CHAPTER IV.
THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY.
§ 1. The Modern Greek Vampire.
The division of the human entity into the two parts which we call soul and body has been so universally recognised even among the most primitive of mankind that the idea of it must have been first suggested by the observation of some universal phenomenon—most probably the phenomenon of unconsciousness whether in sleep, in fainting, in trance, or in death. If it had been man’s lot to pass in this world a life of activity unbroken by sleep or exhaustion, and thereafter to be translated like Enoch or Ganymede to another world, so that the spectacle of a body lying inert and senseless could never have been forced upon men’s sight, the first impulse to speculation concerning that impalpable something, the loss of which severs men from converse with the waking, active world, might never have been given, and the duality of human nature might never have been conceived. But death above all overtaking each in turn has forced in turn the mourners for each to muse on the future condition of these two elements which, united, make a man, and, disjoined, leave but a corpse. Does neither or does one or do both of them continue? And, continuing, what degree of intelligence and of power has either or have both? Are they for ever separated, or will they be re-united elsewhere? Such are the questions that must have vexed, as they still vex, the minds of many when their eyes were confronted by the spectacle of death.
For some indeed a means of answering or of quieting such searchings of heart has been found in the acceptance of religious dogma. But ancient Greek religion, the faith or superstition in which the Hellenic people, defiant alike of destructive and of constructive philosophy, lived and moved and had their being, was not dogmatic; the very priests were guardians and exponents of ceremonies rather than preachers of doctrine; there was no organised hierarchy committed to one set creed and prepared to assert the divine revelation of a single formulated answer to these questions. The sum total of orthodoxy amounted to little more than a belief in gods; and each man was free to believe what he would, evil as well as good, concerning them, and to find for himself hope or despair. In determining therefore the views to which the mass of the common-folk inclined with regard to the relations of soul and body, little assistance can be obtained in the first instance from those personal opinions which literature has preserved to us, opinions emanating from poets and philosophers who were not of the people but consciously above them, and who set themselves some to expose, others to reform, the popular religion, but few simply to maintain it. The conservative force of the ancient religion lay in the inherited and almost instinctive beliefs of the common-folk; oral tradition weighed more with them than philosophic reasoning, and their tenacity of customs as barbarous even as human sacrifice defied the softening influences of an humaner civilisation.
That these characteristics of the ancient Greek folk are stamped equally upon the people of to-day is a fact which every page of this book has confirmed; and it is therefore by analysis of modern beliefs and customs relative to death that I propose to discover the fundamental ideas held by the Greek people from the beginning concerning the relations between soul and body. For I venture to think that the great teachers of antiquity, whose doctrines dominate ancient literature, were often more widely removed by their genius, than are the modern folk by the lapse of centuries, from the peasants of those early days, and that the oral tradition of a people who have instinctively clung to every ancient belief and custom is even after more than two thousand years a safer guide than the contemporary writings of men who deliberately discarded or arbitrarily modified tradition in favour of the results of their own personal speculations. First then the peasants of modern Greece must furnish our clue to the popular beliefs of antiquity; afterwards we may profitably consider the use and handling of those beliefs in ancient literature.
To this end I shall examine first and necessarily at some length a certain abnormal condition of the dead about which very definite ideas are everywhere held; for the abhorrence and dread with which the abnormal state is regarded will be an accurate measure of the eagerness with which the opposite and normal state is desired; and further in this desire to promote and to secure the normal condition of the departed will be found the motive of various funeral-customs.
This abnormal condition of the dead is a kind of vampirism. It is believed that under certain conditions a dead body is withheld from the normal process of corruption, is re-animated, and revisits the scenes of its former life, sometimes in a harmless or even kindly mood, but far more often bent on mischief and on murder. The superstition as it now stands is by no means wholly Greek or wholly popular. Two extraneous influences, the one Slavonic and the other ecclesiastical, have considerably modified it. But in the present section I shall confine myself to describing the appearance, nature, habits, and proper treatment of the Greek vampire as he is now conceived; the work of analysing the superstition and of separating the pure Hellenic metal from the extraneous alloys with which in its now current form it is contaminated will occupy the next section; and the two which follow will be devoted to showing that the native residue of superstition was in fact well known to the ancient Greeks and was utilised to no small extent in their literature.
The best accounts of this superstition and of the savage practices to which it led are furnished by writers of the seventeenth century. At the present day, though the superstition is far from extinction, the more violent outbreaks of it are comparatively rare; and, although stories dealing with it may frequently be heard, it might perhaps be difficult to piece together any complete and coherent account of the Greek vampire without a previous knowledge obtained from writers of two or three centuries ago. In such stories as I myself have heard I have found nothing new, and have often missed something with which older narratives had made me familiar. In the seventeenth century some parts of Greece would seem to have been infested by these vampires. The island of Santorini (the ancient Thera) acquired so enduring a notoriety in this respect, that even at the present day ‘to send vampires to Santorini[959]’ is a proverbial expression synonymous with ‘owls to Athens’ or ‘coals to Newcastle’; and the inhabitants of the island enjoyed so wide a reputation as experts in dealing with them, that two stories recently published[960], one from Myconos and the other from Sphakiá in Crete, actually end with the despatch of a vampire’s body to Santorini for effective treatment there. The justice of this reputation will shortly appear; for one of the best accounts of the superstition was written by a Jesuit residing in the island, to whom the resurrection of these vampires seemed an unquestionable, if also inexplicable, phenomenon of by no means rare occurrence. Nowadays cases of suspected vampirism are much less common, and I can count myself very fortunate to have once witnessed the sequel of such a case. But of that more anon.
The most common form of the Greek name for this species of vampire is βρυκόλακας[961], and in order to avoid on the one hand continual qualification of the word ‘vampire’ (which I have used hitherto as the nearest though not exact equivalent) and on the other hand confusion of the Greek with the Slavonic species from which in certain traits it differs, I prefer henceforth to adopt a transliteration of the Greek word, and, save where I have occasion to speak of the purely Slavonic form of vampire, to employ the name vrykólakas (plural vrykólakes[962]).
The first of those writers of the seventeenth century whose accounts deserve attention is one to whose treatise on various Greek superstitions reference has already frequently been made, Leo Allatius. ‘The vrykolakas,’ he writes[963], ‘is the body of a man of evil and immoral life—very often of one who has been excommunicated by his bishop. Such bodies do not like those of other dead men suffer decomposition after burial nor turn to dust, but having, as it appears, a skin of extreme toughness become swollen and distended all over, so that the joints can scarcely be bent; the skin becomes stretched like the parchment of a drum, and when struck gives out the same sound; from this circumstance the vrykolakas has received the name τυμπανιαῖος (“drumlike”).’ Into such a body, he continues, the devil enters, and issuing from the tomb goes about, chiefly at night, knocking at doors and calling one of the household. If such an one answer, he dies next day; but a vrykolakas never calls twice, and so the inhabitants of Chios (whence Allatius’ observations and information were chiefly derived) secure themselves by always waiting for a second call at night before replying. ‘This monster is said to be so destructive to men, that appearing actually in the daytime, even at noon—and that not only in houses but in fields and highroads and enclosed vineyards—it advances upon them as they walk along, and by its mere aspect without either speech or touch kills them.’ Hence, when sudden deaths occur without other assignable cause, they open the tombs and often find such a body. Thereupon ‘it is taken out of the grave, the priests recite prayers, and it is thrown on to a burning pyre; before the supplications are finished the joints of the body gradually fall apart; and all the remains are burnt to ashes....’ ‘This belief,’ he pursues, ‘is not of fresh and recent growth in Greece; in ancient and modern times alike men of piety who have received the confessions of Christians have tried to root it out of the popular mind.’