gain access to the house by their favourite entrance; and that the utmost they will venture is to vent their urine down the chimney in the hope of extinguishing the fire. For this reason the wood-ashes from the hearth, which are generally stored up and used in the washing of clothes, are during the Twelve Days left untouched, and after the purification at Epiphany are carried out of the house; but in some districts[545], though the ashes are not thought suitable for ordinary use, they are not thrown away as worthless impurities, but, owing I suppose to their contact with supernatural beings, are held to be endowed with magically fertilising properties and are sprinkled over the very same fields and gardens which the priests have sprinkled with holy water. Again there are not a few stories current[546] in which a Callicantzaros, attracted to some house at Christmas-tide by the smell of roasting pork, has been put to rout by having the hot joint or the spit on which it was turning thrust in his face. In one version also of the song which the Callicantzari are supposed to sing as they depart, ‘the pot-bellied priest with censer and sprinkling-vessel’ is accompanied by his wife carrying hot water to scald them[547]. In other stories again the rescue of a man from the clutches of Callicantzari is effected by his neighbours with fire-brands as their only weapons; and where such help cannot be obtained, a man may sometimes free himself merely by ejaculating ξύλα, κούτσουρα, δαυλιὰ καμμένα, ‘sticks, logs, and brands ablaze!’ for the very thought of fire will sometimes scare the monsters away.

Other safeguards are also mentioned; you are recommended for instance to keep a black cock in the house, or you may render the Callicantzaros harmless by binding him with a red thread or a straw rope[548]; but the latter method would in most cases be like putting salt on a bird’s tail.

Such, on a general view, are the monsters whose origin I now propose to examine; and the first step in the investigation must be to account for the extraordinary variations in shape exhibited by the Callicantzari in different districts.

I have already observed that the Callicantzari are sometimes conceived to be of ordinary human form, but that more commonly there is an admixture of something beast-like. Among the animals which are laid under contribution, first comes the he-goat, from which the Callicantzari borrow ears, horns, and legs. Almost equally common is a presentment of Callicantzari with the ears and the legs of an ass combined with a body in other respects human; or again the head of an ass, according to Pouqueville[549], may be combined with the body and legs of a man. In other districts again the wolf has once been a factor in the conception of Callicantzari. Thus in Messenia, in Cynouria (a district in the east of Laconia), and in parts of Crete[550] the Callicantzari are called also Λυκοκάντζαροι, in which the first half of the compound name is undoubtedly λύκος, ‘wolf.’ Similarly in some parts of Macedonia Callicantzari are often called simply ‘wolves’ (λύκοι), and both names are also applied metaphorically to any particularly ill-favoured man[551]. Resemblances to apes are also mentioned, particularly in the long, lean, hairy arms of the Callicantzari; and Pouqueville speaks also of their monkey-like tails[552]. Next from Phoeniciá in Epirus comes the suggestion that Callicantzari may resemble squirrels; for there they have the two by-names σκιορίσματα and καψιούρηδες[553], in which it is not hard to recognise the two ancient Greek names for the squirrel, σκίουρος and καμψίουρος. Concerning the local character of these I have no information; but it is fairly safe to surmise that they possess the power, commonly ascribed to the smaller sort of Callicantzari, of climbing with great dexterity the walls and roofs of houses in order to gain access by the chimney. Finally in Myconos, as noted above, the Callicantzari are described as ‘savage four-footed things’—a description which need not exclude some human attributes any more than it does in the savage four-footed Centaurs of ancient art, but implies it would seem at least a predominance of the bestial over the human element.

What then is the explanation of these wide divergences of type? The answer is really very simple and final. The Callicantzari were originally believed to possess the power, which many supernatural beings share, of transforming themselves at their pleasure into any shape. The shapes most commonly assumed differed in different districts, and gradually, as the belief in the metamorphosis of Callicantzari here, there, and almost everywhere was forgotten, what had once been the commonest form locally assumed by Callicantzari became in the several districts their fixed and only form.

The correctness of this explanation was first proved to me by information obtained from the best source for all manner of stories and traditions about the Callicantzari, the villages on Mount Pelion. There I was definitely told that the Callicantzari are believed to have the power of assuming any monstrous shape which they choose; and the accuracy of this statement is, I find, now confirmed by information obtained independently by Prof. Polites[554] from one of these same villages, Portariá; he adds that there the shapes most frequently affected by Callicantzari are those of women, bearded men, and he-goats. Further evidence of the same belief existing also in Cyprus is adduced by the same writer. ‘The Planetari (πλανήταροι),’ so runs the popular tradition which he quotes from a work which I have been unable to consult, ‘who are also called in some parts of Cyprus Callicantzari, come to the earth at Christmas and remain all the Twelve Days. They are seen by persons who are ἀλαφροστοίχει̯ωτοι[555] (i.e., to give the nearest equivalent, ‘fey’). Sometimes they appear as dogs, sometimes as hares, sometimes as donkeys or as camels, and often as bobbins. Men who are ‘fey’ stumble over them, and stoop down to pick them up, when suddenly the bobbin rolls along of its own accord and escapes them. Further on it turns into a donkey or camel and goes on its way. The man is deceived (by its appearance) and mounts it, and the donkey grows as tall as a mountain and throws the man down from a great height[556], and he returns home half-dead, and if he does not die outright, he will be an invalid all his life[557].’

Linguistic evidence is also forthcoming that the same belief in the metamorphosis of these monsters was once held both in Epirus and in Samos. The by-name σκιορίσματα, recorded from Phoeniciá, proves more than the squirrel-form of Callicantzari; it implies that that shape is not natural but assumed. From the ancient word σκίουρος, comes by natural formation an hypothetical verb σκιουρίζω, ‘I become a squirrel,’ and thence the existing substantive σκιούρισμα or σκιόρισμα (for this difference in vocalisation is negligible in modern Greek) meaning ‘that which has turned into a squirrel.’ Similarly in Samos the by-name κακανθρωπίσματα means ‘those that have turned into evil men.’ Whether the belief implied by these names is still alive in Epirus, I do not know; in Samos it has apparently died out, for the word κακανθρωπίσματα is popularly there interpreted to mean ‘those who do evil to men[558]’—a meaning which the formation really precludes.

Since then the belief that Callicantzari possess the power of metamorphosis either obtains now or has once obtained in places as far removed from one another as Phoeniciá in Epirus, Mount Pelion, Samos, and Cyprus, it is reasonable to conclude that this quality was in earlier times universally attributed to them, and therewith the whole problem of their multifarious presentments in different districts is at once solved.

The next question which arises is this; if the various forms in which the Callicantzari are locally represented are, so to speak, so many disguises assumed by them at their own will, what is the normal form of the Callicantzaros when he is not exercising his power of self-transformation? On reviewing the various shapes assumed, one fact stands out clearly; it is the animal attributes of the Callicantzari which are variable, while the human element in their composition (with a possible exception in the case of the ‘savage quadrupeds’ of Myconos) is constant. But the variation of form results, as has been shown, from the power of transformation. Therefore the animal characteristics, which are variable, are the characteristics assumed at pleasure by the Callicantzari, and the constant or human element in their composition indicates their normal form. In other words, the Callicantzaros in his original and natural shape was anthropomorphic, as indeed he is sometimes still represented to be.

And here too, while the various types of Callicantzari are still before us, it is worth while to notice, at the cost of a short digression, a curious principle which seems to govern the representation of Callicantzari in those districts in which the belief in their power of metamorphosis has been lost. On Mount Pelion and in Cyprus the shapes which the Callicantzari are said to assume at will are those of known and familiar objects—in the former place of women, bearded men, and he-goats, in the latter of dogs, hares, donkeys, and camels—but always complete and single shapes whether of man or beast; on the other hand in the large majority of places in which the remembrance of this power of transformation is lost, the Callicantzari are represented in fanciful and abnormal shapes—hybrids as it were between men and such animals as goat, ass, or ape. What appears to have happened in these cases is that, as the belief in the metamorphosis of Callicantzari was lost from the local folklore, a sort of compensation was made by depicting them arrested in the process of transformation, arrested halfway in the transition from man to beast. Now there are very few parts of Greece in which this change in the superstition has not taken place; and each island of the Greek seas, each district of the Greek mainland—I had almost said each village, for the folklore like the dialect of two villages no more than an hour’s journey apart may differ widely—may be fairly considered to furnish separate instances on which a general principle can be founded. The law then which seems to me to have governed the evolution of Greek folklore is this, that a being of some single, normal, and known shape who has originally been believed capable of transforming himself into one or more other single, normal, and known shapes, comes to be represented, when the belief in his power of transformation dies out, as a being of composite, abnormal, and fantastic shape, combining incongruous features of the several single, normal, and known shapes.

How wide may be the application of this principle, I cannot pretend to determine; but obviously it may supply the solution of certain puzzles in ancient Greek mythology. The goddess Athene, to take but one instance, is in Homer regularly described as γλαυκῶπις, an epithet which, though interpreted by ancient artists in the sense of ‘blue-eyed’ or ‘gray-eyed,’ seems, in view of Athene’s connexion with the owl, to have meant originally ‘owl-faced’; for the sake of argument at any rate, without entering into the controversy on the subject, let me assume this; let it be granted that the goddess was once depicted as a maiden with an owl’s face. How is this hybrid form to be explained? If our principle holds here, the explanation is that in a still earlier stage of Greek mythology the goddess Athene was wont to transform herself into an owl and so manifest herself to her worshippers, just as in early Christian tradition it is recorded that once ‘the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove[559].’

But this digression is long enough. Later in this chapter I shall have occasion to return to the principle which has been formulated. At present the Callicantzari are calling.

Thus far our investigation has shown us that the Callicantzari were originally anthropomorphic, possessing indeed and exercising the power of transmutation into beast-form, but in their natural and normal form completely human in appearance. What therefore remains to be determined is whether these beings were anthropomorphic demons or simply men.

On this point there is a direct conflict of evidence at the present day. The very common tradition that the Callicantzari come from the lower world at Christmas and are driven back there by the purification at Epiphany; the fact that they are often mentioned under the vague names παγανά and ξωτικά which have already been discussed[560], and that their leader is sometimes called ὁ κουτσοδαίμονας, ‘the halting demon’; the belief that they are fond of dancing with the Nereids, and sometimes exercise also a power, proper to the Nereids, of taking away the speech of those who speak in their presence; these and other such considerations might be thought abundantly to prove that the Callicantzari were a species of demon.

But on the other hand there is equally abundant evidence of the belief that Callicantzari are men who are seized with a kind of bestial madness which often effects a beast-like alteration in their appearance. This madness is not chronic, but recurrent with each returning Christmas, and the victim of it displays for the time being all the savage and lustful passions of a wild animal. The mountaineers of South Euboea for example have acquired the reputation of being Callicantzari and are much feared by the dwellers on the coast.

A remarkable feature in this form of the superstition is the idea that the madness is congenital. Children born on Christmas-day, or according to some accounts on any day between Christmas and Epiphany, are deemed likely to become Callicantzari. This, it is naively said, is the due punishment for the sin of a mother who has presumed to conceive and to bring forth at seasons sacred to the Mother of God; whence also the children are called ἑορτοπιάσματα or ‘feast-stricken.’ In Chios, in the seventeenth century, this superstition was so strong that extraordinary methods of barbarism were adopted to render such children harmless. They were taken, says Leo Allatius[561], to a fire which had been lighted in the market-place, and there the soles of their feet were exposed to the heat until the nails were singed and the danger of their attacks obviated. A modern and modified form of this treatment is to place the child in an oven and to light a fire outside to frighten it, and then to ask the question, ‘Bread or meat?’ If the child says ‘bread,’ all is well; but if he says ‘meat,’ he is believed to be possessed by a savage craving for human flesh, and the treatment is continued till he answers ‘bread[562].’

These infant Callicantzari are particularly prone, it is said, to attack and kill their own brothers and sisters. Hence comes the by-name by which they are sometimes known, ἀδερφοφᾶδες, ‘brother-eaters,’ as also, according to Polites’ interpretation, the name κάηδες, which is an equivalent for Callicantzari in several islands of the Aegean Sea. This word Polites holds to be the plural of the name Cain, and to denote ‘brother-slayers’; but inasmuch as a longer form καϊμπίλιδες appears side by side with κάηδες in Carpathos[563], I hesitate to accept this interpretation of the one while the other remains to me wholly unintelligible. At any rate to the people themselves the word has ceased to convey any idea of murderous propensities; for in the island of Syme, where the name is in use, the beings denoted by it are held to be harmless[564].

The issue before us is well summarised in two popular traditions which Polites adduces from Oenoë and from Tenos, and which are in clear mutual contradiction. The tradition of Oenoë begins thus: ‘“Leave-us-good-sirs” (Ἀς-ἐμᾶς-καλοί) is the name which we give them (the Callicantzari), though they are really evil demons (ξωτικά).’ The tradition of Tenos opens with the words: ‘The Callicantzari are not demons (ζωτ’κά)[565]; they are men; as New Year’s Day approaches, they are stricken with a fit of madness and leave their houses and wander to and fro.’ How are we to decide which of these two traditions is the older?

The evidence in favour of either is at the present day abundant; the two chief authorities on the subject, Schmidt and Polites, both acknowledge this; and, in my own experience, I should have difficulty in saying which view of the Callicantzari I have the more frequently heard expressed. On the mainland they are most commonly demons; in the islands of the Aegean, more usually human. But in a matter of this kind it would be of no value to count heads; even if the whole population of Greece could be polled on the question, the view of the majority would have no more value than that of the minority. The issue must be decided on other than numerical grounds.

And clearly the first consideration which suggests itself must be the nature of the earliest evidence on the subject. The earliest authority then is Leo Allatius[566], and his statement is in brief as follows. Children born in the octave of Christmas are seized with a kind of madness; they rage to and fro with incredible swiftness; and their nails grow sharp like talons. To any wayfarer whom they meet they put the question ‘Tow or lead?’ If he answer ‘tow,’ he escapes unhurt; if he answer ‘lead,’ they crush him with all their power and leave him half-dead, lacerated by their talons.

Thus far the testimony of Leo Allatius distinctly favours the belief that Callicantzari are human and not demoniacal in origin; but at the same time it must be admitted that his statement was probably founded upon the particular traditions of his native island only and carries therefore less weight. The barbarous custom however which he next proceeds to describe is of some importance. He states that children born during the dangerous period between Christmas and New Year had the soles of their feet scorched until the nails were singed and so they could not become Callicantzari. Now there is a small but obvious inconsistency in this statement. Persons who scratch one another use, presumably, not their toe-nails but their finger-nails; and animals likewise employ the fore feet and not the hind feet. To scorch the feet therefore, and particularly the soles of the feet, is not a logical method of preventing the growth of talons. But on the other hand the treatment adopted might well be supposed to prevent the development of hoofs, such as in many parts of Greece the Callicantzari are still believed to have. In other words, the custom which Leo Allatius describes was not properly understood in his time. But a custom which has ceased to be properly understood and has had an inaccurate interpretation set upon it is necessarily of considerable age. Already therefore in the first half of the seventeenth century the custom which Allatius describes was of some antiquity; and the belief that children turn into Callicantzari, which is implied alike by the original meaning and by the later interpretation of the custom, was equally ancient. In Chios then at any rate the human origin of Callicantzari is a very old article of faith.

But more important for our consideration is the answer to be made to the following question; is it more probable, that Callicantzari, if they were originally demons, should have come in the belief of many people to be men, or that, being originally men, they should have assumed in the belief of many people the rank of demons? Here, if I may trust the analogy of other instances in Greek folklore, my answer is decided. I know of no case in which a demon has lost status and been reduced to human rank; but I can name three several cases in which beings originally human have been elevated to the standing of demons. The human maiden Gello was the prototype of the class of female demons now known as Gelloudes. Striges (στρίγγλαις) are properly old women who by magical means can transform themselves into birds, but they too both in mediaeval and in modern times are frequently confused with demons. ‘Arabs’ (Ἀράπηδες), as the name itself implies, were originally nothing but men of colour, but they now form, as will be shown in the next section, a recognised class of genii. And if we turn from modern Greek folklore to ancient Greek religion, there also we find the tendency in the same direction. There men in plenty are elevated to the rank of hero, demon, or god, but the degradation of a demon to human rank is a thing unknown. In view of this strongly marked principle of Greek superstition or religion, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that the Callicantzari were originally not demons but men—men who either voluntarily or under the compulsion of a kind of madness chose or were forced to assume the shape and the character of beasts.

Having thus disposed of the problem presented by the various types of Callicantzari, we must next investigate the origin of the name itself. This investigation too is not a little complicated by the fact that the dialectic varieties of the name are fully as manifold and divergent as the various shapes which the monsters are locally believed to assume. There can be few words in the Greek language which better illustrate the difference in speech between one district and another. The most general form of the word, and one which is either used side by side with other dialectic forms or at least is understood in almost every district, is the form which I have used throughout this chapter καλλικάντζαρος or, to transliterate it, Callicantzaros; but in reviewing all the dialectic varieties of the word, I find that there are only two out of the fourteen letters composing this word, which do not, in one dialect or another, suffer either modification of sound or change of position. The consonant κ in the first syllable and the vowel α in the third are the only constant and uniform elements common to all dialects.

These dialectic forms demand consideration for the reason that some of the derivations proposed take as their starting-point not the common form καλλικάντζαρος but one of the rarer by-forms—a method which is evidently open to objection when it is seen, as the accompanying table of forms will show, that καλλικάντζαρος, besides being the common and normal form, is also the centre from which all the dialectic varieties radiate in different directions. In compiling my list of forms, however, I may abbreviate it by the omission of those which are a matter of calligraphic rather than of phonetic distinction. Thus the first two syllables of καλλικάντζαρος are often written καλι- or καλη-, but since ι and η represent exactly the same sound and λλ is very seldom distinguished from λ, I have uniformly written καλλι- even where my authority for the particular form uses some other spelling. On the other hand, as regards the use of τζ or τσ, between which there is a real if somewhat subtle difference in sound, I have retained the particular form which I have found recorded.

Starting then from the normal form καλ-λι-κάν-τζα-ρος, which I thus dismember for convenience of reference to its five syllables, I may classify the changes which the word undergoes in various dialects as follows:

• (1) The insertion of α in the second syllable, giving λι̯α in the place of λι.
• (2) The prefixing of σ to the first syllable, giving σκαλ for καλ. With this Bernhard Schmidt well compares the modern σκόνη for κόνις, and σκύφτω for κύπτω.
• (3) The complete suppression of the second syllable, or the retention of the ι only as a faintly pronounced y.
• (4) Combined with, and consequent upon, the suppression of the second syllable, the change of λ to ρ in the first syllable, or the interchange of the λ in the first syllable with the ρ in the fifth.
• (5) The loss of either ν in the third syllable or τ in the fourth.
• (6) The change of the α in the first syllable to ο.
• (7) The change of the α in the third syllable to ε, ι, ο, or ου. Instances of this are most frequent in combination with the changes under (4).
• (8) The interchange of the κ in the third syllable with the τζ (or τσ) in the fourth. The νκ thus produced becomes γγ.
• (9) The formation of diminutive neuter forms ending in -ι instead of the masculine forms in -ος, with the consequent shift of accent from the third to the fourth syllable, the -ι representing -ιον. These neuter forms occur chiefly in the plural.

Further it may be noted that the formation of the nominative plural of the masculine forms shows some variation; the ordinary form is in -οι with the accent on the antepenultimate as in the nominative singular; a second form has the same termination but with the accent shifted to the penultimate, as commonly happens in some dialects with words of the second declension (e.g. ἄνθρωπος with plural ἀνθρώποι) by assimilation to the other cases of the plural; while a third form has the anomalous termination -αῖοι (e.g. in Cephallenia, σκαλλικάντσαρος with plural σκαλλικαντσαραῖοι).

The following genealogical table exhibits the dialectic progeny of the normal form καλλικάντζαρος. The numeral or numerals placed against each form refer to the classification of phonetic changes as above. Beneath each form is noted the name of one place or district (though of course there are usually more) in which it may be heard, or, failing the provenance, the authority for its existence.

This table of dialectic forms, which was originally based mainly upon the information of Schmidt[567] and my own observations and has now been enlarged with the aid of Polites’ new work[568], is even so probably far from complete; nor have I included in it, for reasons to be stated, the following forms: καλκάνια[569] (τὰ) which is apparently an abbreviated diminutive formed from the first two syllables of καλκάν-τζαρος with a neuter termination, and is therefore a nickname rather than a strict derivative: καλκαγάροι which Bent[570] represents to be the usual form in Naxos and Paros, but I hesitate to accept without confirmation from some other source: σκατσάντζαροι[571], a Macedonian form, and καλκατζόνια, a diminutive form from the district of Cynouria, both so extraordinarily corrupt that I can find no place for them in the table: λυκοκάντζαροι, which has been thought to be κολλικάντζαρος with the first two syllables reversed in order—a change to which I can find no parallel—but is, as I shall show later, a distinct and very important compound of the word κάντζαρος: and lastly καλι̯οντζῆδες[572] which has nothing at all to do with καλλικάντζαροι etymologically, but is an euphemistic and not particularly good pun upon it, really meaning the ‘sailors of a galleon[573]’ (Turkish qālioundji), and humorously substituted for the dreaded name of the Callicantzari.

To conclude this compilation, it must be added that the wives of Callicantzari are denoted by feminine forms with the termination -ίνα or -οῦ, and their children by neuter forms ending in -άκι or -οῦδι in place of the masculine -ος.

From a careful analysis of this material two main facts seem to emerge. First, the form καλλικάντζαρος, the commonest in use, is also the centre from which the other dialectic forms diverge in many directions; and therefore if one of the rarer dialectic forms be selected as the parent-form and the basis of any etymological explanation, the advocate of the particular etymology not only assumes the burden of showing how his original form came to be so generally superseded by the form καλλικάντζαρος, but also will require many more steps in his genealogical table of existing varieties of the word. Secondly, the words καλλικάντζαρος and λυκοκάντζαρος (if, as I hold, they cannot be connected through the mediation of the form κολλικάντζαρος) show that we have to deal with a compound word of which the second half is κάντζαρος: and corroboration of this view is afforded by the existence of a form of the uncompounded word in the dialect of Cynouria, where σκατζάρια[574] (τὰ)—i.e. a diminutive form of κάντζαρος with σ prefixed and ν lost—is used side by side with the words καλλικάντζαροι and λυκοκάντζαροι to denote the same beings.

In view of the latter inference, or perhaps even apart from it, there is no need to delay long over a derivation propounded by a Greek writer, Oeconomos, whose theory, that ‘callicantzaros’ is a corruption of the Latin ‘caligatus’ or perhaps of ‘calcatura,’ suggests a vision of a monster in hob-nailed boots which does more credit to its author’s imagination than to his knowledge of philology.

A suggestion which deserves at any rate more serious consideration is that of Bernhard Schmidt[575] who holds that the word is of Turkish origin and passed first into Albanian and thence into Greek—reversing, that is, the steps indicated in the above table. But to this there are several objections, each weighty in itself, and cumulatively overwhelming.

First, if the Turkish word karakondjolos be the source from which the multitude of Greek forms, including in that case λυκοκάντζαρος[576] are derived, it ought to be shown how the Turkish word itself came to mean anything like ‘were-wolf[577].’ It is compounded, says Schmidt, of kara, ‘black,’ and kondjolos which is connected with koundjul, a word which means a ‘slave of the lowest kind[578].’ But before that derivation can be accepted, it should be shown what link in thought may exist between a slave even of the lowest and blackest variety and a were-wolf, and also how the supposed Turkish compound came to have the Greek termination -ος.

Secondly, the theory that the Greeks borrowed the word, and presumably also the notion which it expressed, from the Turks contravenes historical probability. For when did the supposed borrowing take place? Evidently not before the Ottoman influence had made itself thoroughly felt in Eastern Europe not only in war but in peace; for only those peoples who are living side by side in friendly, or at the least pacific, relations, are in a way to exchange views on the subject of were-wolves or any other superstitions; and in the case of the Greeks and the Turks such intercourse would certainly have been retarded by religious as well as racial animosity. Presumably then, even if the transference of the word from the Turkish to the Greek language had been direct and not, as Schmidt somewhat unnecessarily supposes, through the medium of Albanian, two or three generations must have elapsed after the Ottoman occupation of Chios in 1566[579], and the seventeenth century must have well begun, before the Greeks of that island even began to adopt the new word and the new superstition involved in it. Yet the form of the word familiar to Leo Allatius since the beginning of that century, when he lived as a boy in Chios, was not karakondjolos or anything like it, but callicantzaros; while the belief that children born in the octave of Christmas became Callicantzari was of such antiquity in Chios that a custom founded upon it had already come, as I have shown, to be misinterpreted. Indeed, as the same writer tells us, the Callicantzari and their haunts and habits were so familiar to the people of Chios that two proverbs of the island referred to them. One, which was addressed to persons always appearing in the same clothes—βάλλε τίποτε καινούριο ἀπάνω σου διὰ τοὺς καλλικαντζάρους, ‘put on something new because of the Callicantzari’—is more than a little obscure; it would seem to imply that the clothes which were being worn would hardly be worth the while even of the mischief-loving Callicantzari to tear; but in any case the very existence of an obscure proverb is evidence that the Callicantzaros and all his ways had long been a matter of common knowledge. The second saying—ἐκατέβης ἀπὸ τὰ τριποτάματα, ‘You have come down from the Three Streams,’ or in another version, δὲν πᾶς ’στα τριποτάματα; ‘Why not go to the Three Streams?’—was addressed to mad persons, because, as Allatius explains, ‘the Three Streams’ was a wild wooded place in Chios reputed to be the haunt of Callicantzari. Historically then the theory that the people of Chios borrowed from the Turks the name and the conception of the Callicantzari is untenable.