Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/506

 Several other small pieces of evidence point to the wide distribution of this popular notion. In Sinasos, once more, and also in Patmos, the fees paid to the priests for memorial services derive their name from the word 'forty' ([Greek: saranta]), as if the fortieth day were the limit; after that date, apparently, though my authorities are not explicit on the point, the priests have for their remuneration only the dish of boiled wheat or other presents in kind. In Crete, if a dead man is suspected of turning vrykolakas soon after his death, the people are anxious to deal with him before he enters upon his second period of forty days ; for then all hope of natural dissolution is past, and he becomes as it were a confirmed vampire. In Scyros, the old custom of burning such corpses as were found on exhumation at the end of three years (or, in case of a panic, earlier) to be still whole, and were therefore suspected of vampire-like proclivities, has been replaced by the milder expedient of carrying the body round to forty churches in turn and then re-interring it, in the hope, as it seems, that each of the forty saints, whose sanctuaries have been honoured with a visit and a certain consumption of candles, will in return take a proportionate share in 'loosing' the suppliant dead—or, it may be, in the more mathematical expectation that the work effected in cases of ordinary burial by one funeral-service in forty days, will be achieved by forty funeral-services in one day. Whichever be the calculation on which the practice has been based, the number of churches to be visited is clearly governed by the number of days requisite, in popular belief, for ordinary dissolution.

But with all this reputed rapidity of the earth in 'loosing' the dead bodies committed to her care, the action of fire is incontrovertibly more rapid. In hours, not in days, may be counted the period of disintegration on the pyre. And as it is quicker, so also is it far surer. No body that has been burned can wander as a revenant over the earth, while for the buried there is no perfect assurance of dissolution. Some curse, some crime, the violence of their death, or the deficiency of their funeral rites, each and all of these may keep their bodies 'bound' and indissoluble..], p. 337. The form is [Greek: sarantaria].]