Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/393

 not disembarrass itself of a vrykolakas by the traditional means, cremation.

Of the causes by which a man is predisposed to become a vrykolakas some mention has already been made in the passages which have been cited from various writers above; but before I conclude this account of the superstition as it now is and has been since the seventeenth century, and proceed to analyse its composite nature, it may be convenient to give a complete list of such causes. The majority of these are recognised all over Greece and are familiar to every student of modern Greek folklore, and I shall not therefore burden this chapter with references to previous writers whose observations tally exactly with my own; for rarer and more local beliefs I shall of course quote my authority.

The classes of persons who are most liable to become vrykolakes are:

(1) Those who do not receive the full and due rites of burial.

(2) Those who meet with any sudden or violent death (including suicides), or, in Maina, where the vendetta is still in vogue, those who having been murdered remain unavenged.

(3) Children conceived or born on one of the great Church-festivals , and children stillborn.

(4) Those who die under a curse, especially the curse of a parent, or one self-invoked, as in the case of a man who, in perjuring himself, calls down on his own head all manner of damnation if what he says be false.

(5) Those who die under the ban of the Church, that is to say, excommunicate.

(6) Those who die unbaptised or apostate.

(7) Men of evil and immoral life in general, more particularly if they have dealt in the blacker kinds of sorcery.([Greek: Kythniaka], p. 125), the names of several persons (including one woman) who became vrykolakes are still remembered.](see above, p. 208), who are commonly regarded as subject to lycanthropy in life and continue the same predatory habits as vampires after death.]