Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/272

 snakes for the most part, but in one Messenian story also raw dogs'-flesh. Heracles broached a cask of wine, and Pholos' brother Centaurs smelt it and swarmed to the cave on mischief bent; the Callicantzari have the same love of wine and the same malevolence. The first of the Centaurs to enter the cave were put to flight by Heracles with fire-brands, and his ordinary weapon, the bow, was not used by him save to complete the rout; fire-brands are the right weapons with which to scare away the Callicantzari. Surely, when such correspondences as these attest the integrity of popular tradition for some two thousand years, there is nothing incredible in the supposition that there had been equal integrity in popular (as opposed to artistic and literary) traditions for another thousand years or more before that.

Thus then it appears that in some districts of modern Greece, in which there prevail the beliefs that the Callicantzari are, in their normal form, human and that they are capable of transforming themselves into beasts, popular tradition dates from the age in which the Achaean invaders credited the Pelasgian tribe of Centauri with magical powers and in token of one special manifestation thereof surnamed them Pheres.

In other districts, where the Callicantzari are represented as demoniacal and not human and as monsters of mixed rather than of variable shape, the popular memory goes back to a period somewhat less remote, that period in which a new conception, encouraged perhaps unwittingly by archaic art, became predominant in classical art and literature, with the further result, we must suppose, that in the minds of some of the common-folk too monsters of composite shape took the place of the old human wonder-working Centaurs.

And yet again in other districts, where the Christmas mummers in the guise of Callicantzari are the modern representatives of those worshippers of Dionysus who dressed themselves in the guise of Satyrs or Sileni, the traditions which survive are mainly those of a post-classical age in which the half-human half-animal comrades of Dionysus lost their distinctive names and were enrolled in the Centaurs' ranks.

Finally in the few districts where language at least testifies that werewolves have also been numbered among the Callicantzari,, [Greek: Paradoseis], pp. 1297 and 1337.]