Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/433

 straight to Demostratus' house, and in the guest-chamber saw the girl stretched upon the floor. Thence they returned to another public assembly as crowded as the first, at which one Hyllus, who was reputed not only the best seer of the place but also a clever diviner and possessed of a comprehensive knowledge of other branches of the profession, advised that the girl's body should be taken outside the boundaries of the town and should be burnt to ashes—it was inexpedient, he said, for her to be buried in the town—and that certain propitiatory rites, accompanied by a general purification, should be paid to Hermes Chthonios and the Eumenides.

The strange episode ended with the acceptance of this advice by the townspeople and the suicide of Machates.

This story was known to Father Richard of Santorini, who recognised in it an ancient case parallel to some which he himself had witnessed or learnt from other eye-witnesses in his own times. Even the harmless character of Philinnion did not appear to him incompatible with the popular conception of vrykolakes. Indeed, as we saw above, he himself mentions, among the many instances known to him, one in which a shoemaker of Santorini, having turned vrykolakas, manifested no vicious tendencies, but rather the greatest affection and solicitude for his wife and children.

Nor again is the incident of Philinnion's intercourse with Machates unparalleled in modern times. Many travellers and writers have concurred in recording the belief that the vrykolakas sometimes revisits his widow, or does violence to other women in their husbands' absence, or even marries again in some place where he is unknown, and that of such unions children have been born. Indeed in the Middle Ages this belief seems to have spread even beyond the confines of Greece; for a Roman priest, early in the seventeenth century, sums up the views of his Church on the, a man directly inspired; by 'diviner' [Greek: oiônoskopos], one who is skilled in the science of interpreting signs and omens.], pp. 589, 591 and 593; [Greek: Ballêndas, Kythniaka], p. 125.]