at the present day. This was curiously betrayed by some questions put to an American archaeologist by an Arcadian peasant. Among the items of falsehood vended as news by the Greek press he had seen, but owing to the would-be classical style had failed to understand, certain allegations concerning the cannibalistic habits of Red Indians; and the points on which he sought enlightenment were, first, whether they ran on all fours, and, secondly, whether they went naked or wore wolf-skins. In effect the only form of savagery familiar to his mind was that of the werewolf.
Now here, it might be thought, is the clue by which to explain the first conclusion which we reached, namely, that the Callicantzari were originally men capable of transformation into beasts. The name [Greek: lykokantzaros] or werewolf, it might be urged, involved the idea of such transformation; and the idea originally associated with the one species was extended to the whole tribe of Callicantzari. At first sight such an explanation is attractive and appears tenable; but maturer consideration compels me to reject it.
In the first place, although the word [Greek: lykokantzaros] cannot etymologically have meant anything but werewolf when it was first employed, at the present day in the few districts where the name may be heard, in Cynouria, in Messenia, and, so far as I can ascertain, in Crete, it involves no idea of the transformation of men into beasts; it is merely a variant form for [Greek: kallikantzaros] and in no way distinguished from it in meaning, and the Callicantzari in those districts are demons of definite hybrid form, not men temporarily transformed into beasts. And conversely in the Cyclades and other places where the belief in this transformation of men is prevalent, the compound [Greek: lykokantzaros] seems to be unknown, and [Greek: kallikantzaros] (or some dialectic form of the same word) is in vogue. Since then in many places where the generic name Callicantzari is alone in use, the human origin of these monsters is maintained, while in those few districts where the specific name Lycocantzari is also used that human origin is denied, it is hard to believe that in this respect the surviving ideas concerning the genus can be the outcome of obsolete ideas concerning the species.
Secondly, if for the sake of argument it be granted that the Callicantzari had always been demons, how came the werewolf, the [Greek: lykanthrôpos], whose very name proved him half-human, to change
