defensive, not an offensive, measure. It was not an act of hostility or reprisal, but merely a necessary act of self-preservation, which inflicted no hurt on the revenant but simply interposed an impassable barrier between the living and the dead. The motive was fear; there was little or nothing of hatred mixed with it. This is made clear by the fact that cremation has been used even in recent times in a case which had nothing whatsoever to do with the belief in vrykolakes, and where the sole motive was the old desire to serve the interests of the dead.
The occasion was the evacuation of Parga in 1819. The inhabitants of that town had long defied the Turks, but the end was at hand, and it was only by the intervention of the English that they were saved from the tender mercies of Ali Pasha. The English offered them asylum in the Ionian Islands and obtained from the Porte on their behalf a sum of money which fully indemnified them for the houses and lands which they abandoned. But in spite of the terms obtained, the emigrants never forgave the English for treacherously selling to the Turks, as they said, the home which they had defended so stoutly and so long[1]. This evacuation of Parga forms the theme of some ballads which have been preserved[2]. One of them runs as follows:
'Bird of black tidings, that art come from yon confronting coastland,
Tell me what mean those sobs of woe, those dismal lamentations,
That rise aloud from Parga's walls and shake the very mountains.
Hath the Turk overwhelmèd her, do fire and sword consume her?'
'The Turk hath not o'erwhelmèd her, nor fire and sword consume her;
The men of Parga have been sold, as ye sell goats and oxen,
And all must hie them thence to dwell in miserable exile.
They must leave all, the homes they love, the tombs of their own fathers,
The shrine whereat they bowed the knee, for infidels to trample.
Women in anguish rend their hair and beat their bare white bosoms,
Old men lift up their quavering voice in dismal lamentation,
Priests amid flowing tears strip bare the churches where they worshipped.
Dost see the glare of yonder fire? the pall of smoke above it?
There are they burning dead men's bones, the bones of valiant warriors,
Who made the hosts of Turkey quail and fired their captain's palace[3].
Yonder, I tell thee, many a son his father's bones is burning,
Lest the Liápid[4] light on them, lest Turk upon them trample.
Dost hear the wailing manifold wherewith the woodlands echo?
Dost hear the beating of the breast, the dismal lamentation?
'Tis that the parting hour has come, to part them from their country;
They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.'
, literally
'and they burnt the Vizir.']
