Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/381

 To this end I shall examine first and necessarily at some length a certain abnormal condition of the dead about which very definite ideas are everywhere held; for the abhorrence and dread with which the abnormal state is regarded will be an accurate measure of the eagerness with which the opposite and normal state is desired; and further in this desire to promote and to secure the normal condition of the departed will be found the motive of various funeral-customs.

This abnormal condition of the dead is a kind of vampirism. It is believed that under certain conditions a dead body is withheld from the normal process of corruption, is re-animated, and revisits the scenes of its former life, sometimes in a harmless or even kindly mood, but far more often bent on mischief and on murder. The superstition as it now stands is by no means wholly Greek or wholly popular. Two extraneous influences, the one Slavonic and the other ecclesiastical, have considerably modified it. But in the present section I shall confine myself to describing the appearance, nature, habits, and proper treatment of the Greek vampire as he is now conceived; the work of analysing the superstition and of separating the pure Hellenic metal from the extraneous alloys with which in its now current form it is contaminated will occupy the next section; and the two which follow will be devoted to showing that the native residue of superstition was in fact well known to the ancient Greeks and was utilised to no small extent in their literature.

The best accounts of this superstition and of the savage practices to which it led are furnished by writers of the seventeenth century. At the present day, though the superstition is far from extinction, the more violent outbreaks of it are comparatively rare; and, although stories dealing with it may frequently be heard, it might perhaps be difficult to piece together any complete and coherent account of the Greek vampire without a previous knowledge obtained from writers of two or three centuries ago. In such stories as I myself have heard I have found nothing new, and have often missed something with which older narratives had made me familiar. In the seventeenth century some parts of Greece would seem to have been infested by these vampires. The island of Santorini (the ancient Thera) acquired so enduring a notoriety in this respect, that even at the