Vrykolakes are not ghosts. Such is the first observation which I am compelled to make and which the reader of the last chapter might well consider superfluous. But so many Greek writers, and with them even Bernhard Schmidt[996], have fallen into the error of comparing ancient ghost-stories with modern tales about vrykolakes, without apparently recognising the essential and fundamental difference between them, that some insistence upon the point is necessary. That a definite and close relation does indeed subsist between the ancient belief in wandering spirits and the modern belief in wandering corpses, I readily admit, and with that relation I shall deal later; but the issue before us can only be kept clear by remembering that vrykolakes are not ghosts. There is absolute unanimity among the Greek peasants in their belief that the corpse itself is the vrykolakas, and even the work of re-animating the corpse is generally credited not to the soul which formerly inhabited it, but to the Devil. Thus it appears that whereas most peoples believe to some extent in the return of the ghosts or spirits of the dead, the Greeks fear rather the return of their bodies. If then we can determine what part, if any, of this superstition is genuinely Hellenic, we shall have gained a step in our knowledge of the ideas popularly held in ancient Greece concerning the condition and the relations of soul and body after death.
The view which I take is briefly this, that though Slavonic influence is very conspicuous in the modern superstition as I have described it, yet the whole superstition has not been transplanted root and branch from Slavonic to Greek soil, but the growth, as we now see it and as the writers of the seventeenth century saw it, is the result of the grafting of Slavonic branches upon an Hellenic stock; and further, that before that process began the old pagan Greek element in the superstition had been modified in certain respects by ecclesiastical influence. This is the view which I propose to develop in this section; and my method will be to work back from the modern superstition, removing first the Slavonic and then the ecclesiastical elements in it, and so leaving a residue of purely Hellenic belief.
To Slavonic influence is due first of all the actual word vrykolakas, the derivation of which need not long detain us. Patriotic attempts have indeed been made by Greeks to deny its Slavonic origin, the most plausible being that of Coraës[997], who selecting the local form βορβόλακας sought to identify it with a supposed ancient form μορμόλυξ (= μορμολύκη, μορμολυκεῖον), a ‘bugbear’ or ‘hobgoblin’ of some kind. But there need be no hesitation in pronouncing this suggestion wrong and in asserting the identity of the modern Greek word with a word which runs through all the Slavonic languages. This word is in form a compound of which the first half means ‘wolf’ and the second has been less certainly identified with dlaka, the ‘hair’ of a cow or horse. But, however the meaning of the compound has been obtained, it is, in the actual usage of all Slavonic languages save one, the exact equivalent of our ‘were-wolf[998].’ That one exception is the Serbian language in which it is said to bear rather the sense of ‘vampire[999].’ If this is true, the reason for the transition of meaning lies probably in the belief current among the Slavonic peoples in general that a man who has been a were-wolf in his lifetime becomes a vampire after death[1000]. Yet in general there is no confusion of nomenclature. Although the depredations of the were-wolf and of the vampire are similar in character, the line of demarcation between the living and the dead is kept clear, and the great mass of the Slavonic peoples apply only to the living that word from which the Greek vrykolakas comes, and to the dead the word which we have borrowed in the form ‘vampire[1001].’
Now among the Greeks the latter word is almost unknown; in parts of Macedonia indeed where the Greek population lives in constant touch with Slavonic peoples, a form βάμπυρας or βόμπυρας has been adopted and is used as a synonym of vrykolakas in its ordinary Greek sense[1002]; but in Greece proper and in the Greek islands the word ‘vampire’ is, so far as I can discover, absolutely non-existent, and it is vrykolakas which ordinarily denotes the resuscitated corpse. In discriminating therefore between the Slavonic and the Greek elements in the modern Greek superstition it is of some importance to determine in which sense the Greeks originally borrowed the word vrykolakas which at the present day they in general employ in a different sense from that which both etymology and general Slavonic usage accord to it. Was it originally borrowed in the sense of ‘were-wolf’ or in the sense of ‘vampire’?
Among Slavonic peoples the only one said to have transferred the word vrykolakas from its original meaning to that of ‘vampire’ is the Serbian; and the Greeks therefore, in order to have borrowed the word in that sense, would have had to borrow direct from the Serbian language. But linguistic evidence renders that hypothesis untenable. All the many Greek dialectic forms of the word vrykolakas concur in showing a liquid (ρ or λ) in the first syllable; while Serbian is among the two or three Slavonic languages which have discarded that liquid. It follows therefore that the Greeks borrowed the word from some Slavonic language other than Serbian, and consequently from some language which used and still uses that word in the sense of ‘were-wolf.’
Further, there is evidence that in the Greek language itself the word vrykolakas does even now locally and occasionally bear its original significance. This usage indeed is flatly denied by Bernhard Schmidt, who, having accurately distinguished the were-wolf and the vampire, states that ‘the modern Greek vrykolakas answers only to the latter[1003].’ This pronouncement however was made in the face of two strong pieces of independent evidence to the contrary, which Schmidt notices and dismisses in a footnote[1004]. The first witness is Hanush[1005], who was plainly told by a Greek of Mytilene that there were two kinds of vrykolakes, the one kind being men already dead, and the other still living men who were subject to a kind of somnambulism and were seen abroad particularly on moonlight nights. The other authority is Cyprien Robert[1006], who describes the vrykolakes of Thessaly and Epirus thus: ‘These are living men mastered by a kind of somnambulism, who seized by a thirst for blood go forth at night from their shepherd’s-huts, and scour the country biting and tearing all that they meet both man and beast.’
To these two pieces of testimony—strong enough, it might be thought, in their mutual agreement to merit more than passing notice and arbitrary rejection—I can add confirmation of more recent date. In Cyprus, during excavations carried out in the spring of 1899 under the auspices of the British Museum, the directors of the enterprise heard from their workmen several stories dealing with the detection of a vrykolakas. The outline of these stories (to which Tenos furnishes many parallels[1007], though in these latter I have not found the word vrykolakas employed) is as follows. The inhabitants of a particular village, having suffered from various nocturnal depredations, determine to keep watch at night for the marauder. Having duly armed themselves they maintain a strict vigil, and are rewarded by seeing a vrykolakas. Thereupon one of them with gun or sword succeeds in inflicting a wound upon the monster, which however for the nonce escapes. But the next day a man of the village, who had not been among the watchers of the night, is observed to bear a wound exactly corresponding with that which the assailant of the vrykolakas had dealt; and being taxed with it the man confesses himself to be a vrykolakas.
Similarly on the borders of Aetolia and Acarnania, in the neighbourhood of Agrinion, I myself ascertained that the word vrykolakas was occasionally applied to living persons in the sense of were-wolf, although there as elsewhere it more commonly denotes a resuscitated corpse. Lycanthropy, as has been observed in a previous chapter[1008], is in Greece often imputed to children. In the district mentioned this is conspicuously the case. If one or more children in a family die without evident cause, the mother will often regard the smallest or weakliest of the survivors—more especially one in any way deformed or demented—as guilty of the brothers’ or sisters’ deaths, and the suspect is called a vrykolakas. Εἶσαι βρυκόλακας καὶ ’φάγες τὸν ἀδερφό σου, ‘you are a vrykolakas and have devoured your brother,’ is the charge hurled at the helpless infant, and ill-treatment to match is meted out in the hope of deterring it from its bloodthirsty ways.
In effect from four widely separated parts of the Greek world—Mytilene, Cyprus, the neighbourhood of Agrinion, and the district of Thessaly and Epirus—comes one and the same statement, that to the word vrykolakas is still, or has recently been, attached its etymologically correct meaning ‘were-wolf’; and, since these isolated local usages cannot be explained otherwise than as survivals of an usage which was once general, they constitute a second proof that the Greeks originally adopted the word in the sense in which the vast majority of the Slavonic races continue down to this day to employ it.
But while it is thus certain that the Greeks first learnt and acquired the word vrykolakas in the sense of ‘were-wolf,’ it is equally certain that the main characteristics of the monster to which that name is now applied are those of the Slavonic ‘vampire.’ The appearance and the habits of the re-animated corpse according to Slavonic superstition differ hardly at all from those described in the last chapter. Indeed the question is not so much whether the Greeks are indebted to the Slavs in respect of this belief, as what is the extent of their indebtedness. Is the whole superstition a foreign importation, or is it only partly alien and partly native?