Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/403

 for the genus implied no idea beyond that of the resuscitation of the dead, and were therefore no less applicable to the uniformly ferocious Slavonic variety than to the more reasonable and human type with which they themselves were familiar. They therefore did not require the word 'vampire,' but were content at first to comprise all revenants, whatever their character, under one or other of the existing Greek names.

Subsequently however, it appears, a change took place. The Slavonic superstition concerning were-wolves included then, we may suppose, as it includes now, the idea that were-wolves become after death vampires. The Greeks, who borrowed from the Slavs the very name of the were-wolf, must therewith have learnt that these vrykolakes as they then called them were among the classes of men who were liable to vampirism; and in this particular case it would surely have seemed natural to them that the revenant should be conspicuous for ferocity. The conduct of a reasonable being could not be expected after death from one who in his lifetime had suffered from lycanthropic mania; or rather, if there could be any reason in his conduct, the most reasonable and consistent thing would be for him to turn vampire.

Thus one class of revenants came to be distinguished in the now composite Greek superstition by its wanton and blood-thirsty character; and in order to mark this distinction in speech also the Greeks, it would seem, began to call one who from a were-wolf had become a genuine vampire by the same name after as before death, vrykolakas, while to the more reasonable and human revenants they still applied some such term as [Greek: tympaniaioi], 'drumlike.'

By the seventeenth century the superstition had undergone a further change, which is reflected in the usage of the word [Greek: tympaniaios]. In proportion as the horror of real vrykolakes had grown and spread, the very memory of the more innocent kind of revenants had faded, until the genus revenant was represented only by the species vrykolakas. The word [Greek: tympaniaios] was indeed still known, but Leo Allatius was undoubtedly following the popular usage of his time when he made it synonymous with vrykolakas; for those narratives of the seventeenth century from which I have