Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/229

 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 ([Greek: stringlais]) 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' ([Greek: Arapêdes]), 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 [Greek: kallikantzaros] 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 [Greek: k] in the first syllable and the vowel [Greek: a] in