Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/267

 and prophecy. It was from him that Asclepios learned 'to be a healer of the many-plaguing maladies of men; and thus all that came unto him whether plagued with self-grown sores or with limbs wounded by the lustrous bronze or stone far-hurled, or marred by summer heat or winter cold—these he delivered, loosing each from his several infirmity, some with emollient spells and some by kindly potions, or else he hung their limbs with charms, or by surgery he raised them up to health .' And it was Chiron too to whom Apollo himself resorted for counsel, and from whom he learned the blissful destiny of the maiden Cyrene. Nor was Chiron the only exponent of such arts among the Centaurs; for Hesiod names also Asbolos as a diviner.

If then the tribe of Centaurs enjoyed a reputation for sorcery, could this have won for them the name of 'Beasts'? Can it have been that, in the exercise of their magic powers, they were believed able to transform themselves into beasts?

Within the limits of Greek folk-lore we have already once encountered such a belief, namely in the case of the 'Striges,' old witches capable of turning themselves into birds of prey; and in the folk-lore of the world at large the idea is extremely frequent. There is no need to encumber this chapter with a mass of recorded instances; the verdict of the first authority on the subject is sufficient. According to Tylor, the belief 'that certain men, by natural gift or magic art, can turn for a time into ravening wild beasts' is 'a widespread belief, extending through savage, barbaric, classic, oriental, and mediaeval life, and surviving to this day in European superstition.' 'The origin of this idea,' he says, 'is by no means sufficiently explained,' but he notes that 'it really occurs that, in various forms of mental disease, patients prowl shyly, long to bite and destroy mankind, and even fancy themselves transformed into wild beasts.' Whether such cases of insanity are the cause or the effect of the belief, he does not determine; but he adds, what is most important to the present issue, that 'professional sorcerers have taken up the idea, as they do any morbid delusion, and pretend to turn themselves and others into beasts by magic art'; and, later on, citing by way