Vrykolakes are not ghosts. Such is the first observation which I am compelled to make and which the reader of the last chapter might well consider superfluous. But so many Greek writers, and with them even Bernhard Schmidt[996], have fallen into the error of comparing ancient ghost-stories with modern tales about vrykolakes, without apparently recognising the essential and fundamental difference between them, that some insistence upon the point is necessary. That a definite and close relation does indeed subsist between the ancient belief in wandering spirits and the modern belief in wandering corpses, I readily admit, and with that relation I shall deal later; but the issue before us can only be kept clear by remembering that vrykolakes are not ghosts. There is absolute unanimity among the Greek peasants in their belief that the corpse itself is the vrykolakas, and even the work of re-animating the corpse is generally credited not to the soul which formerly inhabited it, but to the Devil. Thus it appears that whereas most peoples believe to some extent in the return of the ghosts or spirits of the dead, the Greeks fear rather the return of their bodies. If then we can determine what part, if any, of this superstition is genuinely Hellenic, we shall have gained a step in our knowledge of the ideas popularly held in ancient Greece concerning the condition and the relations of soul and body after death.

The view which I take is briefly this, that though Slavonic influence is very conspicuous in the modern superstition as I have described it, yet the whole superstition has not been transplanted root and branch from Slavonic to Greek soil, but the growth, as we now see it and as the writers of the seventeenth century saw it, is the result of the grafting of Slavonic branches upon an Hellenic stock; and further, that before that process began the old pagan Greek element in the superstition had been modified in certain respects by ecclesiastical influence. This is the view which I propose to develop in this section; and my method will be to work back from the modern superstition, removing first the Slavonic and then the ecclesiastical elements in it, and so leaving a residue of purely Hellenic belief.

To Slavonic influence is due first of all the actual word vrykolakas, the derivation of which need not long detain us. Patriotic attempts have indeed been made by Greeks to deny its Slavonic origin, the most plausible being that of Coraës[997], who selecting the local form βορβόλακας sought to identify it with a supposed ancient form μορμόλυξ (= μορμολύκη, μορμολυκεῖον), a ‘bugbear’ or ‘hobgoblin’ of some kind. But there need be no hesitation in pronouncing this suggestion wrong and in asserting the identity of the modern Greek word with a word which runs through all the Slavonic languages. This word is in form a compound of which the first half means ‘wolf’ and the second has been less certainly identified with dlaka, the ‘hair’ of a cow or horse. But, however the meaning of the compound has been obtained, it is, in the actual usage of all Slavonic languages save one, the exact equivalent of our ‘were-wolf[998].’ That one exception is the Serbian language in which it is said to bear rather the sense of ‘vampire[999].’ If this is true, the reason for the transition of meaning lies probably in the belief current among the Slavonic peoples in general that a man who has been a were-wolf in his lifetime becomes a vampire after death[1000]. Yet in general there is no confusion of nomenclature. Although the depredations of the were-wolf and of the vampire are similar in character, the line of demarcation between the living and the dead is kept clear, and the great mass of the Slavonic peoples apply only to the living that word from which the Greek vrykolakas comes, and to the dead the word which we have borrowed in the form ‘vampire[1001].’

Now among the Greeks the latter word is almost unknown; in parts of Macedonia indeed where the Greek population lives in constant touch with Slavonic peoples, a form βάμπυρας or βόμπυρας has been adopted and is used as a synonym of vrykolakas in its ordinary Greek sense[1002]; but in Greece proper and in the Greek islands the word ‘vampire’ is, so far as I can discover, absolutely non-existent, and it is vrykolakas which ordinarily denotes the resuscitated corpse. In discriminating therefore between the Slavonic and the Greek elements in the modern Greek superstition it is of some importance to determine in which sense the Greeks originally borrowed the word vrykolakas which at the present day they in general employ in a different sense from that which both etymology and general Slavonic usage accord to it. Was it originally borrowed in the sense of ‘were-wolf’ or in the sense of ‘vampire’?

Among Slavonic peoples the only one said to have transferred the word vrykolakas from its original meaning to that of ‘vampire’ is the Serbian; and the Greeks therefore, in order to have borrowed the word in that sense, would have had to borrow direct from the Serbian language. But linguistic evidence renders that hypothesis untenable. All the many Greek dialectic forms of the word vrykolakas concur in showing a liquid (ρ or λ) in the first syllable; while Serbian is among the two or three Slavonic languages which have discarded that liquid. It follows therefore that the Greeks borrowed the word from some Slavonic language other than Serbian, and consequently from some language which used and still uses that word in the sense of ‘were-wolf.’

Further, there is evidence that in the Greek language itself the word vrykolakas does even now locally and occasionally bear its original significance. This usage indeed is flatly denied by Bernhard Schmidt, who, having accurately distinguished the were-wolf and the vampire, states that ‘the modern Greek vrykolakas answers only to the latter[1003].’ This pronouncement however was made in the face of two strong pieces of independent evidence to the contrary, which Schmidt notices and dismisses in a footnote[1004]. The first witness is Hanush[1005], who was plainly told by a Greek of Mytilene that there were two kinds of vrykolakes, the one kind being men already dead, and the other still living men who were subject to a kind of somnambulism and were seen abroad particularly on moonlight nights. The other authority is Cyprien Robert[1006], who describes the vrykolakes of Thessaly and Epirus thus: ‘These are living men mastered by a kind of somnambulism, who seized by a thirst for blood go forth at night from their shepherd’s-huts, and scour the country biting and tearing all that they meet both man and beast.’

To these two pieces of testimony—strong enough, it might be thought, in their mutual agreement to merit more than passing notice and arbitrary rejection—I can add confirmation of more recent date. In Cyprus, during excavations carried out in the spring of 1899 under the auspices of the British Museum, the directors of the enterprise heard from their workmen several stories dealing with the detection of a vrykolakas. The outline of these stories (to which Tenos furnishes many parallels[1007], though in these latter I have not found the word vrykolakas employed) is as follows. The inhabitants of a particular village, having suffered from various nocturnal depredations, determine to keep watch at night for the marauder. Having duly armed themselves they maintain a strict vigil, and are rewarded by seeing a vrykolakas. Thereupon one of them with gun or sword succeeds in inflicting a wound upon the monster, which however for the nonce escapes. But the next day a man of the village, who had not been among the watchers of the night, is observed to bear a wound exactly corresponding with that which the assailant of the vrykolakas had dealt; and being taxed with it the man confesses himself to be a vrykolakas.

Similarly on the borders of Aetolia and Acarnania, in the neighbourhood of Agrinion, I myself ascertained that the word vrykolakas was occasionally applied to living persons in the sense of were-wolf, although there as elsewhere it more commonly denotes a resuscitated corpse. Lycanthropy, as has been observed in a previous chapter[1008], is in Greece often imputed to children. In the district mentioned this is conspicuously the case. If one or more children in a family die without evident cause, the mother will often regard the smallest or weakliest of the survivors—more especially one in any way deformed or demented—as guilty of the brothers’ or sisters’ deaths, and the suspect is called a vrykolakas. Εἶσαι βρυκόλακας καὶ ’φάγες τὸν ἀδερφό σου, ‘you are a vrykolakas and have devoured your brother,’ is the charge hurled at the helpless infant, and ill-treatment to match is meted out in the hope of deterring it from its bloodthirsty ways.

In effect from four widely separated parts of the Greek world—Mytilene, Cyprus, the neighbourhood of Agrinion, and the district of Thessaly and Epirus—comes one and the same statement, that to the word vrykolakas is still, or has recently been, attached its etymologically correct meaning ‘were-wolf’; and, since these isolated local usages cannot be explained otherwise than as survivals of an usage which was once general, they constitute a second proof that the Greeks originally adopted the word in the sense in which the vast majority of the Slavonic races continue down to this day to employ it.

But while it is thus certain that the Greeks first learnt and acquired the word vrykolakas in the sense of ‘were-wolf,’ it is equally certain that the main characteristics of the monster to which that name is now applied are those of the Slavonic ‘vampire.’ The appearance and the habits of the re-animated corpse according to Slavonic superstition differ hardly at all from those described in the last chapter. Indeed the question is not so much whether the Greeks are indebted to the Slavs in respect of this belief, as what is the extent of their indebtedness. Is the whole superstition a foreign importation, or is it only partly alien and partly native?

The former alternative is rendered improbable in the first place by the fact that the Greeks have not adopted the word ‘vampire.’ If the whole idea of dead men remaining under certain conditions incorrupt and emerging from their graves to work havoc among living men had been first communicated to them by the Slavs, they must almost inevitably have borrowed the name by which the Slavs described those men. But since in fact they did not adopt the Slavonic name ‘vampire,’ it is probable that they already possessed in their own language some word adequate to express that idea, and therefore possessed also some native superstition concerning resuscitation of the dead which Slavonic influence merely modified.

Further, there is positive evidence that such a word or words existed; for there have been, and still are, dialects which employ a word of Greek formation in preference not merely to the word ‘vampire,’ which seems to be unknown in Greece proper, but even to the misapplied Slavonic word vrykolakas. Thus Leo Allatius was familiar with the word τυμπανιαῖος, ‘drum-like,’ but whether in his day it belonged especially to his native island Chios[1009] or was still in general usage, he does not record. At the present day it survives only, so far as I know, in Cythnos, where also ἄλυτος, ‘incorrupt,’ is used as another synonym[1010]. From Cythera are reported three names, ἀνάρραχο, λάμπασμα, and λάμπαστρο[1011], evidently Greek in formation but to me, I must confess, unintelligible. In Cyprus (where, as we have seen, the word vrykolakas may still bear its old sense ‘were-wolf’) the revenant is named σαρκωμένος[1012], because his swollen appearance suggests that he has ‘put on flesh,’ or more rarely στοιχειωμένος[1013], perhaps with the idea that he has become the ‘genius’ (στοιχειό)[1014] of some particular locality. Again, from the village of Pyrgos in Tenos is reported the word ἀναικαθούμενος[1015] meaning apparently one who ‘sits up’ in his grave. Finally, in Crete the name popularly employed is καταχανᾶς[1016], the origin of which is not certain. Bernhard Schmidt[1017], following Koraës[1018], derives it from κατὰ and χάνω (= ancient Greek χαόω), ‘lose,’ ‘destroy,’ and would have it mean accordingly ‘destroyer.’ I would suggest that derivation from κατὰ and the root χαν-, ‘gape,’ ‘yawn,’ is at least equally probable, inasmuch as other local names such as τυμπανιαῖος, ‘drumlike,’ and σαρκωμένος, ‘fleshy,’ have reference to the monster’s personal appearance, and the ‘gaper’ in like manner would be a name eminently suitable to a creature among whose features are numbered by Leo Allatius ‘a gaping mouth and gleaming teeth[1019].’ The same name was some forty years ago[1020], and probably still is, used in Rhodes, and in a Rhodian poem of the fifteenth century occurs both in its literal sense and as a term of abuse[1021]. This secondary usage however is in no way a proof that the word meant originally ‘destroyer’ rather than ‘gaper’; for by the fifteenth century there can be little doubt that the revenant was everywhere an object of horror, and therefore his name, whatever it originally meant, furnished a convenient term of vituperation. But one thing at least is clear, that καταχανᾶς, whichever interpretation of it be right, is certainly a word of Greek origin no less than the others which I have enumerated.

Now all these dialectic Greek names are found, it will have been observed, only in certain of the Greek islands, while on the mainland vrykolakas has come to be universally employed. But it was the mainland which was particularly exposed to Slavonic immigration and influence, while islands like Crete and Cyprus were practically immune. Hence, while the mainland gradually adopted a Slavonic word, it was likely enough that some of the islands should retain their own Greek terms, even though in the course of their relations with the mainland they became acquainted also with the new Slavonic word. These insular names for the vrykolakas may therefore be regarded as survivals from a pre-Slavonic period, and, though they are now merely dialectic, it is reasonable to suppose that one or more of them formerly held a place in the language of mainlanders and islanders alike. But the existence of such words presupposes the existence of a belief in some kind of resuscitated beings denoted by them. In other words, the Greeks when first brought into contact with the Slavs already possessed a belief in the re-animation and activity of certain dead persons, which so far resembled the Slavonic belief in vampirism, that the Slavonic vampire could be adequately denoted by some Greek word or words already existing and there was no need to adopt the Slavonic name.

I claim then to have established two important points: first, that the word vrykolakas was originally borrowed by the Greeks from the Slavs in the sense of ‘were-wolf,’ though now it is almost universally employed in the sense of ‘vampire’; secondly, that, whatever ideas concerning vampires the Greeks may have learnt from the Slavs, they did not adopt the Slavonic word ‘vampire’ but employed one of those native Greek words, such as τυμπανιαῖος or καταχανᾶς, which are still in local usage; whence it follows that some superstition anent re-animated corpses existed in Greece before the coming of the Slavs.

These points being established, I am now in a position to trace the development of the superstition in Greece from the time of the Slavonic immigrations onward, and to show how it came to pass that, whereas in the tenth century, let us say, when the Greeks had had ample time to imbibe Slavonic superstitions, vrykolakas meant a ‘were-wolf,’ and a ‘vampire’ was denoted by τυμπανιαῖος or some other Greek word, nowadays vrykolakas almost always means a ‘vampire’ and τυμπανιαῖος is well-nigh obsolete.

The Slavs brought with them into Greece two superstitions, the one concerning were-wolves and the other concerning vampires. The old Hellenic belief in lycanthropy was apparently at that time weak—confined perhaps to a few districts only—for the Greeks borrowed from the invaders their word vrykolakas in the place of the old λυκάνθρωπος[1022], by which to express the idea of a ‘were-wolf.’ They also learnt the Slavonic superstition concerning vampires, but in this case did not borrow the word ‘vampire’ but expressed the notion adequately by means of one of those words which now survive only in insular dialects—adequately, I say, but not exactly. For—and here I must anticipate what will be proved later—the Greeks denoted by those words a revenant but not a vampire. They believed in the incorruptibility and the re-animation of certain classes of dead men, but they did not impute to these revenants the savagery which is implied by the name ‘vampire.’ The dead who returned from their graves acted, it was held, as reasonable men, not as ferocious brutes. This did not of course exclude the idea that a revenant might return to seek revenge where vengeance was due; he was not necessarily peaceable; but if he exacted even the life of one who had wronged him, the act of vengeance was reasonable. To the proof of this, as I have said, I shall come later on; here I will only point out that the names which survive in the island-dialects are perfectly consistent with my view. Of the words τυμπανιαῖος, ‘drumlike,’ σαρκωμένος, ‘fleshy,’ στοιχειωμένος, ‘genius,’ ἀναικαθούμενος, ‘sitting up’ in the grave, and, if my interpretation is right, καταχανᾶς, ‘gaper,’ not one suggests any inherent ferocity in the resuscitated dead.

Nevertheless, when the Greeks first heard of the Slavonic ‘vampire,’ they naturally regarded it merely as a new and particularly vicious species of the genus revenant. Their own words for the genus implied no idea beyond that of the resuscitation of the dead, and were therefore no less applicable to the uniformly ferocious Slavonic variety than to the more reasonable and human type with which they themselves were familiar. They therefore did not require the word ‘vampire,’ but were content at first to comprise all revenants, whatever their character, under one or other of the existing Greek names.

Subsequently however, it appears, a change took place. The Slavonic superstition concerning were-wolves included then, we may suppose, as it includes now[1023], the idea that were-wolves become after death vampires. The Greeks, who borrowed from the Slavs the very name of the were-wolf, must therewith have learnt that these vrykolakes as they then called them were among the classes of men who were liable to vampirism; and in this particular case it would surely have seemed natural to them that the revenant should be conspicuous for ferocity. The conduct of a reasonable being could not be expected after death from one who in his lifetime had suffered from lycanthropic mania; or rather, if there could be any reason in his conduct, the most reasonable and consistent thing would be for him to turn vampire.

Thus one class of revenants came to be distinguished in the now composite Greek superstition by its wanton and blood-thirsty character; and in order to mark this distinction in speech also the Greeks, it would seem, began to call one who from a were-wolf had become a genuine vampire by the same name after as before death, vrykolakas, while to the more reasonable and human revenants they still applied some such term as τυμπανιαῖοι, ‘drumlike.’

By the seventeenth century the superstition had undergone a further change, which is reflected in the usage of the word τυμπανιαῖος. In proportion as the horror of real vrykolakes had grown and spread, the very memory of the more innocent kind of revenants had faded, until the genus revenant was represented only by the species vrykolakas. The word τυμπανιαῖος was indeed still known, but Leo Allatius was undoubtedly following the popular usage of his time when he made it synonymous with vrykolakas; for those narratives of the seventeenth century from which I have quoted above make it abundantly clear that the common-folk had come to suspect all revenants alike of predatory propensities.

This change in popular beliefs placed the Church in an awkward predicament, and was the cause of a marked divergence between the popular and the clerical usages of the word τυμπανιαῖος. It had long been claimed that a sentence of excommunication was binding upon a man even beyond death and could arrest the natural process of decomposition; indeed the formula officially employed ended, as Father Richard of Santorini notes, with the phrase, ‘and after death to remain indissoluble.’ But when the fear of real vampires spread over Greece, the priests would naturally have been unwilling to be held responsible for the resuscitation of such pests, while they were equally unwilling to diminish the terrors of excommunication by omitting the final imprecation. Their only course therefore was to emphasize what seems indeed to have been always the authorised doctrine of the Church, that excommunicated persons remained indeed incorrupt and ‘drum-like,’ but were not, like vrykolakes, subject to diabolical re-animation. It is Father Richard’s acceptance of this clerical view which explains why, writing as he did some few years after Leo Allatius, he distinguished the two words which Leo had treated as synonymous, making resuscitation the criterion of the vrykolakas and stating that the ‘drum-like’ body, though withheld from natural decay, lay quiet in its grave. But the ecclesiastical doctrine made no impression upon the popular belief; to this very day the common-folk regard any corpse which is found incorrupt as a potential vrykolakas, and excommunication is everywhere numbered among the causes of vampirism.

Thus it has come to pass that any revenants other than the savage vrykolakes are well-nigh forgotten, and in most districts their very name is no longer heard. The word vrykolakes, which first meant were-wolves, came to denote also the vampires into which were-wolves changed, and gradually, as these vampires by exciting men’s horror and concentrating on themselves the people’s attention became the predominant class of revenants, ousted from the very speech of Greece as a whole the old Greek names for the more harmless sort, and established itself as the regular equivalent of revenant.

Such is my solution of the somewhat complex problem of nomenclature; and in presenting it I have incidentally stated my view that the genuinely Greek element in the modern superstition is a belief in the incorruptibility and re-appearance of dead persons under certain special conditions, and that the imported and now dominant element is the Slavonic belief that the resuscitation of the dead renders them necessarily predatory vampires. This I now have to prove.

It is a well-established characteristic of the Slavonic vampire that his violence is directed first and foremost against his nearest of kin. The same trait is so pronounced too in the modern Greek vrykolakas that it has given rise to the proverb, ὁ βρυκόλακας ἀρχίζει ἀπὸ τὰ γένειά του, ‘the vrykolakas begins with his own beard’—a saying which carries a double meaning, so a peasant told me. It may be taken literally, inasmuch as the vrykolakas usually appears bald and beardless; but the words τὰ γένειά του, ‘his beard,’ are popularly understood as a substitute, half jocose and half euphemistic, for τὴ γενεά του, ‘his family.’ In other words, this most deadly of pagan pests, like the most lively of Christian virtues, begins at home.

Such being the acknowledged and even proverbial habits of the vrykolakas, nothing, it might be supposed, could be more repugnant and fearful to the near relations of a dead man than the possibility that he would turn vrykolakas and return straightway to devour them. The first sufferers from such an eventuality would be the man’s own kinsfolk, the next his acquaintances and fellow-villagers, but he himself would appear to be aggressor rather than sufferer. Nevertheless, in face of this consideration, there is no more commodious form of curse in popular usage than the ejaculation of a prayer that the person who has incurred one’s displeasure may be withheld from corruption after death and return from his grave. I have heard it extended even to a recalcitrant mule; but it is also used gravely by parents as an imprecation of punishment hereafter upon undutiful children. A few samples of this curse will not be out of place, as showing at once its frequency and its range[1024].

Νὰ μήν τον δεχτῇ ἡ γῆς, ‘May the earth not receive him’: νὰ μήν τον φάγῃ τὸ χῶμα, ‘May the ground not consume him’: ἡ γῆ νὰ μή σε χωνέψῃ[1025], ‘May the earth not digest thee’: ἡ μαύρη γῆ νά σ’ ἀναξεράσῃ[1026], ‘May the black earth spew thee up’: νὰ μείνῃς ἄλυ̯ωτος, ‘Mayest thou remain incorrupt’: νὰ μή σε λυώσῃ ἡ γῆ, ‘May the earth not loose thee’ (i.e. not let thy body decompose): νά σε βγάλῃ τὸ χῶμα, ‘May the ground reject thee’: κουτοῦκι νὰ βγῇς[1027], ‘Mayest thou become (after death) like a log (in solidity)’: τὸ χῶμα ’ξεράσ’ τόνε, ‘May the ground spew him out’—this last phrase being made more terrible by being a parody, as it were, of the prayer uttered by the mourners at every Greek funeral ὁ θεὸς ’χωρέσ’ τόνε, ‘May God forgive him.’ Such are the popular forms of the curse; and akin to them are the ecclesiastical imprecations, with which the formula of excommunication used to end: καὶ ἔσῃ μετὰ θάνατον ἄλυτος αἰωνίως, ὡς αἱ πέτραι καὶ τὰ σίδηρα[1028], ‘And after death thou shalt be bound (i.e. incorrupt) eternally, even as stone and iron’; or, in a shorter form, καὶ μετὰ τὸν θάνατον ἄλυτος καὶ ἀπαράλυτος[1029], ‘And after death bound and indissoluble.’ Here, it will be observed, the Church spoke only of incorruptibility, but several of the popular expressions contain explicit mention of resuscitation as well; and the very forms of the curse which I have quoted show how closely knit together, how almost identical, are these two notions in the mind of the peasants. That which the earth will not ‘receive,’ she necessarily ‘rejects’; that which she does not ‘consume’ or ‘digest,’ she necessarily ‘spews up.’ The man whose body does not decompose is necessarily a revenant.

Now curses, it must be remembered, among a primitive people are considered as operative, and not merely expletive; each bullet of malediction deliberately aimed is expected to find its billet; each imprecation seriously uttered has a magical power of fulfilling itself. That this belief is firmly held by the Greek folk is sufficiently proved by certain quaint solemnities enacted beside the deathbed. It is a common custom[1030] for a dying man to put a handful of salt into a vessel of water, and when it is dissolved to sprinkle with the liquid all those who are present, saying, ὡς λυ̯ώνει τ’ ἀλάτι, νὰ λυ̯ώσουν ᾑ κατάραις μου, ‘As the salt dissolves, so may my curses dissolve.’ By this ceremony all persons whom he has cursed are released from the bonds of an imprecation which after death he would no longer be able to revoke or annul. Then in turn the relations and friends formally pronounce their forgiveness of aught that the dying man has done to their hurt. Thus pardoning and pardoned the sick man may expect a short and easy passing; and, if the death-struggle be prolonged, it is taken as a sign that some one whom he has injured has not forgiven him. Accordingly the friends and kinsmen, having decided among themselves who the delinquent must be, send to fetch him, if he be still living, in order that he too may pronounce his forgiveness and so smooth the passage of the parting soul. If however he be dead, a portion of his shroud or of his ashes is brought and burnt, and the sick man, who needs his forgiveness ere he can die in peace, is fumigated with the smoke therefrom.

Since then curses in general are regarded by the Greek folk no less than by other primitive peoples as effective instruments of wrath which work out their own fulfilment, the particular curses which we are considering, when they are gravely uttered, do seriously contemplate the possibility of the person cursed becoming after death a revenant and are designed to bring about that future state.

But, if already at the time when such imprecations first became popular it had been believed that their effect was to render the corpse, whose decay was arrested and whose resuscitation was assured, a wanton and blood-thirsty monster, preying first of all upon his nearest of kin, the question of relationship or no relationship between the curser and the cursed would necessarily have been taken into account.

On the one hand, where a man was in no degree akin to the object of his wrath, he would have welcomed the opportunity of including his enemy’s whole family in his vengeance by causing him to return and devour them. For in Greece recrimination is wholly unsparing, and no man pretending to any elegance or taste in the matter of abuse could neglect to level his taunts and threats and curses at least as much against the relatives—especially the female relatives—of his enemy as against the man himself. Just as the tenderest blessings among the peasants are prayers, not for him to whom they wish well, but rather for those whom he has loved and lost, so that the beggar’s thanks are often ‘May God forgive your father and your mother’ (which, however it may sound, is not intended otherwise than graciously) or again, prettier still in its vague genderless plural which no translation can adequately render, ὁ θεὸς ’χωρέσ’ τὰ πεθαμμένα σου, ‘May God forgive your dead,’ so the harshest and bitterest of curses are vented, not upon the man who has excited them, but upon those who are nearest and dearest to him. And bitterness in cursing being as much a part of the Greek character as gentleness in blessing, it is almost inconceivable that, if any idea of real vampirism had originally been associated with revenants, the merest novice in malediction could have missed the opportunity of adding to his imprecations of incorruptibility and resuscitation a prayer that his enemy might devastate with horrid carnage the home of those who mourned him. Yet not one of the curses which I have quoted above suggests any savagery to be shown by the resuscitated body; not one of them hints at the blood-thirsty predatory character of the modern vrykolakas; nay, most significant of all, not one of them contains the word vrykolakas, nor have I ever heard or found recorded, so far as I can remember, any form of the curse in which that word appears[1031]. Now this is certainly not due to any difficulty of language in using the word, for there is a convenient enough verb formed from it, βρυκολακιάζω, ‘I turn vampire,’ and νὰ βρυκολακιάσης, ‘May you turn vampire,’ should commend itself as both sonorous and compendious. The reason why all mention and all thought of the ordinary vrykolakas are lacking in these curses must rather be that, when they first came into vogue, revenants were not yet credited with the savage character which under Slavonic influence they afterwards acquired; and that, when the word vrykolakas was introduced, the old traditional forms of curse underwent no modification, but were bandied to and fro by boys with the same glib uniformity as by their fathers before them. They had been cast in set forms before the idea of vampirism had been introduced and when men believed only in reasonable and usually harmless revenants.

On the other hand, where the curser was akin to the cursed, the nearer the tie of blood the more incomprehensible would be the attitude of one who by an imprecation should recall from the grave so malignant a thing as the modern vrykolakas, only to fall himself perhaps the first victim to its blood-thirstiness. If the phrase ‘May the earth reject thee’ had suggested anything beyond simple resuscitation, if there had been any resemblance in character between the Greek revenant and the Slavonic vampire, such an imprecation would have been impossible where close kinship existed; it would at once recoil with fatal force upon the curser’s own head; above all, that most solemn curse, the curse of parent upon child, would have been the first to ‘come home to roost’; and yet the use of such parental imprecations is both celebrated in ballad and not unknown, I am told, in actual experience. Once more then the use of these curses is explicable only on the hypothesis that the original Greek revenants were not the formidable monsters now known as vrykolakes, and that, when under Slavonic influence the popular conception of them changed, the old set phrases of commination—coins, as it were, of speech, struck in the mint of the original superstition—continued current in spite of their inconsistency with the new ideas. These colloquial survivals of the original Greek superstition are at once a proof and a measure of its later contamination. The Greeks had believed in reasonable human revenants; the Slavs taught them to believe in brutish inhuman vampires.

This conclusion is confirmed by the ballad to which I have just referred; in it a mother’s imprecation recalls her son from the grave; the revenant, who is the protagonist in a most dramatic story, is, as will be seen, of the type which I claim to have been the original Greek type and exhibits no Slavonic traits.

The ballad[1032], which as an important document I translate at length, runs as follows:

The versions of this ballad which have been collected are very numerous[1033], and some of them differ so widely from others in language as not to have a single line in common. That which I have selected for translation is one of the most complete, presenting fairly all the essential points of the story, and free from the eccentricities which some versions have developed. At the same time it must be allowed that here the mother’s curse is only implied by her action of tearing up the gravestones and adjuring Constantine to rise, whereas in one or two versions, otherwise inferior, it is clearly and forcibly expressed.

Thus in one[1034] her words run: