Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study...

The same objection holds good as against Polites’ first view[585]. Taking the word λυκοκάντζαρος as his starting-point, instead of the common and central form καλλικάντζαρος, he proposed to derive the word from λύκος, ‘wolf,’ and κάνθαρος, ‘beetle.’ But though the resulting hybrid might be a monster as hideous as the worst of Callicantzari, these creatures so far as I know show no traits suggestive of entomological parentage. But since Polites himself has long abandoned this view, there is no need to criticize it further.

His next pronouncement on the subject[586] banished both wolf and beetle and seemed to recognise the necessity of keeping the main form καλλικάντζαρος to the fore. But while he naturally assumed καλός to be the first half of the compound, he could only set down κάντζαρος as an unknown foreign, perhaps Slavonic, word.

But in his latest publication[587] he relinquishes this position and falls back once more on a dialectic form καλιτσάγγαρος which is reported to be in use at the village of Pyrgos in Tenos and at some places on the western shores of the Black Sea. This word he believes to be a compound, of which the second half is connected with a Byzantine word τσαγγίον, meaning a kind of boot, and the still existing, if somewhat rare, word, τσαγγάρης, ‘a boot-maker,’ while the first half is to be either καλός, ‘fine,’ or καλίκι, ‘a hoof[588].’ The former alternative provides easily the form καλοτσάγγαρος or, as would be almost more likely, καλλιτσάγγαρος, meaning ‘one who wears fine boots’; while in the other alternative there results a supposed original form καλικοτσάγγαρος, meaning ‘one who has hoofs instead of boots,’ whence, by suppression of the third syllable, comes the existing word καλιτσάγγαρος, or again, by loss of the first syllable, a supposed form λικοτσάγγαρος which developed into λυκοκάντζαρος.

On the score of formation the former alternative is unassailable; but the latter, with its supposed loss of syllables, is more questionable. The loss of a first syllable is common enough in modern Greek, where it consists of a vowel only (e.g. βρίσκω[589] for εὑρίσκω, μέρα for ἡμέρα, etc.), but the supposed loss of the syllable κα would, I think, be hard to parallel. Again the loss of a syllable in the middle of a word is fairly common either through the suppression of the vowel ι (or η, which is not distinguished from ι in sound) as in καλκάντζαρος for καλλικάντζαρος, ἔρμος for ἔρημος, etc., or else when two concurrent syllables begin with the same consonant, as in ἀστροπελέκι, ‘a thunderbolt,’ for ἀστραποπελέκι, but the loss of the syllable κο from the form καλικοτσάγγαρος is a bold hypothesis.

But on the score of meaning both alternatives are alike unconvincing. Polites indeed cites one or two popular traditions in which the Callicantzari are represented as wearing wooden or iron shoes—wherewith no doubt the better to kick and to trample their victims; and such footgear might, I suppose, be described ironically as ‘nice boots.’ But to find in this occasional trait the origin of the word Callicantzaros[590] appears to me a counsel of despair. Nor does the other alternative commend itself to me any more. It is of course a widely accepted belief—and one by the way which contradicts the traditions just mentioned—that the Callicantzari have feet like those of an ass or a goat. But in describing such a creature no one surely would be likely to say that it had hoofs ‘instead of boots’—‘instead of feet’ would be the natural and reasonable expression. To suppose that the Callicantzari (or rather, to use the hypothetical form, the καλικοτσάγγαροι) are so named because their boot-maker provides them with hoofs instead of detachable foot-gear, is little short of ludicrous.

But though neither of the proposed derivations will, I think, win much acceptance, the historical evidence which Polites adduces in support of his views forms a valuable contribution to the study of this subject. The inferences which he draws therefrom may not be correct; but the material which he has collected is of high interest.

Singling out of the many traditions concerning the Callicantzari the widely, and perhaps universally, prevalent belief that their activities are confined to the Twelve Days between Christmas and Epiphany, he argues that if we can discover the origin of this limitation, we shall be in a fair way to discover also whence came the conception of the Callicantzari themselves.

Accordingly he traces the history of winter festivals in Greece, starting from the period in which the Greeks, in deference to their Roman masters, adopted the festivals known as the Saturnalia, the Brumalia, and the Kalándae (for so the celebration of the Kalends of January was called by the Greeks) in place of their own old festivals such as the Kronia and some of the festivals of Dionysus. The change however was more one of name than of method of observance[591]. The pagan orgies which marked these festal days were strongly denounced by the Fathers of the Church from the very earliest times. In the first century of our era, Timothy, bishop of Ephesus, met with his martyrdom in an attempt to suppress such a festival. At the end of the fourth century S. John Chrysostom and, after him, Asterios, bishop of Amasea, loudly inveighed against the celebration of the Kalandae. At the end of the seventh century the sixth Oecumenical Council of the Church promulgated a canon forbidding all these pagan winter-festivals. But still in the twelfth century, as Balsamon testifies[592], the old abuses continued unabated; and there are local survivals of such festivals at the present day.

The most prominent feature of these celebrations was that men dressed themselves up in various characters, to represent women, soldiers, or animals, and thus disguised gave themselves up to the wildest orgies. At Ephesus it is clear that these orgies included human sacrifice, and that Bishop Timothy was on one occasion the victim; for we are told by Photius that he met with his death in trying to suppress ‘the polluted and blood-stained rites of the Greeks[593]’; and the same writer speaks of τὸ καταγώγιον—so this particular ceremony was called—as a ‘devilish and abominable festival[594]’ in which men ‘took delight in unholy things as if they were pious deeds[595].’ And again another account of the same celebration tells how men with masks on their faces and with clubs in their hands went about ‘assaulting without restraint free men and respectable women, perpetrating murders of no common sort and shedding endless blood in the best parts of the city, as if they were performing a religious duty (ὡσανεὶ ἀναγκαῖόν τι καὶ ψυχωφελὲς πράττοντες)[596].’

At Amasea, according to Asterios, at the beginning of the fifth century, things were not much better. The peasants, he says, who come into the town during the festival ‘are beaten and outraged by drunken revellers, they are robbed of anything they are carrying, they have war waged upon them in a time of peace, they are mocked and insulted in word and in deed[597].’ Here too the custom of dressing up was in vogue among those who took part in the festival—women’s dress being especially affected.

Again in the seventh century the points specially emphasized by the canon of the Church are that ‘no man is to put on feminine dress, nor any woman the dress proper to men, nor yet are masks, whether comic, satyric, or tragic, to be worn’; and the penalty for disregard of this ordinance was to be excommunication. Yet for all these fulminations the old custom continued. The author of ‘the Martyrdom of S. Dasius[598],’ writing perhaps as late as the tenth century, speaks of the festival of the Kronia as still observed in the old way: ‘on the Kalends of January foolish men, following the custom of the (pagan) Greeks, though they call themselves Christians, hold a great procession, changing their own appearance and character, and assuming the guise of the devil; clothed in goat-skins and with their faces disguised,’ they reject their baptismal vows and again serve in the devil’s ranks. And still in the twelfth century these practices obtained not only among the laity but even among the clergy, some of whom, in the words of Balsamon[599], ‘assume various masks and dresses, and appear in the open nave of the church, sometimes with swords girt on and in military uniform, other times as monks or even as quadrupeds.’

Several instances of the continuance of this custom in modern times have been collected by Polites[600] and others; the savage orgies of old time have indeed dwindled into harmless mummery; but their most constant feature, the wearing of strange disguises, remains unchanged; and the occasion too is still a winter-festival, either some part of the Twelve Days or the carnival preceding Lent. From certain facts concerning these modern festivals it will be manifest that some relation exists between the mummers who celebrate them and the Callicantzari.

In Crete, where the New Year is thus celebrated, the mummers are called καμπουχέροι, while in Achaia a fuller form of the same word, κατσιμπουχέροι, is a by-name of the Callicantzari. At Portariá on Mount Pelion, each night of the Twelve Days, a man is dressed up as an ‘Arab,’ wearing an old cloak and having bells affixed to his clothes. He goes the round of the streets with a lantern; and the villagers explicitly state that this is done γιὰ τὰ καρκαντζέλια, ‘because of the Callicantzari,’ i.e., says Polites, as a means of getting rid of them. At Pharsala there is a sort of play at the Epiphany, in which the mummers represent bride, bridegroom, and ‘Arab’; the Arab tries to carry off the bride, and the bridegroom defends her. In some parts of Macedonia similar mumming takes place at the New Year; in Belbentós the men who take part in it are called ‘Arabs’; at Palaeogratsana they have the name ῥουκατζιάρια (evidently another compound of κάντζαρος, but one which I cannot interpret); formerly also ‘at Kozane and in many other parts of Greece,’ according to a Greek writer in the early part of the nineteenth century, throughout the Twelve Days boys carrying bells used to go round the houses, singing songs and having ‘one or more of their company dressed up with masks and bells and foxes’ brushes and other such things to give them a weird and monstrous look.’

This custom is evidently identical with one which I myself saw enacted in Scyros at the carnival preceding Lent. The young men of the town array themselves in huge capes made of goat-skin, reaching to the hips or lower, and provided with holes for the arms. These capes are sometimes made with hoods of the same material which cover the whole head and face, small holes being cut for the eyes but none for purposes of respiration. In other cases the cape covers the shoulders only, leaving the head free, and the young man contents himself with the blue and white kerchief, which is the usual head-gear in Scyros, and a roughly made domino. A third variety of cape is provided with a hood to cover the back of the head, while the mask for the face is made of the skin of some small animal such as a weasel, of which the hind legs and tail are attached to the hood, while the head and forelegs hang down to the breast of the wearer; eye-holes are cut in these as in the other forms of mask. These capes are girt tightly about the waist with a stout cord or strap, from which are hung all round the body a large number of bronze goat-bells, of the ordinary shape but of extraordinary dimensions, some measuring as much as ten inches for the greatest diameter. The method by which these bells are attached to the belt is remarkable, and is designed to permit a large number of them to be worn without being in any way muffled by contact with the cape.

Each bell is fastened to one end of a curved and springy stick of about a foot in length, and the other end is inserted behind the belt from above; the curve and elasticity of the stick thus cause the bell to hang at some few inches distance from the body, free to jangle with every motion of the dancer. Some sixty or seventy of these bells, of various sizes, are worn by the best-equipped, and the weight of such a number was estimated by the people of the place as approximately a hundredweight—no easy load with which to dance over the narrow, roughly-paved alleys of ‘steep Scyros.’ Those however who lack either the prowess or the accoutrements to share in the glorious fatigue do not abstain altogether from the festivities; even the small boys beg, borrow, or steal a goat-bell and attach it to the hinder part of their person in lieu of a tail, or, at the worst, make good the caudal deficiency with a branch from the nearest tree.

Thus in various grades of goat-like attire the young men and boys traverse the town, stopping here and there, where the steep and tortuous paths offer a wider and more level space, to leap and dance, or anon at some friendly door to imbibe spirituous encouragement to further efforts. In the dancing itself there is nothing peculiar to this festival; the swinging amble, which is the gait of the more heavily equipped, is prescribed by the burden of bells and the roughness of roads. The purpose of the leaping and dancing is solely to evoke as much din as possible from the bells; and prodigious indeed is the jarring and jangling in those narrow alleys when the troupe of dancers leap together into the air, as high as their burdens allow, and come down with one crash.

Since I first published[601] an account of these festivities in Scyros, similar celebrations of carnival-time have been reported from other places; at Sochos in Macedonia[602] the scene is almost identical with that which I have described; in the district of Viza in Thrace a primitive dramatic performance was recently observed in which the two chief actors wore similar goat-skins, masks, and bells, and had their hands blackened[603]; and again at Kostí in the extreme north of Thrace there is mummery of the same kind[604].

A scene of the same sort was formerly enacted in Athens also during the carnival, and was known by the expressive name τὰ ταράματα (i.e. ταράγματα), ‘The Riotings.’ A man dressed up as a bear used to rush through the streets followed by a crowd of youths howling and clashing any noisy instruments that came to hand. That this ceremony was originally of a religious character is shown not only by its association with the season of Lent, but by an accessory rite performed on the same occasion. Wooden statues, actually called ξόανα as late as the time of the Greek War of Independence, were carried out in procession; and the well-being of the people was believed to be so bound up with the due performance of these rites, that even during the Revolution, when Athens was in the hands of the Turks, a native of the place is said to have returned from Aegina, whither he had fled for safety, in order to play the part of the bear and to carry out the xoana for the general good[605].

The close connexion of these several modern customs, whether the occasion of them is the Twelve Days or Carnival-time, cannot be doubted. The variation of date is of old standing; for the canon of the Church, on which Balsamon[606] comments, condemns certain pagan festivals on March 1st (approximately the carnival time) along with the Kalandae and Brumalia; and the similarity of the dresses, masks, bells, and other accoutrements proper to both occasions proves the substantial identity of the festivals.

A comparison of these allied modern customs can only lead to one conclusion. The use of the same word to denote the mummers in Crete and the Callicantzari in Achaia; the name ῥουκατζιάρια for these mummers at Palaeogratsana; the custom of blackening the face, which is clearly indicated by the employment of the name ‘Arab’ in this connexion; the monstrous and half-animal appearance produced by masks, foxes’ brushes, goat-skins, and suchlike adornments; the attempted rape of the bride by the ‘Arab’ in the play at Pharsala—all furnish contributory evidence that the mummers themselves represent Callicantzari. Only at Portariá is the significance of the custom somewhat confused; there the ‘Arab’ in his old cloak and bells has long ceased to represent a Callicantzaros, and has actually been provided with a lantern with which to scare the Callicantzari away.

Polites, in support of his theory that the name Callicantzari, in its earliest form, meant either ‘wearers of nice boots’ or ‘possessors of hoofs instead of boots,’ claims that the mummers first suggested to the Greek imagination the conception of the Callicantzari (it is not indeed anywhere mentioned in the above traditions that the feet or the footgear of the mummers were in any way remarkable, but we may let that pass), and that the fear which their riotous conduct inspired in earlier times gradually elevated them in men’s minds to the rank of demons. This, he urges, is the reason why these demons are feared only during the Twelve Days, the period when such mumming was in vogue.

In confirmation of his view Polites cites some of the evidence concerning the human origin of the Callicantzari, mentioning both the fairly common belief that men turn into Callicantzari, and the rarer traditions that a Callicantzaros resumes his human shape if a torch be thrust in his face and that the transformation of men into Callicantzari can be prevented by certain means. With this evidence I have already dealt, and I agree with Polites that in it there survives a genuine record of the human origin of the Callicantzari. But of course on the further question, whether the particular men thus elevated to the dignity of demons were the mummers of Christmastide, it has no immediate bearing.

As a second piece of corroboration, he adduces another derivation hardly more felicitous than those with which I have already dealt. The word on which he tries his hand this time is καμπουχέροι or κατσιμπουχέροι—the name of the mummers in Crete and of the Callicantzari in Achaia. Here again, with a certain perversity, he selects the worse form of the two, καμπουχέροι, which is evidently a syncopated form of the other, and proceeds to derive it from the Spanish gambujo, ‘a mask,’ leaving the subsequent development of κατσιμπουχέροι totally inexplicable. For my own part I consider it far more probable that the word κατσιμπουχέροι is a humorously compounded name, of which the second half is the word μπουχαρί[607] (an Arabic word which has passed, probably through Turkish, into Greek) meaning ‘chimney,’ and that the whole by-name has reference simply to the common belief that Callicantzari try to extinguish the fire on the hearth and thus to gain access to the house by the chimney. As to the meaning of κατσι-, the first half of the compound, I can only hazard the conjecture that it is connected with the verb κατσιάζω, which ordinarily means to blight, to wither, to dry up, and so forth, though its passive participle, κατσιασμένος, is said by Skarlatos[608] to be applied to clothes which are ‘difficult to wash.’

If then the compound κατσιμπουχέροι is a descriptive title of the Callicantzari, meaning those who render the chimney difficult to wash, the coarse and eminently rustic humour of the allusion to their habits needs no further explanation; and it is the mummers of Crete who owe their name to the Callicantzari, not vice versa.

While therefore I acknowledge and appreciate to the full the value of Polites’ researches into the history of the Twelve Days, the inferences which he draws from the material collected seem to me no more sound than the derivations which they are designed to corroborate. My own interpretation of the historical facts which Polites has brought together is as follows.

The superstitions and customs connected by the modern folk with the Twelve Days are undoubtedly an inheritance from ancestors who celebrated the Brumalia and other pagan festivals at the same season of the year. These ancient festivals, though Roman in name, probably differed very little in the manner of their observance from certain old Greek festivals, chief among which was some festival of Dionysus. This is rendered probable both by the date of these festivals and by the manner of their celebration. For the worship of Dionysus was practically confined to the winter-time; at Delphi his cult superseded that of Apollo during the three winter months[609]; and at Athens the four festivals of Dionysus fell within about the same period—the rural Dionysia at the end of November or beginning of December, the Lenaea about a month later, the Anthesteria at the end of January, and the Great Dionysia at the end of February. As for the manner of conducting the Latin-named festivals, Asterios’ description of the Kalándae in the fifth century plainly attests the Dionysiac character of the orgies, and Balsamon, in the twelfth, was so convinced, from what he himself witnessed, of their Bacchanalian origin, that he actually proposed to derive the name Brumalia from Βροῦμος[610] (by which he meant Βρόμιος) a surname of Dionysus.

The mumming then, which is still customary in some parts of Greece during the Twelve Days, is a survival apparently of festivals in honour of Dionysus. Further the mummers dress themselves up to resemble Callicantzari. But the worship of Dionysus presented a similar scene; ‘those who made processions in honour of Dionysus,’ says Ulpian, ‘used to dress themselves up for that purpose to resemble his companions, some in the guise of Satyrs, others as Bacchae, and others as Sileni[611].’ The mummers therefore of the present day have, it appears, inherited the custom of dressing up from the ancient worshippers of Dionysus and are their modern representatives; and from this it follows that the Callicantzari whom the modern mummers strive to resemble are to be identified with those motley companions of Dionysus whom his worshippers imitated of old.

The more closely these two identifications are examined, the more certain they will appear. Take for example Müller’s general description[612] of the celebration of Dionysus’ festivals. ‘The swarm of subordinate beings—Satyrs, Panes, and Nymphs—by whom Bacchus was surrounded, and through whom life seemed to pass from the god of outward nature into vegetation and the animal world, and branch off into a variety of beautiful or grotesque forms, were ever present to the fancy of the Greeks; it was not necessary to depart very widely from the ordinary course of ideas, to imagine that dances of fair nymphs and bold satyrs, among the solitary woods and rocks, were visible to human eyes, or even in fancy to take a part in them. The intense desire felt by every worshipper of Bacchus to fight, to conquer, to suffer, in common with him, made them regard these subordinate beings as a convenient step by which they could approach more nearly to the presence of their divinity. The custom, so prevalent at the festivals of Bacchus, of taking the disguise of satyrs, doubtless originated in this feeling, and not in the mere desire of concealing excesses under the disguise of a mask; otherwise, so serious and pathetic a spectacle as tragedy could never have originated in the choruses of these satyrs. The desire of escaping from self into something new and strange, of living in an imaginary world, breaks forth in a thousand instances in these festivals of Bacchus.

It is seen in the colouring the body with plaster, soot, vermilion, and different sorts of green and red juices of plants, wearing goats’ and deer skins round the loins, covering the face with large leaves of different plants; and lastly in the wearing masks of wood, bark, and other materials, and of a complete costume belonging to the character.’ To complete this description it may be added that ‘drunkenness, and the boisterous music of flutes, cymbals and drums, were likewise common to all Dionysiac festivals[613].’ Which of all these things is missing in the mediaeval or modern counterpart of the festival? The blackening of the face or the wearing of the masks, the feminine costume or beast-like disguise, the boisterous music of bells, the rioting and drunkenness—all are reproduced in the celebration of Kalandae and Brumalia or in the mumming of the Twelve Days. The mummers are the worshippers of a god, whose name however and existence they and their forefathers have long forgotten.

And again are not the Callicantzari faithful reproductions of the Satyrs and Sileni who ever attended Dionysus? Their semi-bestial form with legs of goat or ass affixed to a human trunk, their grotesque faces and goat-like ears and horns, their boisterous and mischievous merriment, their love of wine, their passion for dancing, above all in company with Nereids, the indecency of their actions and sometimes of their appearance, their wantonness and lust—all these widely acknowledged attributes of the Callicantzari proclaim them lineal descendants of Dionysus’ motley comrades.

Such is my interpretation of the facts collected by Polites, and it differs from that which he has advanced in the reversal of cause and effect. Starting from the fact that dressing up in various disguises was the chief characteristic of the Kalandae and Brumalia and is perpetuated in the mumming of the Twelve Days, but failing to carry his researches far enough back and so to discover the absolute identity of these festivals with the ancient Dionysia, he holds that the generally prevalent custom of dressing up in monstrous and horrible disguises at a given period of the year—a custom which he leaves unexplained—was the cause of the belief in the activity of monstrous and horrible demons at that period; those who had once been simply human mummers were exalted to the ranks of the supernatural, but still betrayed their origin by the possession of a name which meant either ‘wearers of nice boots’ or else ‘hoofed and not booted.’ In my view on the contrary the identity of the modern mumming with the ancient Dionysia is indisputable; and just as in ancient times the belief in the Satyrs and Sileni was the cause of the adoption of satyr-like disguises in the Dionysia, so in more recent times, when the Satyrs, Sileni, and others came to be included in the more comprehensive term Callicantzari, it was the belief in the Callicantzari which continued to cause the wearing of similar disguises during the Twelve Days.

And this interpretation of the facts explains no less adequately than that of Polites the reason why the activities of the Callicantzari are limited to the Twelve Days. That which was in ancient times the special season for the commemoration of Dionysus and his attendants has now with the very gradual but still real decline of ancient beliefs become the only season. This is natural and intelligible enough in itself; but, if a parallel be required, Greek folklore can provide one. No one will suppose that the Dryads of ancient Greece were feared during the first six days of August only, though it is likely enough that they had a special festival at that time; but in modern folklore these are the only days on which, in many parts of Greece, any survival of the Dryads’ memory can be found[614].

Moreover the identification of the Callicantzari with the Satyrs and other kindred comrades of Dionysus elucidates a modern custom which I noticed earlier in this chapter but did not then explain—the rare, but known, custom of making offerings to the Callicantzari. The sweetmeats, waffles, sausages, and even the pig’s bone which are occasionally placed in the chimney for the Callicantzari correspond, it would seem, with offerings formerly made to Dionysus and shared by his train of Satyrs. Possibly even the choice of pork (usually in the shape of sausages) or, in the more rudimentary form of the survival, of a pig’s bone, dates from the age in which the proper victim for Dionysus at the Anthesteria was a sow; but of course it may only have been determined by the fact that pork is the peasant’s Christmas fare and therefore the most ready offering at that season.

How then, it will be asked, does the conclusion here reached, namely that the Callicantzari are, in many districts, the modern representatives of the Satyrs and other kindred beings, square with that other conclusion previously drawn from another set of facts, namely that the Callicantzari were originally not demons but men who either voluntarily or under the compulsion of a kind of madness assumed the shape and the character of beasts? The reconciliation of these two apparently antagonistic conclusions depends primarily on the derivation of the name Callicantzari.

Now the conditions which in my opinion that derivation should satisfy, have already been indicated in my discussion of dialectic forms and in my criticism of the several derivations proposed by others; but it will be well to summarise them here. They are four in number.

Thirdly, it must explain this form as a compound of a word κάντζαρος—presumably with καλός. For, in dialect, there exists a word σκατζάρι, which is used as a synonym with καλλικάντζαρος and is evidently in form a diminutive of the word κάντζαρος, and likewise there exists another synonym λυκοκάντζαρος, which cannot be formed from καλλικάντζαρος by an arbitrary shuffling of syllables but is a separate compound of κάντζαρος—presumably with λύκος.