Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/412

 but the story confers the further advantage of letting us see such a curse in operation. Constantine is presented as a revenant, but not of the modern type; for what turn must the story have taken if he had been a normal vrykolakas? His first act would have been to devour his nearest of kin—his mother, who was tearing up his grave-stones and cursing him: and his next, if he had troubled to go as far as Babylon, to make a like end of Areté. And what do we actually find? Constantine acts not only as a reasonable man in seeking to allay his sister's suspicions, but also as a good man in keeping his oath. He is driven forth from the grave on a quest which (in most versions of the story) earns him no thanks from those whom he benefits; he does his weary mission and (in most versions) goes back again to the cold grave from which the curse had raised him. Our sympathy is engaged by Constantine no less than by his mother. He too is a sufferer, first stricken down in his youth by pestilence, and then cursed because his oath remained unfulfilled. He claims our pity, and in this differs fundamentally from the ordinary vrykolakas which could only excite our horror.

Furthermore it is noteworthy that in the many versions of this poem, just as in the popular curses which I have quoted, the word vrykolakas is nowhere found.

Hence I am inclined to believe that the original poem, from which have come so many modern versions, differing widely in many respects, but agreeing completely in the exclusion both of the Slavonic word vrykolakas and of all the suggestions of horror which surround it, was composed in a period anterior to the intrusion of Slavonic ideas; and that the modern versions therefore, which prove their fidelity to the spirit of the original precisely by having refused admittance to anything Slavonic, furnish that which we are seeking, the purely and genuinely Greek element in the now composite superstition. That Greek element then is the conception of the revenant as a sufferer deserving even of pity, the very antithesis in character of the Slavonic vampire, an aggressor exciting only loathing and horror.

In the composite modern Greek superstition, as described in the last chapter, the Slavonic element is clearly predominant.