Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals

by J. C. Lawson

§ 13. The Centaurs.

Ἀνάγκη μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων εἶδος ἐπανορθοῦσθαι.

Plato, Phaedrus, 7.

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:

φύγετε, νὰ φύγουμε,

τ’ ἔφτασ’ ὁ τουρλόπαπας

μὲ τὴν ἁγι̯αστοῦρα του

καὶ μὲ τὴ βρεχτοῦρα του,

κι’ ἅγι̯ασε τὰ ῥέμματα

καὶ μᾶς ἐμαγάρισε[533].

Quick, begone! we must begone,

Here comes the pot-bellied priest,

With his censer in his hand

And his sprinkling-vessel too;

He has purified the streams

And he has polluted us.

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.

καλλικάντζαρος (with which καλλικάντσαρος and καλλικάντσι̯αρος (Cythnos and Melos) may be considered identical)

καλλιακάντζαρος (1) (Πολίτης, Μελέτη, p. 67)

καλλικάτζαρος (5) (Cyprus)

καλλικάνζαρος (5) (Cythera)

σκαλλικάντζαρος (2) (Ionian Islands)

καλι̯κάντζαρος (3) and καλκάντζαρος (3) (Lesbos, etc.)

κολλικάντζαρος (6) (Gortynia and Cynouria, districts of the Peloponnese)

καλλιτσάγγαρος (8) (Pyrgos in Tenos and Western shores of Black Sea)

σκαλλικαντζούρια (τὰ) (2, 7, 9) (Sciathos)

σκαλκαντσέρι (τὸ) (2, 3, 7, 9) (Arachova on Parnassus)

σκαλκάντζερος (2, 3, 7) (Arachova on Parnassus)

κολλικάτζαρος (6, 5) (Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, II. p 1245)

καρκάντσαλος (4) (Stenimachos in Roumelia)

καλκάντσερος (3, 7) (Arachova on Parnassus)

καρκάντζαρος (4) (Scyros)

καλσάγγαροι (8, 3, 5) (Tenos)

καρτσάγγαλοι (8, 4) (Oenoë on S. shore of Black Sea)

καρκάντζελος (4, 7) (Zagorion in Epirus)

καρκάντσιλος (4, 7) (Ophis, on S. shore of Black Sea)

καρκάντζολος (4, 7) (Cythnos)

καρκαντσέλια (τὰ) (4, 7, 9) (Portariá on Mt Pelion)

Albanian καρκανdσόλ-ι (cf. Hahn, Alban. Stud., Vocabulary, s.v.) and Turkish karakóndjolos

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.

Another piece of historical evidence against Schmidt’s theory is that the Callicantzaros of the present day appears to be identical with the ‘baboutzicarios’ whereof Michael Psellus[580] discoursed in the eleventh century. He himself indeed, with his usual passion for explaining away popular superstitions, affirms that ‘baboutzicarios’ is the same as ‘ephialtes,’ the demon who punishes gluttony with nocturnal discomfort and a feeling of oppression; and in that view he was followed by Suidas[581] and other lexicographers; but he states two important points in the popular superstition which he combats: the ‘baboutzicarios’ appears only in the octave of Christmas; and it is at night that he meets and terrifies men. Moreover the name itself is, I suspect, derived from the Low-Latin babuztus[582] meaning ‘mad,’ and indicates the existence then of the belief which is so largely held to-day, that the monstrous apparitions of Christmastide are really men smitten with a peculiar kind of madness. Thus all the information which Psellus gives about the ‘baboutzicarios’ tallies with modern beliefs concerning the Callicantzaros, and militates against the supposition that the Greeks are indebted for this superstition to the Turks.

Finally there is positive evidence that the Turks borrowed the word in question from the Greeks; for the time at which they used to fear the advent of the karakondjolos—whether the superstition still remains the same, I do not know—was fixed not by their own calendar but by that of the Christians. An article written on the subject of the Turkish calendar early in last century contains this statement: ‘The Turks have received this fabulous belief from the Greeks, and they say that this demon, whom the former call Kara Kondjolos and the latter Cali Cangheros, exercises his sway of maleficence and mischief from Christmas-day until that of the Epiphany[583].’ Clearly the Turks would not have fixed the time for the appearance of the karakondjolos by the Christian festivals if they had not borrowed the whole superstition from the Greeks; and indeed the very termination in -ος of the Turkish form of the word betrays its Hellenic origin.

The proposed Turkish derivation of the word καλλικάντζαρος must therefore be rejected as finally as Oeconomos’ Latin derivation, and it remains only to deal with those which treat the word as genuinely Greek.

The first of these is that proposed by Coraës[584], who made the word a compound of καλός and κάνθαρος. The formation, as might be expected of so great a scholar, is irreproachable; for the phonetic change of θ to τζ; is seen in the development of the modern word καντζόχοιρος (a hedgehog) from the ancient ἀκανθόχοιρος. But the meaning obtained is less satisfactory. What has a ‘good’ or ‘beautiful beetle’ to do with a Callicantzaros such as I have described? The question remains without an answer. And yet some of Coraës’ followers in recent times have thought triumphantly to vindicate his view by pointing out that in the dialect of Thessaly ‘a species of large horned beetle’ is known as καλλικάτζαροι. Now I am aware that elsewhere in Greece stag-beetles are called κατζαρίδες, which is undoubtedly a modern form of the ancient κάνθαρος and illustrates once more the phonetic change involved in Coraës’ derivation; and I can believe that the Thessalian peasantry with a certain rustic humour sometimes call them καλλικάτζαροι instead. But what light does this throw on the supposed development of meaning? The view which these disciples of Coraës appear to hold, namely that the Callicantzari, who are known and feared throughout Greek lands and even beyond them in Turkey and in Albania, were called after an alleged Thessalian species of Coleoptera, would be fitly matched by a theory that the Devil was so named after a species of fish or a printer’s assistant or a patent fire-lighter.

The same objection holds good as against Polites’ first view[585]. Taking the word λυκοκάντζαρος as his starting-point, instead of the common and central form καλλικάντζαρος, he proposed to derive the word from λύκος, ‘wolf,’ and κάνθαρος, ‘beetle.’ But though the resulting hybrid might be a monster as hideous as the worst of Callicantzari, these creatures so far as I know show no traits suggestive of entomological parentage. But since Polites himself has long abandoned this view, there is no need to criticize it further.

His next pronouncement on the subject[586] banished both wolf and beetle and seemed to recognise the necessity of keeping the main form καλλικάντζαρος to the fore. But while he naturally assumed καλός to be the first half of the compound, he could only set down κάντζαρος as an unknown foreign, perhaps Slavonic, word.

But in his latest publication[587] he relinquishes this position and falls back once more on a dialectic form καλιτσάγγαρος which is reported to be in use at the village of Pyrgos in Tenos and at some places on the western shores of the Black Sea. This word he believes to be a compound, of which the second half is connected with a Byzantine word τσαγγίον, meaning a kind of boot, and the still existing, if somewhat rare, word, τσαγγάρης, ‘a boot-maker,’ while the first half is to be either καλός, ‘fine,’ or καλίκι, ‘a hoof[588].’ The former alternative provides easily the form καλοτσάγγαρος or, as would be almost more likely, καλλιτσάγγαρος, meaning ‘one who wears fine boots’; while in the other alternative there results a supposed original form καλικοτσάγγαρος, meaning ‘one who has hoofs instead of boots,’ whence, by suppression of the third syllable, comes the existing word καλιτσάγγαρος, or again, by loss of the first syllable, a supposed form λικοτσάγγαρος which developed into λυκοκάντζαρος.

On the score of formation the former alternative is unassailable; but the latter, with its supposed loss of syllables, is more questionable. The loss of a first syllable is common enough in modern Greek, where it consists of a vowel only (e.g. βρίσκω[589] for εὑρίσκω, μέρα for ἡμέρα, etc.), but the supposed loss of the syllable κα would, I think, be hard to parallel. Again the loss of a syllable in the middle of a word is fairly common either through the suppression of the vowel ι (or η, which is not distinguished from ι in sound) as in καλκάντζαρος for καλλικάντζαρος, ἔρμος for ἔρημος, etc., or else when two concurrent syllables begin with the same consonant, as in ἀστροπελέκι, ‘a thunderbolt,’ for ἀστραποπελέκι, but the loss of the syllable κο from the form καλικοτσάγγαρος is a bold hypothesis.

But on the score of meaning both alternatives are alike unconvincing. Polites indeed cites one or two popular traditions in which the Callicantzari are represented as wearing wooden or iron shoes—wherewith no doubt the better to kick and to trample their victims; and such footgear might, I suppose, be described ironically as ‘nice boots.’ But to find in this occasional trait the origin of the word Callicantzaros[590] appears to me a counsel of despair. Nor does the other alternative commend itself to me any more. It is of course a widely accepted belief—and one by the way which contradicts the traditions just mentioned—that the Callicantzari have feet like those of an ass or a goat. But in describing such a creature no one surely would be likely to say that it had hoofs ‘instead of boots’—‘instead of feet’ would be the natural and reasonable expression. To suppose that the Callicantzari (or rather, to use the hypothetical form, the καλικοτσάγγαροι) are so named because their boot-maker provides them with hoofs instead of detachable foot-gear, is little short of ludicrous.

But though neither of the proposed derivations will, I think, win much acceptance, the historical evidence which Polites adduces in support of his views forms a valuable contribution to the study of this subject. The inferences which he draws therefrom may not be correct; but the material which he has collected is of high interest.

Singling out of the many traditions concerning the Callicantzari the widely, and perhaps universally, prevalent belief that their activities are confined to the Twelve Days between Christmas and Epiphany, he argues that if we can discover the origin of this limitation, we shall be in a fair way to discover also whence came the conception of the Callicantzari themselves.

Accordingly he traces the history of winter festivals in Greece, starting from the period in which the Greeks, in deference to their Roman masters, adopted the festivals known as the Saturnalia, the Brumalia, and the Kalándae (for so the celebration of the Kalends of January was called by the Greeks) in place of their own old festivals such as the Kronia and some of the festivals of Dionysus. The change however was more one of name than of method of observance[591]. The pagan orgies which marked these festal days were strongly denounced by the Fathers of the Church from the very earliest times. In the first century of our era, Timothy, bishop of Ephesus, met with his martyrdom in an attempt to suppress such a festival. At the end of the fourth century S. John Chrysostom and, after him, Asterios, bishop of Amasea, loudly inveighed against the celebration of the Kalandae. At the end of the seventh century the sixth Oecumenical Council of the Church promulgated a canon forbidding all these pagan winter-festivals. But still in the twelfth century, as Balsamon testifies[592], the old abuses continued unabated; and there are local survivals of such festivals at the present day.

The most prominent feature of these celebrations was that men dressed themselves up in various characters, to represent women, soldiers, or animals, and thus disguised gave themselves up to the wildest orgies. At Ephesus it is clear that these orgies included human sacrifice, and that Bishop Timothy was on one occasion the victim; for we are told by Photius that he met with his death in trying to suppress ‘the polluted and blood-stained rites of the Greeks[593]’; and the same writer speaks of τὸ καταγώγιον—so this particular ceremony was called—as a ‘devilish and abominable festival[594]’ in which men ‘took delight in unholy things as if they were pious deeds[595].’ And again another account of the same celebration tells how men with masks on their faces and with clubs in their hands went about ‘assaulting without restraint free men and respectable women, perpetrating murders of no common sort and shedding endless blood in the best parts of the city, as if they were performing a religious duty (ὡσανεὶ ἀναγκαῖόν τι καὶ ψυχωφελὲς πράττοντες)[596].’

At Amasea, according to Asterios, at the beginning of the fifth century, things were not much better. The peasants, he says, who come into the town during the festival ‘are beaten and outraged by drunken revellers, they are robbed of anything they are carrying, they have war waged upon them in a time of peace, they are mocked and insulted in word and in deed[597].’ Here too the custom of dressing up was in vogue among those who took part in the festival—women’s dress being especially affected.

Again in the seventh century the points specially emphasized by the canon of the Church are that ‘no man is to put on feminine dress, nor any woman the dress proper to men, nor yet are masks, whether comic, satyric, or tragic, to be worn’; and the penalty for disregard of this ordinance was to be excommunication. Yet for all these fulminations the old custom continued. The author of ‘the Martyrdom of S. Dasius[598],’ writing perhaps as late as the tenth century, speaks of the festival of the Kronia as still observed in the old way: ‘on the Kalends of January foolish men, following the custom of the (pagan) Greeks, though they call themselves Christians, hold a great procession, changing their own appearance and character, and assuming the guise of the devil; clothed in goat-skins and with their faces disguised,’ they reject their baptismal vows and again serve in the devil’s ranks. And still in the twelfth century these practices obtained not only among the laity but even among the clergy, some of whom, in the words of Balsamon[599], ‘assume various masks and dresses, and appear in the open nave of the church, sometimes with swords girt on and in military uniform, other times as monks or even as quadrupeds.’

Several instances of the continuance of this custom in modern times have been collected by Polites[600] and others; the savage orgies of old time have indeed dwindled into harmless mummery; but their most constant feature, the wearing of strange disguises, remains unchanged; and the occasion too is still a winter-festival, either some part of the Twelve Days or the carnival preceding Lent. From certain facts concerning these modern festivals it will be manifest that some relation exists between the mummers who celebrate them and the Callicantzari.

In Crete, where the New Year is thus celebrated, the mummers are called καμπουχέροι, while in Achaia a fuller form of the same word, κατσιμπουχέροι, is a by-name of the Callicantzari. At Portariá on Mount Pelion, each night of the Twelve Days, a man is dressed up as an ‘Arab,’ wearing an old cloak and having bells affixed to his clothes. He goes the round of the streets with a lantern; and the villagers explicitly state that this is done γιὰ τὰ καρκαντζέλια, ‘because of the Callicantzari,’ i.e., says Polites, as a means of getting rid of them. At Pharsala there is a sort of play at the Epiphany, in which the mummers represent bride, bridegroom, and ‘Arab’; the Arab tries to carry off the bride, and the bridegroom defends her. In some parts of Macedonia similar mumming takes place at the New Year; in Belbentós the men who take part in it are called ‘Arabs’; at Palaeogratsana they have the name ῥουκατζιάρια (evidently another compound of κάντζαρος, but one which I cannot interpret); formerly also ‘at Kozane and in many other parts of Greece,’ according to a Greek writer in the early part of the nineteenth century, throughout the Twelve Days boys carrying bells used to go round the houses, singing songs and having ‘one or more of their company dressed up with masks and bells and foxes’ brushes and other such things to give them a weird and monstrous look.’

This custom is evidently identical with one which I myself saw enacted in Scyros at the carnival preceding Lent. The young men of the town array themselves in huge capes made of goat-skin, reaching to the hips or lower, and provided with holes for the arms. These capes are sometimes made with hoods of the same material which cover the whole head and face, small holes being cut for the eyes but none for purposes of respiration. In other cases the cape covers the shoulders only, leaving the head free, and the young man contents himself with the blue and white kerchief, which is the usual head-gear in Scyros, and a roughly made domino. A third variety of cape is provided with a hood to cover the back of the head, while the mask for the face is made of the skin of some small animal such as a weasel, of which the hind legs and tail are attached to the hood, while the head and forelegs hang down to the breast of the wearer; eye-holes are cut in these as in the other forms of mask. These capes are girt tightly about the waist with a stout cord or strap, from which are hung all round the body a large number of bronze goat-bells, of the ordinary shape but of extraordinary dimensions, some measuring as much as ten inches for the greatest diameter. The method by which these bells are attached to the belt is remarkable, and is designed to permit a large number of them to be worn without being in any way muffled by contact with the cape. Each bell is fastened to one end of a curved and springy stick of about a foot in length, and the other end is inserted behind the belt from above; the curve and elasticity of the stick thus cause the bell to hang at some few inches distance from the body, free to jangle with every motion of the dancer. Some sixty or seventy of these bells, of various sizes, are worn by the best-equipped, and the weight of such a number was estimated by the people of the place as approximately a hundredweight—no easy load with which to dance over the narrow, roughly-paved alleys of ‘steep Scyros.’ Those however who lack either the prowess or the accoutrements to share in the glorious fatigue do not abstain altogether from the festivities; even the small boys beg, borrow, or steal a goat-bell and attach it to the hinder part of their person in lieu of a tail, or, at the worst, make good the caudal deficiency with a branch from the nearest tree.

Thus in various grades of goat-like attire the young men and boys traverse the town, stopping here and there, where the steep and tortuous paths offer a wider and more level space, to leap and dance, or anon at some friendly door to imbibe spirituous encouragement to further efforts. In the dancing itself there is nothing peculiar to this festival; the swinging amble, which is the gait of the more heavily equipped, is prescribed by the burden of bells and the roughness of roads. The purpose of the leaping and dancing is solely to evoke as much din as possible from the bells; and prodigious indeed is the jarring and jangling in those narrow alleys when the troupe of dancers leap together into the air, as high as their burdens allow, and come down with one crash.

Since I first published[601] an account of these festivities in Scyros, similar celebrations of carnival-time have been reported from other places; at Sochos in Macedonia[602] the scene is almost identical with that which I have described; in the district of Viza in Thrace a primitive dramatic performance was recently observed in which the two chief actors wore similar goat-skins, masks, and bells, and had their hands blackened[603]; and again at Kostí in the extreme north of Thrace there is mummery of the same kind[604].

A scene of the same sort was formerly enacted in Athens also during the carnival, and was known by the expressive name τὰ ταράματα (i.e. ταράγματα), ‘The Riotings.’ A man dressed up as a bear used to rush through the streets followed by a crowd of youths howling and clashing any noisy instruments that came to hand. That this ceremony was originally of a religious character is shown not only by its association with the season of Lent, but by an accessory rite performed on the same occasion. Wooden statues, actually called ξόανα as late as the time of the Greek War of Independence, were carried out in procession; and the well-being of the people was believed to be so bound up with the due performance of these rites, that even during the Revolution, when Athens was in the hands of the Turks, a native of the place is said to have returned from Aegina, whither he had fled for safety, in order to play the part of the bear and to carry out the xoana for the general good[605].

The close connexion of these several modern customs, whether the occasion of them is the Twelve Days or Carnival-time, cannot be doubted. The variation of date is of old standing; for the canon of the Church, on which Balsamon[606] comments, condemns certain pagan festivals on March 1st (approximately the carnival time) along with the Kalandae and Brumalia; and the similarity of the dresses, masks, bells, and other accoutrements proper to both occasions proves the substantial identity of the festivals.

A comparison of these allied modern customs can only lead to one conclusion. The use of the same word to denote the mummers in Crete and the Callicantzari in Achaia; the name ῥουκατζιάρια for these mummers at Palaeogratsana; the custom of blackening the face, which is clearly indicated by the employment of the name ‘Arab’ in this connexion; the monstrous and half-animal appearance produced by masks, foxes’ brushes, goat-skins, and suchlike adornments; the attempted rape of the bride by the ‘Arab’ in the play at Pharsala—all furnish contributory evidence that the mummers themselves represent Callicantzari. Only at Portariá is the significance of the custom somewhat confused; there the ‘Arab’ in his old cloak and bells has long ceased to represent a Callicantzaros, and has actually been provided with a lantern with which to scare the Callicantzari away.

The mummers then represent Callicantzari; the question which remains to be answered is whether the mumming was the cause or the effect of the belief in Callicantzari.

Polites, in support of his theory that the name Callicantzari, in its earliest form, meant either ‘wearers of nice boots’ or ‘possessors of hoofs instead of boots,’ claims that the mummers first suggested to the Greek imagination the conception of the Callicantzari (it is not indeed anywhere mentioned in the above traditions that the feet or the footgear of the mummers were in any way remarkable, but we may let that pass), and that the fear which their riotous conduct inspired in earlier times gradually elevated them in men’s minds to the rank of demons. This, he urges, is the reason why these demons are feared only during the Twelve Days, the period when such mumming was in vogue.

In confirmation of his view Polites cites some of the evidence concerning the human origin of the Callicantzari, mentioning both the fairly common belief that men turn into Callicantzari, and the rarer traditions that a Callicantzaros resumes his human shape if a torch be thrust in his face and that the transformation of men into Callicantzari can be prevented by certain means. With this evidence I have already dealt, and I agree with Polites that in it there survives a genuine record of the human origin of the Callicantzari. But of course on the further question, whether the particular men thus elevated to the dignity of demons were the mummers of Christmastide, it has no immediate bearing.

As a second piece of corroboration, he adduces another derivation hardly more felicitous than those with which I have already dealt. The word on which he tries his hand this time is καμπουχέροι or κατσιμπουχέροι—the name of the mummers in Crete and of the Callicantzari in Achaia. Here again, with a certain perversity, he selects the worse form of the two, καμπουχέροι, which is evidently a syncopated form of the other, and proceeds to derive it from the Spanish gambujo, ‘a mask,’ leaving the subsequent development of κατσιμπουχέροι totally inexplicable. For my own part I consider it far more probable that the word κατσιμπουχέροι is a humorously compounded name, of which the second half is the word μπουχαρί[607] (an Arabic word which has passed, probably through Turkish, into Greek) meaning ‘chimney,’ and that the whole by-name has reference simply to the common belief that Callicantzari try to extinguish the fire on the hearth and thus to gain access to the house by the chimney. As to the meaning of κατσι-, the first half of the compound, I can only hazard the conjecture that it is connected with the verb κατσιάζω, which ordinarily means to blight, to wither, to dry up, and so forth, though its passive participle, κατσιασμένος, is said by Skarlatos[608] to be applied to clothes which are ‘difficult to wash.’ If then the compound κατσιμπουχέροι is a descriptive title of the Callicantzari, meaning those who render the chimney difficult to wash, the coarse and eminently rustic humour of the allusion to their habits needs no further explanation; and it is the mummers of Crete who owe their name to the Callicantzari, not vice versa.

While therefore I acknowledge and appreciate to the full the value of Polites’ researches into the history of the Twelve Days, the inferences which he draws from the material collected seem to me no more sound than the derivations which they are designed to corroborate. My own interpretation of the historical facts which Polites has brought together is as follows.

The superstitions and customs connected by the modern folk with the Twelve Days are undoubtedly an inheritance from ancestors who celebrated the Brumalia and other pagan festivals at the same season of the year. These ancient festivals, though Roman in name, probably differed very little in the manner of their observance from certain old Greek festivals, chief among which was some festival of Dionysus. This is rendered probable both by the date of these festivals and by the manner of their celebration. For the worship of Dionysus was practically confined to the winter-time; at Delphi his cult superseded that of Apollo during the three winter months[609]; and at Athens the four festivals of Dionysus fell within about the same period—the rural Dionysia at the end of November or beginning of December, the Lenaea about a month later, the Anthesteria at the end of January, and the Great Dionysia at the end of February. As for the manner of conducting the Latin-named festivals, Asterios’ description of the Kalándae in the fifth century plainly attests the Dionysiac character of the orgies, and Balsamon, in the twelfth, was so convinced, from what he himself witnessed, of their Bacchanalian origin, that he actually proposed to derive the name Brumalia from Βροῦμος[610] (by which he meant Βρόμιος) a surname of Dionysus.

The mumming then, which is still customary in some parts of Greece during the Twelve Days, is a survival apparently of festivals in honour of Dionysus. Further the mummers dress themselves up to resemble Callicantzari. But the worship of Dionysus presented a similar scene; ‘those who made processions in honour of Dionysus,’ says Ulpian, ‘used to dress themselves up for that purpose to resemble his companions, some in the guise of Satyrs, others as Bacchae, and others as Sileni[611].’ The mummers therefore of the present day have, it appears, inherited the custom of dressing up from the ancient worshippers of Dionysus and are their modern representatives; and from this it follows that the Callicantzari whom the modern mummers strive to resemble are to be identified with those motley companions of Dionysus whom his worshippers imitated of old.

The more closely these two identifications are examined, the more certain they will appear. Take for example Müller’s general description[612] of the celebration of Dionysus’ festivals. ‘The swarm of subordinate beings—Satyrs, Panes, and Nymphs—by whom Bacchus was surrounded, and through whom life seemed to pass from the god of outward nature into vegetation and the animal world, and branch off into a variety of beautiful or grotesque forms, were ever present to the fancy of the Greeks; it was not necessary to depart very widely from the ordinary course of ideas, to imagine that dances of fair nymphs and bold satyrs, among the solitary woods and rocks, were visible to human eyes, or even in fancy to take a part in them. The intense desire felt by every worshipper of Bacchus to fight, to conquer, to suffer, in common with him, made them regard these subordinate beings as a convenient step by which they could approach more nearly to the presence of their divinity. The custom, so prevalent at the festivals of Bacchus, of taking the disguise of satyrs, doubtless originated in this feeling, and not in the mere desire of concealing excesses under the disguise of a mask; otherwise, so serious and pathetic a spectacle as tragedy could never have originated in the choruses of these satyrs. The desire of escaping from self into something new and strange, of living in an imaginary world, breaks forth in a thousand instances in these festivals of Bacchus. It is seen in the colouring the body with plaster, soot, vermilion, and different sorts of green and red juices of plants, wearing goats’ and deer skins round the loins, covering the face with large leaves of different plants; and lastly in the wearing masks of wood, bark, and other materials, and of a complete costume belonging to the character.’ To complete this description it may be added that ‘drunkenness, and the boisterous music of flutes, cymbals and drums, were likewise common to all Dionysiac festivals[613].’ Which of all these things is missing in the mediaeval or modern counterpart of the festival? The blackening of the face or the wearing of the masks, the feminine costume or beast-like disguise, the boisterous music of bells, the rioting and drunkenness—all are reproduced in the celebration of Kalandae and Brumalia or in the mumming of the Twelve Days. The mummers are the worshippers of a god, whose name however and existence they and their forefathers have long forgotten.

And again are not the Callicantzari faithful reproductions of the Satyrs and Sileni who ever attended Dionysus? Their semi-bestial form with legs of goat or ass affixed to a human trunk, their grotesque faces and goat-like ears and horns, their boisterous and mischievous merriment, their love of wine, their passion for dancing, above all in company with Nereids, the indecency of their actions and sometimes of their appearance, their wantonness and lust—all these widely acknowledged attributes of the Callicantzari proclaim them lineal descendants of Dionysus’ motley comrades.

Such is my interpretation of the facts collected by Polites, and it differs from that which he has advanced in the reversal of cause and effect. Starting from the fact that dressing up in various disguises was the chief characteristic of the Kalandae and Brumalia and is perpetuated in the mumming of the Twelve Days, but failing to carry his researches far enough back and so to discover the absolute identity of these festivals with the ancient Dionysia, he holds that the generally prevalent custom of dressing up in monstrous and horrible disguises at a given period of the year—a custom which he leaves unexplained—was the cause of the belief in the activity of monstrous and horrible demons at that period; those who had once been simply human mummers were exalted to the ranks of the supernatural, but still betrayed their origin by the possession of a name which meant either ‘wearers of nice boots’ or else ‘hoofed and not booted.’ In my view on the contrary the identity of the modern mumming with the ancient Dionysia is indisputable; and just as in ancient times the belief in the Satyrs and Sileni was the cause of the adoption of satyr-like disguises in the Dionysia, so in more recent times, when the Satyrs, Sileni, and others came to be included in the more comprehensive term Callicantzari, it was the belief in the Callicantzari which continued to cause the wearing of similar disguises during the Twelve Days.

And this interpretation of the facts explains no less adequately than that of Polites the reason why the activities of the Callicantzari are limited to the Twelve Days. That which was in ancient times the special season for the commemoration of Dionysus and his attendants has now with the very gradual but still real decline of ancient beliefs become the only season. This is natural and intelligible enough in itself; but, if a parallel be required, Greek folklore can provide one. No one will suppose that the Dryads of ancient Greece were feared during the first six days of August only, though it is likely enough that they had a special festival at that time; but in modern folklore these are the only days on which, in many parts of Greece, any survival of the Dryads’ memory can be found[614].

Moreover the identification of the Callicantzari with the Satyrs and other kindred comrades of Dionysus elucidates a modern custom which I noticed earlier in this chapter but did not then explain—the rare, but known, custom of making offerings to the Callicantzari. The sweetmeats, waffles, sausages, and even the pig’s bone which are occasionally placed in the chimney for the Callicantzari correspond, it would seem, with offerings formerly made to Dionysus and shared by his train of Satyrs. Possibly even the choice of pork (usually in the shape of sausages) or, in the more rudimentary form of the survival, of a pig’s bone, dates from the age in which the proper victim for Dionysus at the Anthesteria was a sow; but of course it may only have been determined by the fact that pork is the peasant’s Christmas fare and therefore the most ready offering at that season.

How then, it will be asked, does the conclusion here reached, namely that the Callicantzari are, in many districts, the modern representatives of the Satyrs and other kindred beings, square with that other conclusion previously drawn from another set of facts, namely that the Callicantzari were originally not demons but men who either voluntarily or under the compulsion of a kind of madness assumed the shape and the character of beasts? The reconciliation of these two apparently antagonistic conclusions depends primarily on the derivation of the name Callicantzari.

Now the conditions which in my opinion that derivation should satisfy, have already been indicated in my discussion of dialectic forms and in my criticism of the several derivations proposed by others; but it will be well to summarise them here. They are four in number.

First, the derivation of this word, as of all others, must involve only such phonetic changes as find parallels in other words of the language.

Secondly, it must recognise the commonest form καλλικάντζαρος as being also the central and original form from which the many dialectic forms in the above table have diverged.

Thirdly, it must explain this form as a compound of a word κάντζαρος—presumably with καλός. For, in dialect, there exists a word σκατζάρι, which is used as a synonym with καλλικάντζαρος and is evidently in form a diminutive of the word κάντζαρος, and likewise there exists another synonym λυκοκάντζαρος, which cannot be formed from καλλικάντζαρος by an arbitrary shuffling of syllables but is a separate compound of κάντζαρος—presumably with λύκος.

Fourthly, and consequently on the last-named condition, the word κάντζαρος, whether alone or in composition with either καλός or λύκος, must possess a meaning adequate to denote the monsters who have been described.

All these conditions are satisfied in the identification of the word κάντζαρος with the ancient word κένταυρος.

The phonetic change herein involved will, to any who are not familiar with the pronunciation of modern Greek, appear more considerable than it really is. In that pronunciation it must be remembered that the accent, which indicates the syllable on which stress is laid, is everything, and ancient quantity is nothing; and further that the ancient diphthongs au and eu have come to be pronounced respectively as av or af and ev or ef. The change of sound in this case may therefore be fairly measured by the difference between kéndăvrŏs and kándzărŏs in British pronunciation[615]. The phonetic modifications therefore which require notice are the substitution of α for ε in the first syllable, the introduction of a ζ after the τ, and the loss of the v-sound before the ρ.

The change from ε to α is very common in Greek, especially (by assimilation it would seem) where the following syllable, as in the word before us, has an α for its vowel. Thus ἀλαφρός is constantly to be heard instead of ἐλαφρός (light), ἀργαλει̯ός for ἐργαλειός (a loom), ματα- for μετα- in compound verbs. The insertion of ζ (or σ) after τ is certainly a less common change, but parallels can be found for this also. The ancient word τέττιγες (grasshoppers) appears in modern Greek as τζίτζικες. A word of Latin origin[616] τεντόνω (I stretch) has an equally common by-form τσιτόνω. The classical word τύκανον (a chisel) has passed, through a diminutive form τυκάνιον, into the modern τσουκάνι. The word κεντήματα (embroideries) has a dialectic form κεντζήματα[617]. From the adjective μουντός (grey, brown, dusky) are formed substantives μουντζοῦρα and μουντζαλι̯ά (a stain or daub). The substantive κατσοῦφα (sulkiness, sullenness) is probably to be identified with the ancient κατήφεια. The two most frequently employed equivalents for ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’—τρελλός and ζουρλός—are probably of kindred origin—an insertion of ζ in the former having produced first τζερλός and thence (τ)ζουρλός. Finally there is some likelihood that the word κάντζαρος, in a botanical sense in which it is now used, is to be identified with the ancient plant-name κενταυρεῖον or κενταύριον. The former indeed now denotes a kind of juniper, while the later is of course our ‘centaury’; but this difference in meaning is not, I think, fatal to the identification of the words. At the present day the common-folk are extraordinarily vague in their nomenclature of natural objects. In travelling about I made a practice of asking my guides and others the names of flowers and birds and suchlike; and my general experience might fairly be summed up by saying that the average peasant divides all birds which he does not eat into two classes; the larger ones are hawks, and the smaller are—‘little birds, God knows what’; and an accompanying shrug of the shoulders indicates that the man does not care; while most flowers can be called either violets or gilly-flowers at pleasure. Even therefore when a peasant of superior intelligence knows that κάντζαρος is now the name of a kind of juniper, it does not follow that that name has always belonged to it, and has not been transferred to it from some plant formerly used, let us say, for a like purpose. In this case it is known that both juniper and some kind of centaury were formerly used for medicating wine[618], and the wine treated with either was prescribed as ‘good for the stomach[619].’ Hence a confusion of the two plants is intelligible enough among a peasantry not distinguished by a love of botanical accuracy. But I place no reliance upon this possible identification; the cases previously cited furnish sufficient analogies.

Further it may be noted that in the first two examples of this insertion of ζ or σ a certain change in the consonants of the next syllable accompanies it. The γ in τέττιγες becomes κ, the ντ in τεντόνω is reduced to τ. In the same way, it seems, when ζ was inserted after the τ of κένταυρος, the sound of vr was reduced to r only, though certainly the loss of the v-sound might have occurred, apart from any such predisposing modification, as in the common word ξέρω (I know) for ἠξεύρω.

Since then the etymological conditions of the problem are satisfied by the identification of the word κάντζαρος with the ancient κένταυρος, it remains only to show that the name of ‘Centaurs’ fitly belongs to the monsters whom I have described; and my contention will be that the simple word κάντζαρος, ‘Centaur,’ surviving now only in the dialectic diminutive form σκατζάρι, adequately expresses every sort and condition of Callicantzaros that has been depicted; that καλλικάντζαρος, the general word, of which so many dialectic varieties occur, being simply an euphemistic compound of κάντζαρος with καλός such as we have previously seen in the title καλλικυρᾶδες given to the Nereids, expresses precisely the same meaning as the simple word κάντζαρος, ‘Centaur’; and that λυκοκάντζαρος originally denoted one species only of the genus Centaur, namely a Callicantzaros whose animal traits were those of a wolf.

What then did the ancients mean by the word ‘centaur’?

The mention of the name is apt to carry away our minds to famous frieze or pediment, where in one splendidly impossible creation of art the excellences of man, his head and his hands, are wed with the horse’s strength and speed. This was the species of Centaur which the great sculptors and painters in the best period of Greek Art chose to depict, and these among educated men became the Centaurs par excellence. Yet even so it was not forgotten that they formed only one species, and were strictly to be called ἱπποκένταυροι, ‘horse-centaurs.’ Moreover two other species of Centaur are named in the ancient language, ἰχθυοκένταυροι or fish-centaurs, and ὀνοκένταυροι or ass-centaurs. Of the former nothing seems to be known beyond the mere name, but this matters little inasmuch as they can assuredly have contributed nothing to the popular conception of the wholly terrestrial Callicantzari. The ass-centaurs will prove of more interest.

But the list of ancient species of Centaur does not really stop here. No other compounds of the word Centaur may exist, but none the less there were other Centaurs—other creatures, that is, of mixed human and animal form. Chief among these were the Satyrs, who as pourtrayed by early Greek art might equally well have been called ‘hippocentaurs,’ and in the presentations of Greco-Roman art deserved the name, if I may coin it, of ‘tragocentaurs.’ And the Greeks themselves recognised this fact. ‘The evidence of the coins of Macedonia,’ says Miss Jane Harrison[620], ‘is instructive. On the coins of Orreskii, a centaur, a horse-man, bears off a woman in his arms. At Lete close at hand, with a coinage closely resembling in style, fabric, weight the money of the Orreskii and other Pangaean tribes, the type is the same in content, though with an instructive difference of form—a naked Satyr or Seilenos with the hooves, ears and tail of a horse seizes a woman round the waist.... This interchange of types, Satyr and Centaur, is evidence about which there can be no mistake. Satyr and Centaur, slightly diverse types of the horse-man, are in essence one and the same.’ Nor was the recognition of this fact confined to Macedonia. A famous picture by Zeuxis, representing the domestic life of Centaurs, with a female Centaur (a creature about as rare as a female Callicantzaros) suckling her young, pourtrayed her in most respects, apart from her sex, conventionally, but gave her the ears of a Satyr[621]. And reversely Nonnus ventured to describe the ‘shaggy Satyrs’ as being, ‘by blood, of Centaur-stock[622].’ In view then of this close bond between the two types of half-human half-animal creatures, it would be natural that, when the specific name Satyr was lost, as it has been lost, from the popular language, while the generic term Centaur survived in the form Callicantzaros, the Satyrs should have been amalgamated with those who from of old had professed and called themselves Centaurs; and with the Satyrs, I suppose, went also the Sileni.

Thus the word Centaur, in spite of the narrowing tendencies of Greek art which selected the hippocentaur as the ideal type, was always comprehensive in popular use, and perhaps became even wider in scope as time went on and the distinctive appellations of Satyrs and suchlike were forgotten; but it is also possible that from the very earliest times the distinction between Satyrs and Centaurs was merely an artistic and literary convention, and that in popular speech the name Centaur was applied to both without discrimination. But it does not really concern us to argue at length the question whether the common-folk in antiquity never distinguished, or, having once distinguished, subsequently confused the Satyrs and the Centaurs. It is just worth noticing that it was in art of the Greco-Roman period, so far as I can discover, that horse-centaurs first began to be represented along with Satyrs and Sileni in the entourage of Dionysus; and if this addition to the conventional treatment of such scenes was made, as seems likely, in deference to popular beliefs, the date by which the close association of the two classes was an accomplished fact and confusion of them therefore likely to ensue is approximately determined.

At some date therefore probably not later than the beginning of our era, the generic name of Centaur comprised several species of half-human, half-animal monsters, of whom the best known were horse-centaurs, ass-centaurs, Satyrs, and Sileni; and each of these species, it will be seen, has contributed something to one or other of the many types of the modern Centaurs, the Callicantzari.

The horse-centaur, which was the favourite species among the artists of ancient times, has curiously enough had least influence upon the modern delineation of Callicantzari. The only attribute which they seem to have received chiefly from this source is the rough shaggy hair with which they are usually said to be covered; ‘shaggy’ is Homer’s epithet for the Centaurs[623], and the hippocentaurs of later art retained the trait; for it is specially noted by Lucian that in Zeuxis’ picture the male hippocentaur was shaggy all over, the human part of him no less than the equine[624].

The ass-centaur on the contrary is rarely mentioned by ancient writers, but has contributed largely to some presentments of the Callicantzari. Aelian mentions the name, in the feminine form ὀνοκενταύρα, but the monster to which he applies it, although true to its name in that the upper part of its body is human and the lower part asinine, is not a creation of superstitious fancy, but, as is evident from other facts which he mentions, some species of ape known to him, none too accurately, from some traveller’s tale. The locus classicus on the subject of genuine supernatural ass-centaurs is a passage in the Septuagint translation of Isaiah[625]: καὶ συναντήσουσιν δαιμόνια ὀνοκενταύροις καὶ βοηθήσονται ἕτερος πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον, ἐκεῖ ἀναπαύσονται ὀνοκένταυροι εὑρόντες αὑτοῖς ἀνάπαυσιν—‘And demons shall meet with ass-centaurs and they shall bring help one to another; there shall ass-centaurs find rest for themselves and be at rest.’ Here our Revised Version runs:—“The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves (Heb. ‘howling creatures’), and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there.” The comparison is instructive. It is clear from the context that the Septuagint translators were minded to give some Greek colouring to their rendering even at the expense of strict accuracy; for in the previous verse, where our Revised Version employs the word ‘jackals,’ the Septuagint introduces beings whose voices are generally supposed to have been more attractive, the Sirens. The use of the word ‘ass-centaurs’ cannot therefore have been prompted by any pedantic notions of literal translation. The creatures, for all the lack of other literary warranty, must have been familiar to the popular imagination. And what may be gleaned from the passage concerning their character? Apparently they are the nearest Greek equivalent for ‘howling creatures’ and for ‘night-monsters’; and such emphasis in the Greek is laid upon the statement that they will ‘find rest for themselves and be at rest,’ that they must surely in general have borne a character for restlessness. These restless noisy monsters of the night, in shape half-human and half-asinine, are clearly in character no less than in form the prototypes of some modern Callicantzari.

Of the many traits inherited by the Callicantzari from the Satyrs and Sileni, the usual comrades of Dionysus, I have already spoken. So far as outward appearance is concerned, the Satyrs as they came to be pourtrayed in the later Greek art are clearly responsible for the goat-type so common in the description of the Callicantzari, while a reminiscence of the Sileni may perhaps be traced in the rarer bald-headed type. But as regards their manner of life, which as I have shown bears many resemblances to that of the Satyrs—their boisterous merriment and rioting, their love of wine, their violence, and their lewdness—these traits cannot of course be referred to the Satyrs any more than to the hippocentaurs or for that matter to the onocentaurs who were probably no more sober or chaste than their kindred. Rather it was the common possession of these qualities by the several types of half-human and half-bestial monsters that allowed them to be grouped together under the single name of Callicantzari.

Thus the conclusion drawn from an historical survey of those ancient festivals which are now represented by the Twelve Days, namely that the Callicantzari are the modern representatives of Dionysus’ monstrous comrades, is both corroborated and amplified by the etymological identification of the Callicantzari (or in the simple and unadorned form, the σκατζάρια) with the Centaurs, of whom the Satyrs and the Sileni are species.

The remaining modern name on which I have to touch readily explains itself in the light of what has already been said. If the word κάντζαρος is the modern form of κένταυρος, and if by the name ‘Centaur’ was denoted a being half-human and half-animal both in shape and in character, then the name λυκοκάντζαρος clearly should mean a creature half-man half-wolf, such as the ancients might have called a lycocentaur, but did actually name λυκάνθρωπος. Lycocantzaros then etymologically should mean the werewolf—a man transformed either by his own power or by some external influence into a wolf.

The idea of lycanthropy has probably been familiar to the peasants of Greece continuously from the earliest ages down to the present day, either surviving traditionally like so many other beliefs, or possibly stimulated by actual experiences; for lycanthropy is not a mere figment of the imagination, but is a very real and terrible form of madness, under the influence of which the sufferer believes himself transformed (and by dress or lack of it tries to transfigure himself) into a wolf or other wild animal, and in that state develops and satisfies a craving for human flesh. Outbreaks of it were terribly frequent in the east of Europe during the Middle Ages, especially among the Slavonic populations; and it is not likely that Greece wholly escaped this scourge. But whether the idea received some such impetus or no, it was certainly known to the ancient Greeks, and is not wholly forgotten at the present day. This was curiously betrayed by some questions put to an American archaeologist by an Arcadian peasant. Among the items of falsehood vended as news by the Greek press he had seen, but owing to the would-be classical style had failed to understand, certain allegations concerning the cannibalistic habits of Red Indians; and the points on which he sought enlightenment were, first, whether they ran on all fours, and, secondly, whether they went naked or wore wolf-skins. In effect the only form of savagery familiar to his mind was that of the werewolf.

Now here, it might be thought, is the clue by which to explain the first conclusion which we reached, namely, that the Callicantzari were originally men capable of transformation into beasts. The name λυκοκάντζαρος or werewolf, it might be urged, involved the idea of such transformation; and the idea originally associated with the one species was extended to the whole tribe of Callicantzari. At first sight such an explanation is attractive and appears tenable; but maturer consideration compels me to reject it.

In the first place, although the word λυκοκάντζαρος cannot etymologically have meant anything but werewolf when it was first employed, at the present day in the few districts where the name may be heard, in Cynouria, in Messenia, and, so far as I can ascertain, in Crete, it involves no idea of the transformation of men into beasts; it is merely a variant form for καλλικάντζαρος and in no way distinguished from it in meaning, and the Callicantzari in those districts are demons of definite hybrid form, not men temporarily transformed into beasts. And conversely in the Cyclades and other places where the belief in this transformation of men is prevalent, the compound λυκοκάντζαρος seems to be unknown, and καλλικάντζαρος (or some dialectic form of the same word) is in vogue. Since then in many places where the generic name Callicantzari is alone in use, the human origin of these monsters is maintained, while in those few districts where the specific name Lycocantzari is also used that human origin is denied, it is hard to believe that in this respect the surviving ideas concerning the genus can be the outcome of obsolete ideas concerning the species.

Secondly, if for the sake of argument it be granted that the Callicantzari had always been demons, how came the werewolf, the λυκάνθρωπος, whose very name proved him half-human, to change that name to λυκοκάντζαρος? How came a man who occasionally turned into a wolf to be classified as one species in a genus of beings who ex hypothesi were not human even in origin, but demoniacal? We should have to suppose that the peasants of that epoch in which the change of name occurred did not distinguish between men and demons—which, as Euclid puts it, is absurd; wherefore the supposition that the Callicantzari had always been regarded as demons until werewolves were admitted to their ranks cannot be maintained. Rather the point of resemblance between the earliest Callicantzari and werewolves, which made the amalgamation of them possible, must have been the belief that both alike were men transformed into animals.

Since then the belief in the metamorphosis of men into Callicantzari existed before that epoch—a quite indeterminate epoch, I am afraid—in which the word λυκάνθρωπος fell into desuetude[626] and was replaced by λυκοκάντζαρος, where are we to look for the origin of the idea?

Since the Callicantzari bear the name of the Centaurs, it is obvious that the enquiry must be carried yet further back, and that the ancient ideas concerning the Centaurs’ origin must be investigated. Pindar touches often upon the Centaur-myths; what view did he take of the Centaurs’ nature? Were they divine in origin or human? We shall see that he held no settled view on the subject. Both traditions concerning the origin of the Centaurs were familiar to him just as both traditions still prevail in modern accounts of the Callicantzari; sometimes he follows the one, sometimes the other. On the one hand the Centaur Chiron is consistently described as divine. ‘Fain would I,’ says Pindar[627], ‘that Chiron ... wide-ruling scion of Cronos the son of Ouranos were living and not gone, and that the Beast of the wilds were ruling o’er the glens of Pelion’; and again he names him ‘Chiron son of Cronos[628]’ and ‘the Beast divine[629].’ In Pindar’s view Chiron, be he Beast or God, is certainly not human; and if he is once named by the same poet ‘the Magnesian Centaur[630],’ the epithet need only perhaps declare his habitation. His divinity is plainly asserted, and the legend that he resigned the divine guerdon of immortality in order to deliver Prometheus accords with Pindar’s doctrine.

But on the other hand the story of Ixion as told by Pindar reveals another tradition. Ixion himself was human; for his presumptuous sin of lusting after the wife of Zeus ‘swiftly he suffered as he, mere man, deserved, and won a misery unique[631].’ The son of Ixion therefore by a nebulous mother could not be divine. The cloud wherewith in his delusion he had mated ‘bare unto him, unblest of the Graces, a monstrous son, a thing apart even as she, with no rank either among men or where gods have their portion; him she nurtured and named Centauros; and he in the dales of Pelion did mate with Magnesian mares, and thence there sprang a wondrous warrior-tribe like unto both their parents—like to their dams in their nether parts, and the upper frame their sire’s[632].’ The first Centaur then, the founder of the race, though only half-human in origin, was in no respect divine. How then came Chiron, one of that race, to be divine? The two traditions are inconsistent. Pindar as a poet was not troubled thereby; he chose now the one, now the other, for his art to embroider. But in the science of mythology the discrepancy of the two traditions is important. Once more we must carry our search further back—to Hesiod and to Homer.

The former, in placing the battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs among the scenes wrought on the shield of Heracles[633], says never a word to suggest that either set of combatants were other than human; the contrast between them lies wholly in the weapons they use. The Lapithae have their leaders enumerated, Caineus, Dryas, Pirithous, and the rest; the Centaurs in like manner are gathered about their Chieftains, ‘huge Petraeos and Asbolos the augur and Arctos and Oureios and black-haired Mimas and the two sons of Peukeus, Perimedes and Dryalos.’ The account reads like a description of a fight between two tribes, one of them equipped with body-armour and using spears, the other more primitive and armed only with rude wooden weapons.

To this representation of the Centaurs Homer also, in the Iliad, consents; for, though he names them Pheres or ‘Beasts,’ it is quite clear that this is the proper name of a tribe of men—men who dwelt on Mount Pelion and were hardly less valiant than the heroes who conquered them. ‘Never saw I,’ says Nestor, ‘nor shall see other such men as were Pirithous and Dryas, shepherd of hosts, and Caineus and Exadios and godlike Polyphemus and Theseus, son of Aegeus, like unto the immortals. Mightiest in sooth were they of men upon the earth, and against mightiest fought, even the mountain-haunting Pheres, and fearfully they did destroy them[634].’ And again we hear how Pirithous ‘took vengeance on the shaggy Pheres, and drave them forth from Pelion to dwell nigh unto the Aethices[635].’ Apart from the name ‘Pheres,’ which will shortly be examined, there is nothing in these passages any more than in that of Hesiod to suggest that the conflict of the Lapithae and the Centaurs means anything but the destruction or expulsion of a primitive and wild mountain-tribe by a people who, in the wearing of body-armour, had advanced one important step in material civilisation. Yet in some respects the tribe of Centaurs were, according to Homer, at least the equals of their neighbours; for Chiron, ‘the justest of the Centaurs[636],’ was the teacher both of the greatest warrior, Achilles[637], and of the greatest physician, Asclepios[638]. The only passage of Homer which has been held to imply that the Centaurs were not men comes not from the Iliad but from the Odyssey[639]—ἐξ οὗ Κενταύροισι καὶ ἀνδράσι νεῖκος ἐτύχθη—which Miss Harrison[640] translates ‘Thence ’gan the feud ’twixt Centaurs and mankind,’ inferring therefrom the non-humanity of the Centaurs. It is however legitimate to take the word ἀνδράσι in a stricter sense, and to render the line, ‘Thence arose the feud between Centaurs and heroes,’ to wit, the heroes Pirithous, Dryas, and others; and the inference is then impaired. But in any case the Iliad, the earlier authority, consistently depicts both Chiron and the other Centaurs as human. The tradition of a divine origin must have arisen between the date of the Iliad and the time of Pindar, and from then until now popular opinion must have been divided on the question whether the Centaurs, the Callicantzari, were properly men or demons. But one part of the conclusion at which we first arrived, namely that Callicantzari were originally men, is justified by Homer’s and Hesiod’s testimony.

What then of the other part of that conclusion? There is ancient proof that the Callicantzari were originally men; but what witness is there to the metamorphosis of those men into beasts? The Centaurs’ alternative name, Pheres.

An ethnological explanation of this name has recently been put forward by Prof. Ridgeway[641]. Concluding from the evidence of the Iliad that ‘the Pheres are as yet nothing more than a mountain tribe and are not yet conceived as half-horse half-man,’ he points out, on the authority of Pindar, that Pelion was the country of the Magnetes[642] and that Chiron not only dwelt in a cave on Pelion, but is himself called a Magnete[643]. ‘It is then probable,’ he continues[644], ‘that the Centaur myth originated in the fact that the older race (the Pelasgians) had continued to hold out in the mountains, ever the last refuge of the remnants of conquered races. At first the tribes of Pelion may have been friendly to the (Achaean) invader who was engaged in subjugating other tribes with whom they had old feuds; and as the Norman settlers in Ireland gave their sons to be fostered by the native Irish, so the Achaean Peleus entrusted his son to the old Chiron. Nor must it be forgotten that conquering races frequently regard the conquered both with respect and aversion. They respect them for their skill as wizards, because the older race are familiar with the spirits of the land.... On the other hand, as the older race have been driven into the most barren parts of the land, and are being continually pressed still further back, and have their women carried off, they naturally lose no opportunity of making reprisals on their enemies, and sally forth from their homes in the mountains or forests to plunder and in their turn to carry off women. The conquering race consequently regard the aborigines with hatred, and impute to them every evil quality, though when it is necessary to employ sorcery they will always resort to one of the hated race.’

Then follow a series of instances from various parts of the world which amply justify this estimate of the relations between conquerors and conquered. But in applying the principle thus obtained to the case of the Centaurs Prof. Ridgeway goes a little further. ‘As it is therefore certain that aboriginal tribes who survive in mountains and forests are considered not only possessed of skill in magic, but as also bestial in their lusts, and are even transformed into vipers and wild beasts by the imagination of their enemies, we may reasonably infer from the Centaur myth that the ancient Pelasgian tribes of Pelion and Ossa had been able to defy the invaders of Thessaly, and that they had from the remotest times possessed these mountains.

‘We can now explain why they are called Pheres, Centauri and Magnetes. Scholars are agreed in holding that Pheres (φῆρες) is only an Aeolic form for θῆρες, “wild beasts.” Such a name is not likely to have been assumed by the tribe itself, but is rather an opprobrious term applied to them by their enemies. Centauri was probably the name of some particular clan of Magnetes[645].’

Prof. Ridgeway then, as I understand, believes the Centauri to have been named Pheres or ‘Beasts’ by their enemies because they were bestial in character, and supports his view by the statement which I have italicised. On this point I join issue.

First, the phrase in question is based upon one only out of the many instances which he adduces as evidence of the relations between invaders and aborigines—and that the most dubious, for it depends upon a somewhat arbitrary interpretation of a passage[646] of Procopius. ‘He wrote,’ says Prof. Ridgeway[647], ‘in the sixth century of Britain thus: “The people who in old time lived in this island of Britain built a great wall, which cut off a considerable portion of it. On either side of this wall the land, climate and everything are different. For the district to the east of the wall enjoys a healthy climate, changing with the seasons, being moderately warm in summer and cool in winter. It is thickly inhabited by people who live in the same way as other folk.” After enumerating its natural advantages he then proceeds to say that “On the west of the wall everything is quite the opposite; so that, forsooth, it is impossible for a man to live there for half-an-hour. Vipers and snakes innumerable and every kind of wild beast share the possession of that country between them; and what is most marvellous, the natives say that if a man crosses the wall and enters the district beyond it, he immediately dies, being quite unable to withstand the pestilential climate which prevails there, and that any beasts that wander in there straightway meet their death.”

‘There seems little doubt that the wall here meant is the Wall of Hadrian, for the ancient geographers are confused about the orientation of the island.

‘It is therefore probable that the vipers and wild beasts who lived beyond the wall were nothing more than the Caledonians, nor is it surprising to learn that a sudden death overtook either man or beast that crossed into their territory.’

That a native British statement made in the sixth century to the effect that the country beyond Hadrian’s wall was pestilential in climate and infested with vipers, snakes, and wild beasts, should be considered as even probable evidence that either the Romans or the natives of Britain regarded the Caledonians as noxious animals, is to me surprising. The question whether the Centaurs were called Pheres because of their bestial repute among neighbouring tribes must be decided independently of that inference and on its own merits.

Secondly then, was there anything bestial in the conduct of the Centaurs, as known to Homer, which could have won for them the name of ‘Beasts’? All that ancient mythology tells of their conduct may be briefly summarised; they fought with the men and carried off the women of neighbouring tribes, and occasionally drank wine to excess. Were the Achaeans then such ardent abstainers that they dubbed those who indulged too freely in intoxicants ‘Beasts’? Did the invaders of Greece and the assailants of Troy hold fighting so reprehensible? Or was it the Centaurs’ practice of carrying off the women of their enemies which convicted them of ‘bestial lust’? In all ages surely humanum est errare, but in that early age the practice was not only human but manly; the enemy’s womenfolk were among the rightful prizes of a raid. There is nothing then in mythology to warrant the belief that the Centaurs’ moral conduct was such as to win for them, in that age, the opprobrious name of ‘Beasts.’

And here Art supports Mythology; for clearly the representation of the Centaurs in semi-animal form cannot be dissociated from their name of Pheres; the same idea must lie at the root of both. If then the name Pheres was given to the Centaurs because of their violence or lust, the animal portion of them in the representations of early Greek Art should have been such as to express one or both of those qualities. But what do we find? In discussing the development of the horse-centaur in art, Miss Harrison[648] points out that though in horse-loving Athens, by the middle of the fifth century B.C., the equine element predominated in the composite being, ‘in archaic representations the reverse is the case. The Centaurs are in art what they are in reality, men with men’s legs and feet, but they are shaggy mountain-men with some of the qualities and habits of beasts; so to indicate this in a horse-loving country they have the hind-quarters of a horse awkwardly tacked on to their human bodies.’ Now the particular ‘qualities and habits of beasts,’ if such there be, in the Centaurs must be their violence and lust. Are these then adequately symbolised by ‘the hind-quarters of a horse awkwardly tacked on to their human bodies’? In scenes of conflict, in the archaic representations, it is the human part of the Centaur which bears the brunt of the fight, and the weapon used is a branch of a tree, the primitive human weapon; the Centaur fights as a man fights. If he had been depicted with horns or teeth or claws as his weapons of offence, then the animal part of him would fairly symbolise his bestial violence; but who could discover a trace of pugnacity in his equine loins and rump, hind legs and tail? Or again if pugnacity is not the particular quality which caused the Centaurs to be named ‘Beasts’ and to be pourtrayed in half-animal form, is it their lewdness which art thus endeavoured to suggest? Surely, if the early artists had understood that the name Pheres was a contemptuous designation of a tribe bestial in their lust, Greek taste was not so intolerant of ithyphallic representations that they need have had recourse to so cryptic a symbol as the hind-quarters of a horse. But if it be supposed that, while a sense of modesty, unknown to later generations, deterred those early artists from a more obvious method of expressing their meaning, the idea of the Centaurs’ lewdness was really present to their minds, then Chiron too falls under the same condemnation and is tainted with the same vice as the rest. ‘A black-figured vase,’ says Prof. Ridgeway, à propos of the virtues, not of the vices, of this one Centaur, ‘shows the hero (Peleus) bringing the little Achilles to Chiron, who is depicted as a venerable old man with a white beard and clad in a long robe from under the back of which issues the hinder part of a diminutive pony, the equine portion being a mere adjunct to the complete human figure[649].’ So far then as the animal part is concerned, the representation of Chiron in early art differs no whit from that of other Centaurs, and the quality, which is symbolised by the equine adjunct in these, is imputed to him also. Yet to convict of bestial lust the virtuous Chiron, the chosen teacher of great heroes, is intolerable. In effect, no explanation of the name Pheres in mythology and of the biform representation of the Centaurs in art can be really satisfactory which does not reckon with Chiron, the most famous and ‘the most just’ of the Centaurs, as well as with the rest of the tribe. Some characteristic common to them all—and therefore not lust or any other evil passion—must be the basis of any adequate interpretation of the name ‘Beasts.’

If then the name Pheres cannot have been an opprobrious term applied to the Pelasgian tribe of Centauri by the Achaean invaders in token of their lusts or other evil qualities, can it have been a term of respect? It may not now sound a respectful title; but in view of that ethnological principle which Prof. Ridgeway enunciates, namely ‘that conquering races frequently regard the conquered both with respect and aversion,’ the enquiry is worth pursuing. The principle itself seems to me well established; it is only his application of it in the particular case of the Centaurs to which I have demurred.

The conquering race, he shows, are apt to respect the conquered for their skill as wizards. This certainly holds true in the case before us. Chiron was of high repute in the arts of magic and prophecy. It was from him that Asclepios learned ‘to be a healer of the many-plaguing maladies of men; and thus all that came unto him whether plagued with self-grown sores or with limbs wounded by the lustrous bronze or stone far-hurled, or marred by summer heat or winter cold—these he delivered, loosing each from his several infirmity, some with emollient spells and some by kindly potions, or else he hung their limbs with charms, or by surgery he raised them up to health[650].’ And it was Chiron too to whom Apollo himself resorted for counsel, and from whom he learned the blissful destiny of the maiden Cyrene[651]. Nor was Chiron the only exponent of such arts among the Centaurs; for Hesiod names also Asbolos as a diviner.

If then the tribe of Centaurs enjoyed a reputation for sorcery, could this have won for them the name of ‘Beasts’? Can it have been that, in the exercise of their magic powers, they were believed able to transform themselves into beasts?

Within the limits of Greek folk-lore we have already once encountered such a belief, namely in the case of the ‘Striges,’ old witches capable of turning themselves into birds of prey; and in the folk-lore of the world at large the idea is extremely frequent. There is no need to encumber this chapter with a mass of recorded instances; the verdict of the first authority on the subject is sufficient. According to Tylor[652], the belief ‘that certain men, by natural gift or magic art, can turn for a time into ravening wild beasts’ is ‘a widespread belief, extending through savage, barbaric, classic, oriental, and mediaeval life, and surviving to this day in European superstition.’ ‘The origin of this idea,’ he says, ‘is by no means sufficiently explained,’ but he notes that ‘it really occurs that, in various forms of mental disease, patients prowl shyly, long to bite and destroy mankind, and even fancy themselves transformed into wild beasts.’ Whether such cases of insanity are the cause or the effect of the belief, he does not determine; but he adds, what is most important to the present issue, that ‘professional sorcerers have taken up the idea, as they do any morbid delusion, and pretend to turn themselves and others into beasts by magic art’; and, later on[653], citing by way of illustration a passage of the Eclogues[654], in which Vergil ‘tells of Moeris as turning into a wolf by the use of poisonous herbs, as calling up souls from the tombs, and as bewitching away crops,’ he points out that in the popular opinion of Vergil’s age ‘the arts of the werewolf, the necromancer or “medium,” and the witch, were different branches of one craft.’

If then the Centaurs were a tribe of reputed sorcerers and also obtained the secondary name of ‘Beasts,’ the analogy of worldwide superstitions suggests that the link between these two facts is to be found in their magical power of assuming the shape of beasts.

What particular beast-shape the Centaurs most often affected need not much concern us. The analogy, on which my interpretation of the name Pheres rests, makes certainly for some shape more terrifying than that of a horse; and the word φῆρες itself also denotes wild and savage beasts rather than domestic animals. But the horse-centaur, though it monopolised art, was not the only form of centaur known, nor, if we may judge from modern descriptions of the Callicantzari, had it so firm a hold on the popular imagination as some other types. Possibly its very existence is due only to the aesthetic taste of a horse-loving people. Pindar certainly knew of one Centaurus earlier in date and far more monstrous than the horse-centaurs which artists chose to depict, and provided a genealogy accordingly. Moreover in the passage of Hesiod which I have quoted above and which, by its agreement with the Iliad as to the human character of the Centaurs, is proved to embody an early tradition, there is at least a suggestion of a more savage form assumed by the Centaurs. Several of their names in that passage[655] seem to indicate various qualities and habits which they possessed. One is called Petraeos, because the Centaurs lived in rocky caves or because they hurled rocks at their foes; another is Oureios, because they were a mountain-tribe; then there are the two sons of Peukeus, so named because the Centaurs’ weapons were pine-branches. And why is another named Arctos? Is it not because the Centaurs assumed by sorcery the form of bears? There is some probability then that the equine type of Centaur, the conventional Centaur of Greek Art, was a comparatively late development, and that the remote age which gave to the Centaurs the name of Pheres believed rather that that tribe of sorcerers were wont to transform themselves into the more monstrous and terrible shapes of bears and other wild beasts.

But if the particular animal which Greek artists selected as a component part of their Centaurs is thus of minor importance, the fact that their Centaurs were always composite in conception, always compounded of the human and the animal, is highly significant. In discussing the various types of Callicantzari in various parts of Greece, we found that, where there exists a belief in their power of metamorphosis, they are stated to appear in single and complete shapes, while, where the belief in their transformation is unknown, they are represented in composite shapes; and having previously concluded that the belief in their metamorphosis was a genuine and original factor in the superstition, we were led to formulate the principle, 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. Now the horse-centaur of Greek Art is a being of composite, abnormal, and fantastic shape, combining incongruous features of man and animal. If then the principle based on facts of modern Greek folk-lore may be applied to the facts of ancient Greek folk-lore, the horse-centaur of Greek Art replaced a completely human Centaur capable of transforming himself into completely animal form.

Moreover I am inclined to think that such a development was likely to occur in the representations of art even more readily than in verbal descriptions. For even if the artist belonged to an age which had not yet forgotten that the Centaurs were human beings capable of turning themselves by sorcery into beasts, how was he to distinguish the Centaur in his picture either from an ordinary man, if the Centaur were in his ordinary human shape, or from a real animal, if the Centaur were in his assumed shape? He might of course have drawn an ordinary man and have inscribed the legend, ‘This is a Centaur capable of assuming other forms’; or he might have drawn an ordinary animal with the explanatory note, ‘This is not really an animal but a Centaur in disguise.’ But if such expedients did not satisfy his artistic instincts, what was he to do? Surely his only course was to depict the Centaur in his normal human shape, and by some animal adjunct to indicate his powers of transformation. And that is what he did; for in the earliest art the fore part of the Centaur is a complete human figure, and the hind part is a somewhat disconnected equine appendage[656].

Nor is this artistic convention without parallel in ancient Greece. At Phigalea there was once, we are told, an ancient statue of Demeter represented as a woman with the head and mane of a horse; and the explanation of this equine adjunct was that she had once assumed the form of a mare[657]. In other words, the power of transformation was indicated in art by a composite form.

Hence indeed it is not unlikely that the very method which early artists adopted of indicating the Centaurs’ power to assume various single forms, being misunderstood by later generations among whom the Centaurs’ human origin and faculty of magical transformation were no longer predominant traditions, contributed not a little to the conception of Centaurs in an invariable composite form; and that later art, by blending the two incongruous elements into a more harmonious but less significant whole, confirmed men in that misunderstanding, until the old traditions became a piece of rare and local lore.

Thus on three separate grounds—the analogy of world-wide superstition which attributes to sorcerers the power of assuming bestial form; the tendency detected in modern Greek folk-lore to replace beings of single shape, but capable of transforming themselves into other single shapes, by creatures of composite shape; and the contrast between the horse-centaurs of archaic art and those of the Parthenon—we are led to the same conclusion, namely that the Centaurs were a tribe of reputed sorcerers whose most striking manifestation of power, in the eyes of their Achaean neighbours, was to turn themselves into wild beasts. The name Pheres was then in truth a title of respect, a title in no way derogatory to the virtuous Chiron, who, if he exercised his magical powers chiefly in mercy and healing, shared doubtless with the other Centaurs the miraculous faculty of metamorphosis.

Our first conclusion then concerning the Callicantzari, namely that they were originally men capable of turning into beasts, was no less correct than the second conclusion which showed them as the modern representatives of Dionysus’ attendant Satyrs and Sileni. Where the beliefs in their human origin and in their power of metamorphosis still prevail, Greek tradition has preserved not only the name but the essential character of the ancient Centaurs.

Does it seem hardly credible that popular tradition should still faithfully record a superstition which dates from before Homer and yet is practically ignored by Greek literature? Still if the fidelity of the common-folk’s memory is guaranteed in many details by its agreement with that which literature does record, it would be folly to disregard it where literature is silent or prefers another of the still prevalent traditions. Let us take only Apollodorus’ account[658] of the fight of Heracles with the Centaurs and mark the several points in which it confirms the present beliefs about the Callicantzari. The old home, he says, of the Centaurs before they came to Malea was Pelion; Pelion is now the place where above all others stories of the Callicantzari are rife; and in the neighbouring island of Sciathos it is believed[659] that they come at Christmas not from the lower world, but from the mainland, the old country of the Magnetes; even local associations then seem to have survived, just as in the modern stories about Demeter from Eleusis and from Phigaleia. Heracles was entertained in the cave of the Centaur Pholos; the Callicantzari likewise live in caves during their sojourn on earth, and their hospitality, though never sought, has been endured. The Centaur Pholos ate raw meat, though he provided his guest with cooked meat; the Callicantzari also regale themselves on uncooked food[660], toads and snakes for the most part, but in one Messenian story also raw dogs’-flesh[661]. Heracles broached a cask of wine, and Pholos’ brother Centaurs smelt it and swarmed to the cave on mischief bent; the Callicantzari have the same love of wine and the same malevolence. The first of the Centaurs to enter the cave were put to flight by Heracles with fire-brands, and his ordinary weapon, the bow, was not used by him save to complete the rout; fire-brands are the right weapons with which to scare away the Callicantzari. Surely, when such correspondences as these attest the integrity of popular tradition for some two thousand years, there is nothing incredible in the supposition that there had been equal integrity in popular (as opposed to artistic and literary) traditions for another thousand years or more before that.

Thus then it appears that in some districts of modern Greece, in which there prevail the beliefs that the Callicantzari are, in their normal form, human and that they are capable of transforming themselves into beasts, popular tradition dates from the age in which the Achaean invaders credited the Pelasgian tribe of Centauri with magical powers and in token of one special manifestation thereof surnamed them Pheres.

In other districts, where the Callicantzari are represented as demoniacal and not human and as monsters of mixed rather than of variable shape, the popular memory goes back to a period somewhat less remote, that period in which a new conception, encouraged perhaps unwittingly by archaic art, became predominant in classical art and literature, with the further result, we must suppose, that in the minds of some of the common-folk too monsters of composite shape took the place of the old human wonder-working Centaurs.

And yet again in other districts, where the Christmas mummers in the guise of Callicantzari are the modern representatives of those worshippers of Dionysus who dressed themselves in the guise of Satyrs or Sileni, the traditions which survive are mainly those of a post-classical age in which the half-human half-animal comrades of Dionysus lost their distinctive names and were enrolled in the Centaurs’ ranks.

Finally in the few districts where language at least testifies that werewolves have also been numbered among the Callicantzari, popular belief, though preserving much that is ancient, may have been modified by a superstition, or rather by an actual form of insanity, which was particularly prevalent in the Middle Ages.

Such have been in different districts and periods the various developments of a superstition which originated in the reputation for sorcery enjoyed by a Pelasgian tribe inhabiting Mount Pelion in a prehistoric age; and the complexity of modern traditions concerning the Callicantzari is due to the fact that they do not all date from one epoch but comprise the whole history of the Centaurs.