Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/383

 but having, as it appears, a skin of extreme toughness become swollen and distended all over, so that the joints can scarcely be bent; the skin becomes stretched like the parchment of a drum, and when struck gives out the same sound; from this circumstance the vrykolakas has received the name [Greek: tympaniaios] ("drum-*like").' Into such a body, he continues, the devil enters, and issuing from the tomb goes about, chiefly at night, knocking at doors and calling one of the household. If such an one answer, he dies next day; but a vrykolakas never calls twice, and so the inhabitants of Chios (whence Allatius' observations and information were chiefly derived) secure themselves by always waiting for a second call at night before replying. 'This monster is said to be so destructive to men, that appearing actually in the daytime, even at noon—and that not only in houses but in fields and highroads and enclosed vineyards—it advances upon them as they walk along, and by its mere aspect without either speech or touch kills them.' Hence, when sudden deaths occur without other assignable cause, they open the tombs and often find such a body. Thereupon 'it is taken out of the grave, the priests recite prayers, and it is thrown on to a burning pyre; before the supplications are finished the joints of the body gradually fall apart; and all the remains are burnt to ashes' 'This belief,' he pursues, 'is not of fresh and recent growth in Greece; in ancient and modern times alike men of piety who have received the confessions of Christians have tried to root it out of the popular mind.'

As evidence of this statement he adduces a nomocanon, or ordinance of the Greek Church, of uncertain authorship:

'Concerning a dead man, if such be found whole and incorrupt, the which they call vrykolakas.

'It is impossible that a dead man become a vrykolakas, save it be that the Devil, wishing to delude some that they may do things unmeet and incur the wrath of God, maketh these portents, and oft-times at night causeth men to imagine that the dead man whom they knew before cometh and speaketh with them, and in their dreams too they see visions. Other times they see him in the road, walking or standing still, and, more than this, he even throttles men., leg. [Greek: egnôrizan].]