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.