Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/385

 were open, the eyelids closed, the mouth gaping, and the teeth white.' How the body was finally treated or disposed of is not related.

The next writer whose testimony deserves notice and respect is Father François Richard, a Jesuit priest of the island of Santorini, to whose work on that island reference has above been made. Agreeing with Allatius in his description of the appearance of vrykolakes, he adds thereto many instances of their unpleasantly active habits. His whole narrative bears the stamp of good faith, but is too long to translate in full; and I must therefore content myself with a précis of it, indicating by inverted commas such phrases and sentences as are literally rendered.

The Devil, he says, works by means of dead bodies as well as by living sorcerers. 'These bodies he animates and preserves for a long time in their entirety; he appears with the face of the dead, traversing now the streets and anon the open country; he enters men's houses, leaving some horror-stricken, others deprived of speech, and others again lifeless; here he inflicts violence, there loss, and everywhere terror.' At first I believed these apparitions to be merely the souls of the dead returning to ask help to escape the sooner from Purgatory; but such souls never commit such excesses—assault, destruction of property, death, and so forth. It is clearly then a form of diabolical possession; for indeed the priests with the bishop's permission employ forms of exorcism. They assemble on Saturday (the only day on which vrykolakes rest in the grave and cannot stir abroad) and exhume the body which is suspected. 'And when they find it whole, fresh, and full of blood, they take it as certain that it was serving as an instrument of the Devil.' They accordingly continue their exorcisms until with the departure of the Devil the body begins to decompose and gradually to lose 'its colour and its embonpoint, and is left a noisome and ghastly lump.' So rapid was the decomposition in the case of a Greek priest's daughter, Caliste by name, that no one could remain in the church, and the body was hastily re-interred; from that time she ceased to appear.