Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/215

 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. The third episode in which the priests chase away the Callicantzari is not often found in current stories, but the belief that the [Greek: hagiasmos] 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