Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/236

 *carios' is the same as 'ephialtes,' the demon who punishes gluttony with nocturnal discomfort and a feeling of oppression; and in that View he was followed by Suidas and other lexicographers; but he states two important points in the popular superstition which he combats: the 'baboutzicarios' appears only in the octave of Christmas; and it is at night that he meets and terrifies men. Moreover the name itself is, I suspect, derived from the Low-Latin babuztus meaning 'mad,' and indicates the existence then of the belief which is so largely held to-day, that the monstrous apparitions of Christmastide are really men smitten with a peculiar kind of madness. Thus all the information which Psellus gives about the 'baboutzicarios' tallies with modern beliefs concerning the Callicantzaros, and militates against the supposition that the Greeks are indebted for this superstition to the Turks.

Finally there is positive evidence that the Turks borrowed the word in question from the Greeks; for the time at which they used to fear the advent of the karakondjolos—whether the superstition still remains the same, I do not know—was fixed not by their own calendar but by that of the Christians. An article written on the subject of the Turkish calendar early in last century contains this statement: 'The Turks have received this fabulous belief from the Greeks, and they say that this demon, whom the former call Kara Kondjolos and the latter Cali Cangheros, exercises his sway of maleficence and mischief from Christmas-day until that of the Epiphany .' Clearly the Turks would not have fixed the time for the appearance of the karakondjolos by the Christian festivals if they had not borrowed the whole superstition from the Greeks; and indeed the very termination in [Greek: -os] of the Turkish form of the word betrays its Hellenic origin.

The proposed Turkish derivation of the word [Greek: kallikantzaros] must therefore be rejected as finally as Oeconomos' Latin derivation, and it remains only to deal with those which treat the word as genuinely Greek., [Greek: Paradoseis], p. 1249, note 1.]