Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/478

 pollutions of blood shed of old, sent up in wrath to work havoc, fearsome as a dragon-brood to dwell among .' What then were these monsters? I will venture to say that any Greek peasant of to-day, could he but read and understand the Aeschylean description, would furnish a better commentary upon those lines than the most learned discourse thereon that any scholar has written; and his commentary would be summed up in the one word vrykolakes. For, vigorous as the description is, its vigour comes less of dramatic word-building than of fidelity to the horrors of popular superstition, and no other single passage could so fully establish the unity of ancient and modern belief. For while the actual language contains all the words which in antiquity were bound up with the superstition—the 'pollution' which comes of bloodshed, the 'wrath' which follows thereon and in which Earth herself is here made to share, and the 'sending up' by Earth of the Avengers—the thought of the passage is a faithful reflection of what the Greek peasants still believe, that a violent death is among the chief causes of resuscitation, that the earth sends up the dead man raging to deal destruction, and that with others of his kind he consorts and conspires in veritable dragon-bands; and men still tell of gifted seers and healers, such as Apis, summoned in hot haste to panic-stricken hamlets to allay the pest. The [Greek: knôdala brotophthora] of Aeschylus, 'the monsters that destroy mankind,' are indeed but little removed from the modern vrykolakes.

Is it not then clear also on what sources Aeschylus drew for his picture of the Furies themselves? We have seen how, for dramatic purposes, they were substituted for a revenant wreaking his own vengeance. Clytemnestra herself in bodily form should have been the Avenger, if popular superstition had not been in this respect too gross; but the Erinyes take her place in the actual execution of vengeance, and she herself appears only as a ghost to instigate them to their work. But, when that substitution was effected, did not Aeschylus clearly transfer to the Erinyes the whole character and even the appearance popularly attributed to the human Avenger? They are black and loathly to look upon ;, the emendation of Porson.].]